The Chasm

I went to see a couple of films today, 'Guess Who' and 'Beauty Shop', both worried me greatly - there seems to be a chasm between the people of the americas, and it appears to be getting worse. Just look at the message boards for these films to see what I mean.

racism n.

1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
   
   
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.

Whether it be white to black, black to white, mauve to lavender, or culture to culture - racism is discrimination, believing that you can somehow decide on a person's character or abilities via their race. It is ignorant and shameful, regardless of whom it comes from.

In particular, the belief that just because one is subject to racism, they can give it back and expect to retain any respect is unfathomable. People gain respect by being decent and upstanding, not by dropping down to the level of those they hate.

You know you've truly lost the battle if you've become your enemy.

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach.
Fearing not that I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach.

-- My Back Pages; Bob Dylan

Can I just say I believe in Unity, Harmony and Love - and I really do pray that people lay down their hate and join me in that belief.

Every child smiles in the same language.

Karol Jozef Wojtyla 1920-2005

A good man died tonight...



I am not a Catholic. I am not even Christian, or indeed a theist of any kind. But I know a good person when I see one, and I mourn the loss of such a soul tonight.

The Catholic church is not my favourite organisation. Many of the official lines conflict with my own moral and ethical positions; particularly on areas surrounding sex, birth and death. However, these are old and effectively unchangable tenets of the Catholic dogma, and I don't truly hold John Paul II in contempt for espousing these views.

"Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes." 1987

He was often said to be a conservative traditionalist; rigidly sticking to the ancient ways and reversing much modernisation within the church. On a few select areas this could be deemed accurate, but not overall, certainly not.

Outspoken, passionate, and often practically incendiary in his views; conservative he was not.

The great respect that I hold for this man, who on the face of it stands for something I dislike, organised religion, is born out of his life's work, which I think could be boiled down to - human rights and human responsibilities, a passion that I truly share.



Throughout his 58 years as a priest (he was ordained on November 1st, 1946), he has constantly fought against social injustice, greed, hatred, violence and humanity's disregard for the greater good.

"Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought." 1995

As most people know, my main love is for the environment; something he felt very strongly on too. Often he used his voice to carry weight with new environmental initiatives, supporting ecological conservation and the protection of nature from the excesses of man.

On August 25th, 2002, he said the following about human responsibilities, particularly with respect to what I would call our 'guardianship' of the planet...

The human creature feels very little before the wonder of divine Providence, manifested in creation and history... At the same time, he realizes that he is the recipient of a message of love that calls him to responsibility.

People, indeed, are appointed by God as administrators of the earth, to cultivate and protect it. From here stems that which we might call our 'ecological vocation', which in our time has become more urgent than ever.

In a world that is increasingly interdependent, peace, justice and the protection of creation must be the fruit of the common effort of all in pursuing the common good together.

'ecological vocation' - what a wonderful way to phrase it. In the past, most knew we had to till the soil to survive; but our guardianship runs deeper than that, we have put lifekind in peril and it is our responsibility to bring it back from the brink. He knew that and struggled to let others know - something I feel indebted to him for.



On January 17th, 2001, he said the following about the destructon humanity has caused...

Unfortunately, if one casts a gaze over the regions of our planet, one notices immediately that humanity has not fulfilled the divine expectation.

Especially in our times, man has devastated without hesitation plains and forested valleys, polluted the waters, deformed the earth's habitats, made the air unbreathable, disturbed the hydro-geological and atmospheric systems, and turned green spaces into deserts.

One must therefore, promote and support the ecological conversion, which in the last few decades has made humanity more sensitive to the catastrophies we are moving toward.

Conversion must go beyond protecting the physical environment, aiming instead at creating a human ecology which makes the existence of every creature more dignified, protecting the radical good of life in all its manifestations and preparing for future generations an environment closer to that which God planned.

Whilst I may not speak of the environment in terms of the divine intentions, the phrase 'the radical good of life' strikes a chord deep within me. All life is a wonder, a miracle, a gift. To see it as divine does not surprise me. As anyone that has held a newborn in their arms, or witnessed the green mist of the trees in spring will know - life is beautiful.

Most of the truly beautiful people are born, like the phoenix, out of fire. Karol's early life must have contained much pain, by the age of 21 he has lost his brother, his father and his mother - such lost will colour you. He trained secretly as a priest throughout the second world war and aimed to do something good with his life.

He did.



I will finish by saying thank you to a man who understood the word love better than most, and tried to live his life by the golden law that we all fail to achieve: "to thine ownself be true" - uphold your morals, stand by your beliefs, do as you would be done by, and be a good person.



With luck and some good will, hopefully his following wish will be reality one day...

Men and women will once again walk in the garden of creation, working to ensure that the goods of the earth are available to all, and not just to a privileged few.

Malted Chocolate Biscuit Loaf

An odd post for me, but... as requested...

Malted Chocolate Biscuit Loaf

For some family reason that has yet to be fathomed, I always make this for Easter...



This is quite exceptionally sweet, so not to everyone's taste - but kids usually love it, as do adults if you can persuade them to indulge. :)

It's not a cake, but biscuit based, so there's no baking involved (unless you want/need to make your own biscuits).

Update!

Right, I've made this years cake - so I'll add a picture of it. The decorations are standing on little green fondant petals, and the base edge is trimmed with yellow/green fondant leaves. The chicken models we've had for years...



Ingredients

Loaf

175g (7oz) rich tea biscuits [see notes]
100g (4oz) glace cherries
4x15ml (4tbsp) golden syrup [light corn syrup will do]
75g (3oz) margarine
4x15ml (4tbsp) malted chocolate drink powder [Ovaltine, or Milo, or 3tbsp Horlicks + 1tbsp cocoa powder]

Icing

100g (4oz) plain chocolate-flavour cake covering [see notes]
50g (2oz) margarine
1 egg (medium)
150g (6oz) icing sugar [confectioner's sugar]
diamond-shaped sugar jellies

Method

1. Line the long sides and base of a 1lb loaf tin with a length of foil, overlapping each rim by 5cm (2in). Grease foil and tin.

2. Place biscuits in a food bag, or between two sheets of greaseproof paper, and roll gently with a rolling pin until well broken, not crushed (I find small pieces make the loaf easier to cut). Chop glace cherries into quarters.

3. Measure golden syrup carefully, levelling off spoon with a knife and scraping excess from underside of spoon. Place in a saucepan with margarine. Heat gently until margarine melts, remove pan from heat and stir in malted chocolate quickly.

4. Add biscuits and cherries, stir until well mixed. Place in loaf tin, pressing down with a back of a metal spoon to level the top. Bring foil over to cover the top and chill until set (best to leave it at least 1/2 day).

5. To make the icing; break up chocolate and place in a basin with margarine over a saucepan of hot, but not boiling, water. Stir occasionally until melted. ightly beat the egg, and beat it quickly in to the chocolate mixture. Remove basin from saucepan - don't allow the egg to cook at all.

6. Sift icing [confectioner's] sugar and gradually beat into chocolate mixture (use an electric whisk). Beat well. Leave to cool until icing begins to thicken. Place a rounded tablespoon into a piping tube with a star-shaped nozzle.

7. Fold back foil and invert cake on to a serving plate. Spread main bulk of icing over top and sides of cake using a small palette knife to cover evenly. Pipe a row of stars around the top.

8. Arrange diamond jelly shapes along the top, one in each icing star.

9. Leave to set.

Notes

a) If you can't get plain cake covering, which is often a lot sweeter than pure dark chocolate, then use pure dark chocolate and add a tablespoon of golden syrup to the icing, then possibly add some more sifted icing sugar to the icing - taste it to get it to how sweet you like it.

b) As with all recipes, follow one set of measurements only. Don't mix imperial and metric measurements, that won't work well.

c) As I can't use malted chocolate drinks anymore, I'm planning on replacing the 4tbsp of that powder with 1 1/2 tbsp of cocoa, and replacing 1tbsp of golden syrup with 2tbsp of malt extract - crushing some of the biscuits to powder to compensate for the lack of powder. Also, you could use 3tbsp hot chocolate powder and add 2tbsp of malt extract in place of 1tbsp syrup.

d) The egg in the icing keeps it soft and silky, if you don't want uncooked egg in your icing then it can probably be omitted (especially if you've put some golden syrup in the icing, as above), probably best to add 1 tbsp of milk to the chocolate mixture to make up for the lost liquid.

e) It's essentially a soft chocolate fudge icing, and you could conceivably buy pre-made fudge frosting to top the loaf.

f) Rich Tea Biscuits seem to be peculiar to Britain, judging by the number of ex-patriot websites that stock them they must be hard to get in the US. They are a type of dry, slightly malted biscuit (cookie) - it is possible to make your own, if anyone needs that [like anyone is going to make this] - I'll post it. Does anyone know of an american equivilent that'd work?

Baby, fix me one more drink and hug your daddy one more time.
Baby, fix me one more drink and hug your daddy one more time.
Keep on stirring my malted milk, mama, until I change my mind.
--Malted Milk, Eric Clapton

Ostara

We see the Mother's soft tints
laid lightly on the earth,
though these are but little hints
of the wonders of rebirth.

Tonight is the vernal equinox, a balance point between darkness and light, where day and night are equal. For the northern hemisphere it marks the entrance in to spring and summer - where light dominates.

For those that don't know, the equinoxes are the points in the yearly cycle where the sun passes over the equator. As with all solar events it has been celebrated the world over for many thousands of years.



In Europe it has always been associated with the goddess of fertility, Eostre or Ostara. This is where we get the word Easter from.

The Christians always aligned their major festivals at times of pagan festivals and merged them so as to get everyne on board. Though for extra significance, they decided that Easter should be on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. To make things extra confusing they assume the vernal equinox is fixed on the 21st March (when in fact, due to the leap year it moves between 20/21), and it's an ecclesiastical full moon ("what's one of them then?", I hear you cry), which is a full moon according to the church's old tables which aren't absolutely accurate. The upshot of this is that Easter is almost as early as it can get this year, which I always notice as I'll have to make Hot Cross Buns on my birthday this year instead of a birthday cake.

Much of what we consider traditional Easter activities come from our pagan heritage, and the festival of Ostara.



Ostara is the festival of fertility for good reason, it is the birth of spring, when all life jumps from the ground, all is more obviously fertile at this point of the year than any other. At the time of the equinox, the young goddess supposedly mates with The Green Man, becoming impregnated with the Son of Light, Mabon(who is born at Yule), and also the autumn harvest - mirroring the reality that what is sown at Ostara (the vernal equinox) is reaped at the time of the harvest moon, Mabon (the autumn equinox, end of September, Michaelmas in the Christian calendar).



Probably the major remaining pagan symbol of this festival is that of the Easter Bunny carrying Easter Eggs. This comes from an old legend about Eostre, uniting two major fertility symbols, the March Hare, and the Egg.

The March Hare is a fertility symbol as it is essentially nocturnal most of the year round, only to be seen at night, but at Ostara when it is in season it needs to mate and comes out during the day. Hence the March Hare, only being seen in March when it is fertile. [The March Hare is often referred to as the Mad March Hare, as made famous by Louis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland, as it's out and about in daylight where it is at risk.]



As for the egg, well you can't get much closer to a fertility symbol than that.

On to the story...

Eostre was walking one day in Spring, and came across a little bird with an injured wing. Eostre, being a compassionate sort, desperately wanted to heal this young bird. Alas, the wing was too badly damaged to heal completely, and Eostre realised the young bird would never fly again. She wanted to give the bird back its great vigour and mobility, so she thought about it, and turned the bird into a hare!

However, during the transformation the bird, now hare, retained its ability to lay eggs. The hare was so pleased that Eostra had saved it, that it laid a sacred egg in her honour, which it decorated and presented to her as a gift. She was so pleased that she wished all of the world to share in her joy and instructed the rabbit to go out to all delivering these eggs as gifts of life, fertility and love for all.



Around the world there are many traditions celebrated on this day. In ancient Rome and Greece, young men would pick a lily from the Ostara temples and present it to their love, the equivilent of a diamond ring today, with all the connotations attached. In Mexico (and south-western america, especially Texas) they have the tradition of cascarones - painted eggshells, filled with confetti, lavendar, sage, perfume, which you smash over the heads of loved ones, bringing them love and luck for the season. The Slavic people thought the day was so overbrimming with life that death was subservient to the living at Ostara, and ceremonily cast a figure of death into the river to drown him, throwing in flowers after him and singing him on his way downstream. The Norse, from where I am descended from, celebrated the Virgin Goddess at Ostara. For them it was the most fertile night of the year, and as such it was practically compulsory to mate on Ostara Eve. Bring back Norse religion I say. ;)

Anyhow, on this day of life, light, rebirth and renewal, I hope you will all give a little thought to your life, what it is to be alive and recognise that our greatest purpose is that of carrying on the great cycle.

The exact moment of this year's vernal equinox is today, 20th March 2005, at 12:33 GMT. Same time across the world as it's an exact astronomical event.

Look there is a songbird
And over there is a hare
Excitement in our souls so sacred and fare
The signs that are given of a promise fulfilled
The rebirth of all nature
Flowers in the fields

Better to light a candle...

...than curse the darkness.





The words that made me become an Amnesty International member a few years ago. The motto of AI, quoted from an ancient chinese proverb by Peter Benenson, the founder of AI.

His belief that acts contrary to the basic unarguable rights of people not only should be stopped, but could be, via the gentle drip-drip of a thousand, or a million small voices. Public opinion as a defender of the people, and a changer of minds.

Amnesty were instrumental in the drafting and adoption of the United Nations Convention on Human Rights, which daily defends all of us against those that would wish to abuse their power.

There are good reasons why Amnesty got the Nobel Peace Prize, Peter Benenson was a good man who helped effect so much good in the world.





He died late on Friday night, may he rest peacefully and his work live on.

Sweet Lovers Love The Spring...

In spring time,
In spring time,
In spring time,
The only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing,
Hey ding-a-ding, ding,
Hey ding-a-ding, ding,
Sweet lovers love the spring.

It Was A Lover And His Lass [Listen]
Traditional, (via Thomas Morley & William Shakespeare, As You Like It)

Is it any surprise that Valentine's Day is so carefully positioned right on the cusp of spring? The great mating season, when the land comes back to life. Saw my first crocus and dandelions today, the first of the tet-a-tet were up with the dew. The bird song is getting to the top of its crescendo. Mind you, trying to get to sleep at 7.30am, I would think that... ;)

Indeed it was believed in the past that birds choose their mates on that day. Chaucer said, "For this was Seynt Valentine's Day when every foul cometh ther to choose his mate."...





I always seem to know more Saggi's than anyone else, and by my reckoning mid-november to mid-december corresponds to an active late february/march... Must be something in the water, extra minerals from the thaw no doubt.

Personally, I think love to be too important to celebrate specially on one day. It is the greatest thing we have, and thus should be rejoiced in as such every day you draw breath. Anyhow, my feelings on love have been documented here before.

There is much love in me for some that will read this, hope they know. Some days the trials of the unrequited can be a heavy burden. To all of you, I hope this is not one of those days.



The Springtime, Pierre Auguste Cot

Throw me a line, help me to find
Something to cling to
When the loneliness haunts me
When the bitterness taunts me
When the emptiness eats me.

Lay me low...

-- Lay Me Low; Coope, Boyes & Simpson

Desert Island Discs...

Whilst doing a getting-to-know you style exchange with a new friend, I thought it might be interesting to do a variation on Desert Islands Discs, as peoples tastes in film/tv/music are always interesting. For those who don't know Desert Island Discs is a radio show here in the UK, where someone famous comes along and says what 10 albums they would take with them if they were stranded on a desert island. Simple really. Though this time we stated dvds, cds and books... 10 of each... What would you choose?

Fortunately for me, I maintain a list of films I'd like.... Mind you, that's not the same as dvds in general. Bah... Have to think hard....

1) My LotR DVDs, sad yes, I know, but they are long and highly entertaining.


2) The Dark Crystal, as it's one of my main influences in life, beautiful film.


3) Neverending Story, ditto on the reason for the previous one.


4) The Muppet Christmas Carol, as Christmas wouldn't be anywhere near as good without it, couldn't have that.


5) Chronicles of Narnia Set, excellent stories, reminds me of my childhood so much, happy days.


6) Family Guy DVDs, always amusing.


7) Red Dwarf DVDs, it's a british Sci-Fi sitcom, absolutely brilliant if you like that sort of thing.


8) Fraggle Rock Set, would be in need of the songs, and to see my true people.


9) a natural history documentary series, something excellent to remind me of home.


10) one of my live music dvds, I love to watch people play, so would need something in addition to the cds.



Right CDs, this'll be fun, can never get my music sorted into favourites, too much of it.


1) Simon & Garfunkel, The Definitive Collection - wouldn't leave home without it.


2) Kate Rusby, all of them, English Folk singer, enchanting.


3) Coope, Boyes & Simpson, What We Are Is What We Sing - another folk group, trio of unaccompanied singers, love this album.


4) Metallica, Symphony & Metallica, not a fan of the really hard stuff, but there joint venture with the San Francisco Symphony is amazing.


5) Michael Jackson, Bad - well maybe not in vogue these days, but Moonwalker rocked (might have that for my music film actually, LOL).


6) Beach Boys, Summer Dreams - do love the beach boys, reminds me of childhood holidays.


7) Some classical collection, I have one in mind here, must have The Heart Asks Pleasure First, by Michael Nyman on it.


8) Jethro Tull, Songs From The Woods - excellent album, cheers me up.


9) Queen, Greatest Hits - they rocked.


10) impossible to end the list but maybe Travis, The Man Who, or Ash, Free All Angels - both excellent albums. Or much more likely actually, a 60s compilation album, one that I made, definitely.



Books

1) LotR, essential.


2) The Hobbit, ditto. [Do I sound sad yet?]


3) Chronicles of Narnia, some of the best fiction work ever.


4) Terry Pratchett Discworld Series, not sure which one I'd pick if I was forced to just one, maybe Sourcery or Wyrd Sisters.


5) Animal Bedtime Stories by Lucy Kinkaid, main book that reminds me of my childhood, excellent woodland creature stories.

6) Charles Dickens novels, Oliver Twist if I had to pick.


7) Faeries by Brian Froud, amazing artwork book.


8) Jules Verne, Journey To The Centre Of The Earth - essential reading, still think that book is legendary.


9) Richard Adams, Watership Down - fantastic tale about bunnies.


10) A decent dictionary, just incase I get stuck on anything in the others. ;)


[Apologies for the discount labels on the pictures, nicked them from amazon, and they alter their pictures to show their value. D'oh!]

[God this post took me hours...]