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Galong. The amazing story of Galong begins with Ned (Edward) Ryan one of the 15 convicted Irishmen transported to Sydney for attacking the infirmary in Clonoulty Tipperary in 1815. Ryan was assigned to an Irish ex-convict James Meehan who had been emancipated in 1805 and who had become a land owner himself. Ryan spent most of his time from 1816 to 1825 assigned to Meehan on land near Goulburn. Ned received his ticket-of-leave (like parole) in 1825 as his sentenced was to 1829. He stayed on as a property manager for James Meehan’s son near Goulburn. Ned received his certificate of freedom in 1830 and it is displayed in the Redemptorist monastery. Ned immediately applied for a free land grant which was refused despite his good record. At that time he was “officially” squatting on 50 acres of Crown land with 50 head of cattle but the reality was Ned Ryan had begun squatting on land at Galong in 1825 when he received his ticket-of-leave. He was an industrious and ambitious man. To work his Galong property Ned Ryan asked for 15 assigned convicts in 1832 and was granted seven. He received a further six assigned convicts in 1833 from the convict station at Goulburn. In 1835 Ryan squatted on more land between Galong and Cootamundra and towards Temora totalling 100,000 acres. In January 1837 Ned Ryan became one of the first squatters to pay the fee to have an occupation licence. By 1841 when transportation to NSW and the usage of assigned convicts finished some 62 people were resident on Ryan’s Galong property. He had given up his Wallendbeen and Cootamundra runs but he still had an extensive leasehold. In 1844 a run was determined according to the number of sheep and cattle it by the government so Ned Ryan then had four runs. Ned later had 14 year leases on five runs near Galong. On his Galong run he built a solid stone castle. Ryan established one of the first Catholic cemeteries in NSW in 1838 near his Galong Castle. In the 1840s and 1850s Galong Castle was renowned for its hospitality, especially to swaggies. They were provided bedding for the night and they left with generous supples of meat, flour, sugar and tea. Ryan’s son John Nagle and daughter Anastasia in Ireland moved to Galong in 1848 and their mother sometime after that. It is said that Ned had a “de facto” wife in NSW who was despatched from the property when his Irish wife arrived. Ellen Ryan died in 1856. In that year Ryan purchased 640 acres around his homestead as freehold and in 1860 he added another section to his original stone house which had walls up to two feet thick. Ryan’s Galong station comprised 41,000 acres in 1866 but he gradually transferred most of his lands to his son John Nagle Ryan and some to John Donnelly. Edward Ryan died at Galong in 1871. His son John Nagle Ryan died at Boorowa in 1888. In John’s will he left Galong Castle to his sister Anastasia. She lived with some of her Ryan cousins at Galong. It was she who had the chapel built with a priest’s room at Galong Castle in 1889. After Anastasia’s death in 1900 the Galong property of 800 acres was left to the Cistercians in Ireland or if they declined to the Redemptorists in NSW. The Cistercians refused the offer but the Redemptorists eventually accepted it. Anastasia’s cousin Anastasia Barry Ryan continued to reside in Galong Castle until she died in 1914. The Redemptorists were more interested in the property then. The foundation stone of the new Redemptorist monastery and boys college was laid in 1917 with it opening in 1918. The college and monastery closed in 1975 but operates today as a retreat and conference centre.
Galong cemetery contains graves of early Catholic pastoral families and the headstones of the Ryan family are especially impressive. The children of Ned Ryan had statues carved in marble by noted Italian sculptor Rusconi of Gundagai. Each headstone cost around £1,000. The cemetery also contains the grave of Roger Corcoran, a first cousin of Ned Ryan, who was transported with him to Sydney in 1816. Corcoran settled nearer Boorowa. Corcoran is regarded as the first settler of Galong followed by Ryan. Rusconi headstones were erected over the graves of Anastasia Barry Ryan and her brother Michael Lawrence Ryan the last of the family to live in Galong Castle. In the village of Galong the Catholics established a church, a convent and St Lawrence’s Nursing Home in the 1920s. It is now vacant and deserted with ideas of a drug rehabilitation centre to be established there.
© 2013 Lechatbon/LGS All Rights Reserved
This photo taken in the (downtown) Seattle Public Library Evelyn W. Foster Learning Center, which houses the library's literacy, ESL and world languages collection.
The maple-wood floor was created by artist Ann Hamilton. It contains 556 lines of text (in reverse) from the first sentences of books in 11 languages and alphabets found in the collection.
Washington, D.C. (est. 1790, pop. ~690,000)
• Ford’s Theatre, site of assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln
• theater’s site previously occupied by First Baptist Church of Washington (1834) [photo] • services held until 1859 • John Thompson Ford, Baltimore theatrical manager, leased the church bldg., converted it into a theatre • inaugurated Dec., 1861 as The "George Christy Opera House," presenting popular blackface troupe, Christy’s Minstrels
• following their final performance 27 Feb., 1862, further renovations made for presentation of theatrical (rather than musical) plays • 3 wks. later venue, renamed “Ford’s Atheneum,” entered Washington’s Civil War theater scene • presented excellent companies & first rate stars • Pres. Lincoln first attended Ford's on 28 May, 1862 • venue was profitable until the evening of 30 Dec, 1862, when it burned
• 2 mos.later, the cornerstone of a new theater was laid on this site by James J. Gifford, chief carpenter, architect & builder • the brick structure, modeled after the late Victorian design of Baltimore’s Holliday Street Theatre [photo], seated ~1,700 w/ 8 private boxes, two upper, two lower, located on either side of stage
• opened evening of 27 Aug., 1863 with “The Naiad Queen,” a "Fairy Opera" [photo] presented to a capacity audience • became one of the most successful entertainment venues in Washington —Ford’s Theatre, National Historic Site
• as Ford’s ventures prospered, a future competitor was making history • Mary Francis Moss was born, 1826, in Winchester, England • during childhood was a frequent visitor to the studio of "old man" J.M.W, Turner, the celebrated painter —The Life of Laura Keene [photo]
• married at age 18 to former British Army officer, Henry Wellington Taylor • 7 yr. marriage produced 2 daughters • husband was arrested for an undocumented crime, sent to Australia on a prison ship • to support her family, Mary Taylor became British stage actress Laura Keene, who made her professional debut in London, Oct., 1851 —Wikipedia
• in 1852, less than a year into her acting career, accepted an offer from impresario J.W. Wallack to travel to New York City, to audition for leading lady of the Wallack’s Theater stock company • became a popular star performer [photo] • began considering a move into an entrepreneurial role
• took over Baltimore's Charles Street Theatre, 24 Dec, 1853, w/ financial assistance from wealthy Washingtonian, John Lutz • managed it for 2 months, qualifying her as USA’s first female theater manager • Lutz became her business manager & by some unverifiable accounts, her husband, though she was still married to Taylor — Androom Archives
• moved to San Francisco & the Metropolitan Theatre [photo] • played opposite Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth • toured Australia with Edwin, 1854
• by 1855 she had returned to NYC • retained architect, John M. Trimble, a theater specialist • the new theater, built to her specifications, was named the Laura Keene’s Varieties [photo], aka Laura Keene’s Theatre [photo], or Third Olympic Theatre • opened at 622 Broadway on 18 Nov., 1856 • managed by Keene until 1863 when she assumed the lease & took over D.C.’s Washington Theatre [photo] [ad] from lessee, manager & self-proclaimed “People’s Favorite Tragedian,” John Wilkes Booth
• in 1858, having returned to Laura Keene's Theatre in NYC, premiered Our American Cousin,” [script] a 3-act farce starring Laura Keene [photo], written by English playwright Tom Taylor, U.S./Canada rights owned by Keene • with a run of 150 nights, set new standards for New York theater
• synopsis: a coarse but honest American, Asa Trenchard, arrives at the British Trenchard estate to claim an inheritance as the last named heir • meets Lord Dundreary & other snooty relatives who are trying to keep up appearances & marry off daughters • servants gossip, villains emerge from the shadows, true love conquers all in the end, a farce satirizing pretension & manners —Helytimes
• this is the play Laura Keene chose for her 14 Apr., 1865 Ford’s Theatre engagement, a benefit & farewell performance [ad] for the beloved star [playbill] • “Our Leading Lady,” is a 2007 comedy inspired by Keene’s role in the events surrounding this performance
• Laura Keene would play her usual role as Trenchard’s wife, Florence • Harry Hawk [photo], a member of Keene’s NY company, was to play the boorish American, Asa Trenchard • the classic role of brainless aristocrat Lord Dundreary was given to Edwin "Ned" Emerson [photo], leading man in the Ford Stock Company, brother of a Confederate soldier killed in action in 1862 & close friend of John Wilkes Booth
"I knew John Wilkes Booth well," wrote Edwin Emerson, "having played with him in dozens of cities, throughout the East and Middle West. He was a kind-hearted, genial person, and no cleverer gentleman ever lived. Everybody loved him on the stage, though he was a little excitable and eccentric."
• while Ford's was presenting Keene's famous play, arch-rival Grover's Theatre aka Grover’s National Theatre, offered “Aladin and The Wonderful Lamp” • Leonard Grover advertised his theatre as the capital’s only “Union” playhouse, highlighting John Ford’s more “Secesh” (secessionist) sentiments • “Doubtless [Ford’s] personal sympathies were with his State and with that portion of the country in which he was born and reared.” —Leonard Grover
• according to Grover, during the four years of [Lincoln’s] administration, he visited his theater “probably more than a hundred times. He often came alone, many times brought his little son Tad, and on special occasions, Mrs. Lincoln.” The President also once told Grover, ”I really enjoy a minstrel show," • when Grover responded that Hooley's Minstrels [photo] were soon to appear, Lincoln laughed. "Well, that was thoughtful of you." • “[Lincoln] was exceedingly conversant with Shakespeare. He enjoyed a classical representation, of which I gave many” —Lincoln's Interest in the Theater, Leonard Grover
• the National’s policy of segregating blacks began when it opened in 1835 • a portion of the gallery was set apart for "persons of color" • it is not known how many black theatergoers were in the 5 Mar., 1845 audience for “Beauty & the Beast,” “Stage Struck Nigger” & the Congo Melodists, a Boston blackface minstrel group [photo], but Washington’s 7 Mar. “National lntelligencer” reported that the cause of the fire which had demolished the theatre on the 5th was "a candle without a stick left burning on a table by a negro...."
• although the Grover-managed version of the National also had its "colored parterre,” Ford's Theatre, excluded blacks entirely from its performances • the exclusion of black Washingtonians from public places in the nation’s capital helped secure the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which, in 1889, the Supreme Court held unconstitutional. —The National Theatre in Washington: Buildings and Audiences, 1835-1972
• Mary Lincoln had tickets to Grover’s but preferred seeing Laura Keene in “Our American Cousin” • with little interest, the president said he would take care of the tickets • a messenger was sent to the theatre around 10:30 A.M. to secure the state box for the evening • the Lincolns’ son, Tad, opted for Grover’s, thus would not be with his parents at Ford’s that night
• General Grant accepted Lincoln’s invitation to join them in the Presidential box, but when Julia Grant objected to spending the evening with the sharp-tongued First Lady, he canceled • Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax & son Robert Todd Lincoln also declined before Clara Harris (1834-1883), daughter of New York Senator Ira Harris (1802-1875), and her fiancé, Major Henry Rathbone (1837-1911), accepted. —History Channel
The theatre as it appeared the night of Lincoln's assassination:
• the stage
• “Laura Keene was on stage with E, A. Emerson when the Presidents' party entered the theatre. As the party made its way, Miss Keene halted the play, Conductor William Withers [photo] led the orchestra in Hail to the Chief,'
and the audience rose and greeted the President with 'vociferous cheering.' President Lincoln came to the front of the box, acknowledged the reception, [set his silk hat on the floor], and the actors resumed where they had left off.
“The fatal shot was fired during the second scene of the third act. Laura Keene was standing in the first entrance (wing), stage right, facing the audience, awaiting her cue for the next scene
“On stage, just prior to the shooting, Mrs. Mountchessington was squelching Asa Trenchard: I am aware, Mr. Trenchard, you are not used to the manners of good society, and that alone will excuse the impertinence of which you have been guilty. (Exit)
“This left Asa Trenchard (Harry Hawk) alone on the stage… The audience was silent, expectantly awaiting the punch line from Asa. Miss Harris and Major Rathbone were ‘intently observing’ the scene on stage.The President ‘was leaning upon one hand, and with the other was adjusting a portion of the drapery‘ which hung at the side of the box opening. [photo]
“At this moment John Wilkes Booth stood silently in the shadows of the state box, four or five feet directly behind the President. Probably the last words heard by Lincoln were spoken by Harry Hawk:
“ASA: Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Wal, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal — you sockdologizing old mantrap.
“The audience roared. Then penetrating the laughter was the distinct sound of a shot. A puff of smoke drifted from the box, and Major Rathbone “saw through the smoke, a man between the door and the President. He ‘instantly sprang toward him,’ but the assassin wrested from his grasp and slashed Rathbone with a dagger across the left arm. Meanwhile, Harry Hawk looked up from the stage to see a man, knife in hand, leaping over the balustrade of the President's box onto the stage apron. Fearing he would be attacked Hawk ran off the stage.’ Booth ran across the stage, [illustration] brushed past Miss Keene in the wings…
—Harbin, Billy J. “Laura Keene at the Lincoln Assassination,” Educational Theatre Journal 18, no. 1 (1966): 47–54
• Edwin Emerson: “…near the beginning of the third act… I was standing in the wings, just behind a piece of scenery, waiting for my cue to go on, when I heard a shot. I was not surprised, nor was anyone else behind the scenes. Such sounds are too common during the shifting of the various sets to surprise an actor. For a good many seconds after that sound nothing happened behind the footlights. Then, as I stood there in the dimness, a man rushed by me, making for the stage door. I did not recognize Booth at the time, nor did anyone else, I think, unless, someone out on the stage, when he stood a moment and shouted with theatrical gesture, ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis!' (So perish all tyrants!) Even after he flashed by, there was quiet for a few moments among the actors and the stage hands. No one knew what had happened.”—Find a Grave
• running from the stage Booth exited the building into Baptist Alley, a public alleyway laid out in 1792 • grabbed the reins of his horse & rode off, turning right on F Street to head for the safety of of the Maryland night
• James S. Knox, witness: “…The shrill cry of murder from Mrs. Lincoln first roused the horrified audience, and in an instant the uproar was terrible. The silence of death was broken by shouts of "kill him," "hang him" and strong men wept, and cursed, and tore the seats in the impotence of their anger, while Mrs. Lincoln, on her knees uttered shriek after shriek at the feet of the dying President.” —Library of Congress
• video: Charles L. Willis, J.W. Epperson eyewitness accounts of the assassination
• according to legend, Laura Keene rushed to Lincoln’s box w/a pitcher of water • cradled his head, staining her cuff w/ his blood.
• The Night Lincoln Was Shot: Minute-by-Minute Backstage With John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre
“In the lobby of Grover’s, as Tad Lincoln awaited his parents' carriage to take him back to the White House, he learned that his father had been shot • Grover, who was in New York, received a telegram from his associate manager: President shot tonight at Ford's Theatre. Thank God it wasn't ours. C. D. Hess."
“[two doctors] now arrived and after a moments consultation we agreed to have him removed to the nearest house… I called out twice 'Guards clear the passage,' which was so soon done that we proceeded… with the President and were not in the slightest interrupted until he was placed in bed in the house of Mr. Peterson… During the night the room was visited by many of his friends. Mrs Lincoln with Mrs. Senator Dixon came into the room three or four times during the night. The Presidents son Captn R. Lincoln, remained with his father during the greater part of the night.
“At 7.20 a.m. he breathed his last and “the spirit fled to God who gave it… Immediately after death had taken place, we all bowed and the Rev. Dr. Gurley supplicated to God in behalf of the bereaved family and our afflicted country.” —Report on the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln by Dr. Charles Leale [photo]
• Secy. of War Stanton ordered guards posted at the building [photo] & future dramatic productions canceled • later that year, attempts by Ford to reopen the theatre aroused public indignation • War Dept. ordered it closed, Ford threatened legal action, federal government responded by leasing & later purchasing the bldg.
• American newspapers report the shocking news in a country still younger than some of its citizens
• Willie Clark, the Petersen House boarder who lived in the room in which President Lincoln died, wrote to his sister four days after Lincoln's death...
“The past few days have been of intense excitement. Arrests are numerously made, of any party heard to utter secesh sentiments. The time has come when people cannot say what they please, the people are awfully indignant. Leinency is no longer to be thought of. A new code must be adopted.
“They talk of the tyranical administration of Mr. Lincoln, but we have a man now for a president who will teach the south a lesson they will know well how to appreciate…
“…Everybody has a great desire to obtain some memento from my room so that whoever comes in has to be closely watched for fear they will steal something.
“I have a lock of his hair which I have had neatly framed, also a piece of linen with a portion of his brain, the pillow and case upon which he lay when he died and nearly all his wearing apparel but the latter I intend to send to Robt. Lincoln as soon as the funeral is over, as I consider him the one most justly entitled to them.
“The same matrass (sic.) is on my bed, and the same coverlit (sic.) covers me nightly that covered him while dying.
“Enclosed you will find a piece of lace that Mrs. Lincoln wore on her head during the evening and was dropped by her while entering my room to see her dying husband It is worth keeping for its historical value.
“The cap worked by Clara and the cushion by you, you little dreamed would be so historically connected with such an event.”
“They talk of the tyranical administration of Mr. Lincoln, but we have a man now for a president who will teach the south a lesson they will know well how to appreciate. — Remembering Lincoln
• Lincoln's death was not universally mourned by Northeners even though his decision to resupply Ft. Sumter forced the Confederates into firing the 1st shots, an attack that triggered anger, patriotism & widespread support from Northerners • nevertheless, some who thought him too dictatorial & some Radical Republicans who thought him too lenient toward the enemy welcomed his assassination • Congressman George Julian recorded in his diary that the “universal feeling among radical men here is that his death is a godsend” Michigan Senator Zachariah Chandler wrote to his wife that God had permitted Lincoln to live only “as long as he was useful and then substituted a better man (Johnson) to finish the work.”—History Channel
• In the 2 wks. following the assassination, hundreds were detained, questioned, & some imprisoned • nearly all the personnel at Ford’s (actors, stage hands, musicians, etc.) were arrested & questioned • John T. Ford was visiting Richmond the night of the assassination • he & 2 brothers spent 39 days in the Old Capitol Prison before being cleared & released
• the Old Capitol Prison [photo] gained an association with the Lincoln assassination when it lodged several (but not all) suspected Lincoln assassination conspirators who, by order of the Secty. Of War, wore cotton hoods —Smithsonian
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• 5 days after the assassination, Laura Keene & 2 other cast members arrested in Harrisburg PA, returned to Washington & released by order of the Secretary of War the moment he heard of their unauthorized detention
• Louis J. Weichmann often stayed at the Surratt Boarding House, in contact with the Surratts, & John Wilkes Booth • arrested as a potential accomplice but became a star witness for the prosecution, his testimony helping to convict Mary Surratt
• Pres. Andrew Johnson & Secy. of War Edwin M. Stanton insisted on trying the conspirators before a nine-member military commission, where 5 of the 9 judges—rather than a unanimous vote like in a civilian trial—were required to establish guilt. 6 votes could impose the death penalty
• Federal authorities argued that because Washington, D.C., was a war zone in April 1865—Confederate troops were still in the field—the assassination was an act of war • opponents argued that a civilian court would allow for a fairer trial [photo]
• for 7 weeks in May & June 1865, nation’s attention riveted on the 3rd floor of Old Arsenal Penitentiary (now Fort McNair) [photo], where the alleged conspirators were on trial for their lives [photo]
• one of the first U.S. trials where “colored” Americans, e.g. Ford’s stagehand Joe Simms & cleaner Mary Anderson, were allowed to testify against white Americans in open court • their testimony was included throughout the trial —Ford’s Theatre
• accused were allowed by attorneys to question the 366 witnesses, but not permitted to speak on their own behalf —Ford’s Theatre
• All defendants found guilty, 30 June, 1865 • Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, & George Atzerodt sentenced to death by hanging [photo]
• Samuel Mudd, Samuel Arnold, & Michael O'Laughlen sentenced to life in prison • Ford’s stagehand Edmund Spangler sentenced to 6 yrs. in prison •all incarcerated at Fort Jefferson, off of Key West, Florida, pardoned by Pres. Johnson, 1869.
• following the assassination, [photo]Ford attempted to reopen on 7 July, 1865 but public outcry & threats forced him to cancel the performance, issue refunds & close the still-unfinished theater • bldg. seized July, 1865 by order of the Secretary of War
• interior torn out in August, 1865 • converted into 3-story office bldg housing the Army Medical Museum & Surgeon General • used for govt. purposes for several decades. —Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site
• 40-foot section of the facade collapsed from the 3rd floor, killing 22 War Department personnel, 1893 • alterations, including the facade, 1894 • building repaired, continued as government warehouse & storeroom until 1911 • vacant until taken over by Office of Public Buildings & Public Parks of the National Capital, 1928 • Lincoln museum opened 12 Feb., 1932, 123rd anniversary of Lincoln’s birth
• bldg. transferred to National Parks Service through executive order, 1933 —Ford’s Theatre, Washington, D.C.
• funding for restoration approved, 1964 • original building plans lost • relied on investigative work to extrapolate floor levels & wall locations from known “good” points in the building, w/ photographs & drawings providing supplementary detail • project supervised by Charles W. Lessig • restoration to its 1865 appearance completed, 1968 • theatre reopened 30 Jan., 1968 • following restoration, Presidential Box never occupied. —Ford’s Theatre
• externally west facade & north & south walls remain of the original theatre, although subject to modification, repair & remodeling over time • rear (east) wall, site of Booth’s escape door, is completely rebuilt—Restoration of Ford’s Theatre, Washington
• now a popular tourist destination & working theatre presenting a varied schedule of theatrical & live entertainment events • over 650,000 visitors/yr.
• Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site National Register # 66000865, 1966
• Ford’s Theatre National Historic site, National Register # 66000034, 1966
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Self Portrait
©Nourhan Refaat Maayouf
All rights reserved. My work is not to be edited, distributed, sold or uploaded anywhere without my written permission.
Our family friend, John, has what he calls his funeral suit. I suppose we are now reaching the point where I need one too. In fact, I have lost several friends, former colleagues from The Mob, something that will accelerate as the years pass.
Last week, I noticed that a friend of mine on Flickr, Günter, had not commented on any shots for a few weeks. He used to leave funny one sentence comments that almost always brought a smile.
The lastest shot on his photostream was of a fresh grave.
His.
Sadly, Günter passed away on New Year's Day, and his family posted this last shot to let the world know. Or his friends, anyway.
We had visited his and his wife in Bonn, and he had come to stay with us too, we share interests in railways, photography and beer.
It came quite a shock I can tell you.
Online, people come and go, mostly without fanfare or announcement. One day they are there, and then they're not. Did they just get fed up, or something more terminal?
Most of the time, we'll never know.
I am lucky in that I have met many online friends in real life, sometimes here in Kent, but also in the US too, so know they are more than screen names and photos, but real people with lives, who are pretty much as wonderful as thei online presence would have you believe.
Life goes on, of course, but I will miss Günter, and sad for the fact we will not raise beers in a friendly toast to each other.
We woke at half six, I went to the bathroom and looked out the window. Still too early for birds, but there wasn't a breath of wind either, nor any cars to be seen moving. So it looked like someone had paused time.
Cleo is perpetual motion, however, and coming downstairs revealed her to be always on the move until her food is placed just where she wants it.
I went to Tesco by myself, with a list as long as a long thing, while Jools stayed behind and fed the hungry washing machine two loads of dirty laundry. Good news is that Tesco was fully stocked with fresh produce, including rapsberries from Spain. We like them for breakfast at weekends, its a hard habit to break.
Back home to unload and makaid breakfast; fruit and yogurt followed by warmed croissants.
Jools said she had been sitting all week, so would not come with me to go churchcrawling, so I go on me tood, driving up the M20 to Maidstone, to revisit All Saints church, where I had not been for over 12 years. I had checked Google, and it said the church would be open from 10:00.
I timed it to arrive dead on ten. I parked the car opposite, and didged traffic to get over the main road, I went to the first door only to find it locked. But a sign suggested there were two more possible ways in, so walked round, checked the north door, and that was locked too. That only left the west door, under the tower, to try. That was ajar, so my hopes lifted. Only to find the inner door locked.
Maybe I was too early?
A lady came in, I asked about the church. She said she was a bellringer, and disappeared up the steps to the ringing loft, where sounds of poorly rung bells could be heard.
I went round the church one more time, ending back at the west door, and again all way in were locked.
Sigh.
But there was a runners up prize; a church on the edge of town, in what used to be a village, at Bearsted. THe sat nav told me it was just a ten minute drive away.
So, I drove across town, through the crazy one-ways system, out the other side and along to Bearsted, where there were ancient timber framed houses, so old they had settled over the centuries into strange angles, none of which were right ones.
I found church lane, which wound its way through a modern housing estate, parked outside the chuchyard, and I could see a nice "church open" sign before I got out.
Although it looked spendid from the outside, inside it had been reordered at least twice, so that any ancient features were well hidden indeed. Even the glass, usually a rescuing act for over restored churches, were either just average or poor here. But it was my first visit here, so another tick in the box.
I now had to get home, as Jools is joining the speaking ciruit, as a lady has asked Jools to lead classes in beaded jewellery making.
I hightailed it back to the motorway, and once on, settled down to cruise back down to Dover and home, getting back at half twelve, with an hour to spare before Jools had to leave for the class.
So, it was just me an the cats for a few hours. There was football to entertain me, so I sat beside Scully on the sofa and watched the Championship game while she dozed beside me.
At three, it was time to concentrate on Norwich away at Millwall, one of six teams above us, and a win here would put us back in the play-offs. It was an exciting game, Millwall took the lead, only for City to level before half time, and then score two more early in the 2nd half. Millwall plled one back in the last ten minutes, but we hung on to win 3-2.
Not perfect, but a win at the New Den where they had been unbeated since September. And then, along came Nodge.
Dinner was a rushed one of pizza and iced squash, as we were going out to a gig.
Lawrence was the singer in an indie band in the 80s called Felt. He then formed Denim, an ironic pop band for the 90s, which also stiffed. He now fronts Mozart Estate, which does a fine line in ironic pop. Still.
We drive over th Ramsgate, to a small venue called The Music Hall. We were early, but got in, and went to the bar where we chatted to a couple about our age about music. In fact, most folks were about "our age".
First up was a young female singer/songwriter, who strummed her guitar along to her 6th form poetry.
The hall, which was barley bigger than our living room was about 50% full, but comfortable. We went to find somewhere to sit, thinking that the bar would be empty, only to find it rammed with more people than when we left it half an hour before.
We went to get some air, and finding nowhere to sit, went to the car.
Jools was shattered and fell asleep, and I really did not feel like being rammed into that room unable to see the band, and not able to lean against a wall to rest my back.
I said we'd go home.
So we did.
I don't regret it.
We got back at ten, Jools went to bed, while I had a glass of sloe port.
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Holy Cross church stands to the south of the village green at the end of a cul de sac. Its noble tower is crowned with queer sculptures, slightly reminiscent of Alnwick Castle. The exterior has a nicely textured effect, but this leads to an unexpectedly clean interior - the result of much care and attention and recent reordering. Whilst it cannot pretend to be in the top league of Kent churches it offers a fine selection of 19th and 20th century glass and some fine wall tablets. West tower, nave, chancel, north aisle and chapel, south porch.
www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Bearsted
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BERSTED.
BERSTED lies the next parish north-westward from Leeds. It was antiently written Bergestede, and most probably took its name from its situation, Berg, in Saxon, signifying a hill, and stede, a place or village.
THE PARISH lies mostly on what may be called high ground, a pleasant, and the greatest part of it a dry situation; the soil is in general a deep sand, though towards the south-west part it partakes of the quarry rock, and on the south side of the Lenham river a black moorish soil of fertile meadow ground. This river parts it towards the south from Osham, another smaller stream, which rises near Boxley, separates it on the western side from that parish and Maidstone, leaving within the bounds of it a part of the hamlet of Maginford. Besides the above, this parish is watered by two or three other smaller rivulets, which rise northward, and run here into the Lenham river, the easternmost of them separating it from Hollingborne and Leeds. The high road from Ashford and Lenham towards Maidstone, runs along the northern boundaries of it, passing over Bersted-green, the houses round which form the parish village, near it stands the church; besides this there are two other hamlets, called Ware and Roseacre-streets. In the south-east part of the parish is the seat of Milgate, pleasantly situated and wellcloathed with trees, at the back of which the ground descends to the river, and at a small distance that of Lower Milgate, so called from its lower situation still nearer the river.
A fair used to be held here on Holy Cross day, September 14, now by the alteration of the style, changed to Sept. 25, for pedlary, toys, &c.
The noble family of Bertie own this parish to have been their most antient habitation in this kingdom, for they are said to have possessed lands in it near the parsonage, at Strutton-street, and elsewhere in this neighbourhood, as early as the reign of king Henry II. and among the Harleian MSS. there is a grant of arms, anno 2 Henry VI. to Bartie, of Berested, in Kent; they continued here in king Henry the VIIth.'s reign, as appears by an antient rental of that time, and there are still lands, called Barty lands, in this parish and Thurnham; and from those of this name settled here, in a direct line was descended the dukes of Ancaster, now extinct, and from them the lady Willbughbye, of Eresbye; the earls of Abingdon, and other distinguished branches of this family claim their descent.
The manors of Leeds, Moathall, and Thurnham, extend over this parish, in which there is an estate belonging to the former of them, which has constantly passed through the same succession of owners, from the family of Crevequer, who were proprietors of it in the reign of William the Conqueror, to the Rev. Dr. Denny Martin Fairfax, of Leeds-castle, who is at present in the possession of it.
MILGATE is an eminent seat, situated in the southeast part of this parish, which was formerly esteemed a manor, though it has long since lost the reputation of ever having been one.
The family of Coloigne antiently possessed this estate; one of whom, Robert de Coloigne, died possessed of it in the 35th year of king Edward III. In process of time, his descendants came to be called Coluney; one of whom, Thomas Coluney, as appears by an old survey of Bersted, possessed it in the 14th year of Edward IV. Soon after which, that is, in the beginning of king Henry VII.'s reign, it was become the property of the family of Stonehouse, whose antient seat was at Haslewood, in Boughton Malherbe.
Robert Stonehouse, esq. was of Bersted, at the latter end of king Henry VIII.'s reign. His son, George Stonehouse, esq. was clerk of the green cloth to queen Elizabeth, and resided at West Peckham, where he died in 1575, whose eldest son William was created a baronet anno 4 Charles I. and Nicholas, the second, was of Boxley, in this county. He bore for his arms, Argent, on a fess sable, between three hawks volant, azure, a leopard's face, between two mullets, or. (fn. 1) In the beginning of the reign of queen Elizabeth he alienated this seat to Thomas Fludd, esq. afterwards knighted, who was son of John Fludd, esq. of Morton, in Shropshire, and bore for his arms, Vert, a chevron between three wolves heads, erased, argent; which coat, with his quarterings, was confirmed to him by Robert Cook, clarencieux, in 1572. He resided at Milgate, where he died in 1607, and was buried in this church, having considerably improved and augmented this seat. His son Thomas Fludd, esq. afterwards of Otham, succeeded him in this estate, which he alienated in 1624, to William Cage, of Farringdon, in Hampshire, barrister-at law, who resided here. He was bred at Lincoln's-inn, an utter barrister, and was descended from Richard Cage, of Packenham, in Suffolk. He bore for his arms, Per pale, gules and azure, a saltier, or, and a chief, ermine, which was an alteration from the antient arms of this family, viz. Azure and gules, over all a saltier, or; and, together with an addition to the crest, was granted to him by St. George, clarencieux, in 1624, (fn. 2) and in his descendants it continued down to Wm. Cage, esq. who was likewise of Milgate, and was sheriff in 1695, and represented the city of Rochester in several parliaments during queen Anne's reign. Of his sons, William died s. p. Lewis will be mentioned hereafter; and John was of Lower Milgate, esq. Lewis Cage, the second son, became at length possessed of Milgate, where he resided, and left one son Lewis, and a daughter Catherine, who married first, Mr. George Eastchurch, of Maidstone; and secondly Christopher Hull, esq. but died s. p. On his death, Lewis Cage, esq. his son, succeeded him in this seat, where he now resides.
He married Annetta, second daughter and coheir of Edward Coke, esq. of the White Friars, in Canterbury, by whom he had four sons; Lewis Cage, esq. of Lower Milgate, who married Fanny, eldest daughter of Sir Brook Bridges, bart. the Rev. Edward Cage, rector of Easling, who married Jane, second daughter of Charles Van, esq. of Monmouthshire; John, who died in the West-Indies unmarried in 1789, and the Rev. Charles Cage, of Cristmell, vicar of Bersted, who married Elizabeth, daughter of colonel Graham, and one daughter Catherine, as yet unmarried.
AT A SMALL DISTANCE westward from Milgate, there is a good house, called COMBES, alias LOWER MILGATE, which on the death of William Cage, esq. came to his youngest son John Cage, as before-mentioned, who died s. p. It is now the property of Mrs. Brander, the widow of Gustavus Brander, esq. and daughter of Francis Gulston, esq. by a daughter of William Cage, esq. Lewis Cage, esq. junior, at present resides in it.
MOAT-HALL is a manor in this parish, the mansion of which, from the materials with which it was built, was called Stonehouse. It antiently belonged to the neighbouring priory of Leeds, as appears by several old boundaries and papers, and was most probably part of those demesnes given to it at its first foundation, by Robert de Crevequer, in the reign of king Henry I. These demesnes appear by a rental of the time of king Henry VII. to have been held of the manor of Leeds, though they have been long since accounted parcel of this manor of Moat-hall.
On the dissolution of the priory in the reign of king Henry VIII. this manor, among the rest of the possessions of it, was surrendered into the king's hands, who afterwards, by his dotation-charter, in his 33d year, settled this manor, among other premises, on his new founded dean and chapter of Rochester, with whom it remains at this time.
The present lessee of it, under the dean and chapter, is Mr. William Usborne. There is a court baron held for this manor.
AT A SMALL DISTANCE southward from the church lies an estate called OTTERIDGE, formerly Oterashe, which in the reign of king Henry VIII. belonged to Simon Bertyn, one of the brethren of St. Bartholomew's hospital, beside Sandwich, who by will in 1530, devised it to Jeffry Merchant, of Rainham.
It afterwards came into the possession of the family of Munns, who continued possessors of it for several generations, till at length one of them sold it, with Aldington, in the adjoining parish of Thurnham, to William Sheldon, esq. whose descendant Richard Sheldon, esq. at his death, bequeathed it to his widow, and she re-marrying with William Jones, M. D. entitled him to it. He died in 1780, leaving by her two daughters; Mary, married to Lock Rollinson, esq. of Oxfordshire, and Anne, to Thomas Russell, esq. and they in right of their wives, are respectively entitled to it.
Charities.
SIMON BERTYN, one of the brethren of St. Bartholomew's hospital, near Sandwich, owner of Otteridge, in this parish, which he devised, together with his messuage called Buds, with its lands and appurtenances, in Allyngton, beside Thurnham, by his will in 1530, to Jeffry Marchant, ordered that the said Jeffry and his heirs male, should for ever yearly distribute, on the first Sunday of Lent, in the church of Berghsted, to the parish clerk there, and to other poor people, four bushels of green peas; that is to say, to every one of them, one peck.
EDWARD GODFREY, gent. of Thurnham, gave by his will in 1709, thirty shillings yearly out of lands in this parish, called Crouch field, for the schooling of poor children; half of them to be of this parish, and half of that of Thurnham. And he left 30s. yearly for the same use, to be paid out of an house called Rose acre, in this parish; the payment of which has been constantly refused, upon pretence, that he had no right to devise that charge on it.
The poor constantly relieved are about forty-five; casually twenty five.
BERSTED is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Rochester, and deanry of Sutton.
The church is situated on high ground, at a small distance southward of Bersted-green. It is dedicated to the Holy Cross, and is a handsome building, consisting of two isles and two chancels, with a square beacon tower at the west end of it. On three corners of the summit of the tower, are the figures of three dogs, or bears sejant, for they are so defaced by great length of time, that they can but be guessed at. If they represent the latter, they might have been placed there in allusion to the name of this parish: if not, these figures might perhaps be the crest of the founder of the church. In this church in the Milgate chancel, are monuments for the Cage family, and for Robert Fludd, M. D. A memorial for William Godfrey, jun. in 1690; and for Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Bosvile, esq. of Bradburne, justice and clerk of the court of wards, married first to Edward Mabb, gent. of this parish; and secondly, to William Godfrey, of Bersted, yeoman, obt. 1614. In the porch, against the east wall, is a small monument for Stephen Mason, of Boxley, citizen and vintner of London, obt. 1560, arms, A thevron, between three tuns, or barrels.
There were some lands and tenements in this parish, given by several persons, who stiled themselves the fraternity of the Holy Cross of Bersted, for a priest to sing mass yearly for one quarter of a year, in this church.
The church of Bergnestede, with all its rights and appurtenances, was given in the reign of Henry I. by Robert de Crevequer, son of Hamo de Crevequer, junior, to the priory of Leeds, then founded by him; which gift was confirmed by Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of Henry II. who then appropriated this church to the canons there, towards the finding of lights and ornaments in their church. Archbishops Theobald and Hubert confirmed it likewise, as did John, prior, and the convent of Christ-church, in 1278, by the description of the church of Berghestede, with the tithes of Strutton. King Edward III. likewise confirmed it by his charter of inspeximus in his 41st year.
This church, together with the advowson of the vicarage, remained part of the possessions of the priory of Leeds till the dissolution of it, in the reign of king Henry VIII. when it was surrendered up into the king's hands, among other estates belonging to it.
After which, the king, by his dotation charter, in his 33d year, settled both the parsonage and advowson of the vicarage of this church on his new-founded dean and chapter of Rochester, with whom they now remain.
¶On the intended dissolution of deans and chapters, after the death of king Charles I. the possessions of the dean and chapter of Rochester, in this parish, were surveyed in 1649, by order of the state; when it was returned, that the parsonage or rectory of Bersted consisted of a messuage, barns, &c. which, with the tithes and glebe land of forty acres, were of the improved rent of 46l. 8s. per annum, which were let anno 13 Charles I. at the yearly rent of 9l. 13s. 4d. and four bushels of malt, for the term of twenty-one years; and the lessee covenanted to discharge the pension of forty shillings to the vicar, and to repair the chancel of the church. Out of which lease was excepted, the advowson of the vicarage, and the portion of tithes called Vintners Portion.
The vicarage is a discharged living in the king's books, of the clear yearly certified value of thirty pounds, the yearly tenths of which are 12s. 9d.
In 1649, the vicarage was valued in the abovementioned survey at twenty pounds per annum.
The parsonage is leased out by the dean and chapter to Mr. John Packman, but the advowson of the vicarage they reserve in their own hands.
The vicarage is endowed with all manner of tithes, except grain, and the vicar now enjoys the abovementioned pension of forty shillings from the lessee of the dean and chapter.
The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a museum chronicling the Cambodian genocide. Located in Phnom Penh, the site is a former secondary school which was used as Security Prison 21 (S-21; Khmer: មន្ទីរស-២១) by the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 until its fall in 1979. From 1976 to 1979, an estimated 20,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng and it was one of between 150 and 196 torture and execution centers established by the Khmer Rouge. On 26 July 2010, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia convicted the prison's chief, Kang Kek Iew, for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. He died on 2 September 2020 while serving a life sentence.
To accommodate the victims of purges that were important enough for the attention of the Khmer Rouge, a new detention center was planned in the building that was formerly known as Tuol Svay Prey High School, named after a royal ancestor of King Norodom Sihanouk, the five buildings of the complex were converted in March or April 1976 into a prison and an interrogation center. Before, other buildings in town were used already as prison S-21. The Khmer Rouge renamed the complex "Security Prison 21" (S-21) and construction began to adapt the prison for the inmates: the buildings were enclosed in electrified barbed wire, the classrooms converted into tiny prison and torture chambers, and all windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire to prevent escapes and suicides.
From 1976 to 1979, an estimated 20,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng (the real number is unknown). At any one time, the prison held between 1,000 and 1,500 prisoners. They were repeatedly tortured and coerced into naming family members and close associates, who were in turn arrested, tortured and killed. In the early months of S-21's existence, most of the victims were from the previous Lon Nol regime and included soldiers, government officials, as well as academics, doctors, teachers, students, factory workers, monks, engineers, etc. Later, the party leadership's paranoia turned on its own ranks and purges throughout the country saw thousands of party activists and their families brought to Tuol Sleng and murdered. Those arrested included some of the highest ranking politicians such as Khoy Thoun, Vorn Vet and Hu Nim. Although the official reason for their arrest was "espionage", these men may have been viewed by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot as potential leaders of a coup against him. Prisoners' families were sometimes brought en masse to be interrogated and later executed at the Choeung Ek extermination center.
In 1979, the prison was uncovered by the invading Vietnamese army. At some point between 1979 and 1980 the prison was reopened by the government of the People's Republic of Kampuchea as a historical museum memorializing the actions of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Upon arrival at the prison, prisoners were photographed and required to give detailed autobiographies, beginning with their childhood and ending with their arrest. After that, they were forced to strip to their underwear, and their possessions were confiscated. The prisoners were then taken to their cells. Those taken to the smaller cells were shackled to the walls or the concrete floor. Those who were held in the large mass cells were collectively shackled to long pieces of iron bar. The shackles were fixed to alternating bars; the prisoners slept with their heads in opposite directions. They slept on the floor without mats, mosquito nets, or blankets. They were forbidden to talk to each other.
The day began in the prison at 4:30 a.m. when prisoners were ordered to strip for inspection. The guards checked to see if the shackles were loose or if the prisoners had hidden objects they could use to commit suicide. Over the years, several prisoners managed to kill themselves, so the guards were very careful in checking the shackles and cells. The prisoners received four small spoonfuls of rice porridge and a watery soup of leaves twice a day. Drinking water without asking the guards for permission resulted in serious beatings. The inmates were hosed down every four days.
The prison had very strict regulations, and severe beatings were inflicted upon any prisoner who disobeyed. Almost every action had to be approved by one of the prison's guards. The prisoners were sometimes forced to eat human feces and drink human urine. The unhygienic living conditions in the prison caused skin diseases, lice, rashes, ringworm and other ailments. The prison's medical staff were untrained and offered treatment only to sustain prisoners' lives after they had been injured during interrogation. When prisoners were taken from one place to another for interrogation, they were blindfolded. Guards and prisoners were not allowed to converse. Moreover, within the prison, people who were in different groups were not allowed to have contact with one another.[5]
Most prisoners at S-21 were held there for two to three months. However, several high-ranking Khmer Rouge cadres were held longer. Within two or three days after they were brought to S-21, all prisoners were taken for interrogation. The torture system at Tuol Sleng was designed to make prisoners confess to whatever crimes they were charged with by their captors. Prisoners were routinely beaten and tortured with electric shocks, searing hot metal instruments and hanging, as well as through the use of various other devices. Some prisoners were cut with knives or suffocated with plastic bags. Other methods for generating confessions included pulling out fingernails while pouring alcohol on the wounds, holding prisoners' heads under water, and the use of the waterboarding technique. Women were sometimes raped by the interrogators, even though sexual abuse was against Democratic Kampuchea (DK) policy. The perpetrators who were found out were executed. Although many prisoners died from this kind of abuse, killing them outright was discouraged, since the Khmer Rouge needed their confessions. The "Medical Unit" at Tuol Sleng, however, did kill at least 100 prisoners by bleeding them to death. It is proven that medical experiments were performed on certain prisoners. There is clear evidence that patients in Cambodia were sliced open and had organs removed with no anesthetic. The camp's director, Kang Kek Iew, has acknowledged that "live prisoners were used for surgical study and training. Draining blood was also done."
In their confessions, the prisoners were asked to describe their personal background. If they were party members, they had to say when they joined the revolution and describe their work assignments in DK. Then the prisoners would relate their supposed treasonous activities in chronological order. The third section of the confession text described prisoners' thwarted conspiracies and supposed treasonous conversations. At the end, the confessions would list a string of traitors who were the prisoners' friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. Some lists contained over a hundred names. People whose names were in the confession list were often called in for interrogation.
Typical confessions ran into thousands of words in which the prisoner would interweave true events in their lives with imaginary accounts of their espionage activities for the CIA, the KGB, or Vietnam. Physical torture was combined with sleep deprivation and deliberate neglect of the prisoners. The torture implements are on display in the museum. It is believed that the vast majority of prisoners were innocent of the charges against them and that the torture produced false confessions.
For the first year of S-21's existence, corpses were buried near the prison. However, by the end of 1976, cadres ran out of burial spaces, the prisoner and family members were taken to the Boeung Choeung Ek ("Crow's Feet Pond") extermination centre, fifteen kilometers from Phnom Penh. There, they were killed by a group of teenagers led by a Comrade Teng, being battered to death with iron bars, pickaxes, machetes and many other makeshift weapons owing to the scarcity and cost of ammunition. After the prisoners were executed, the soldiers who had accompanied them from S-21 buried them in graves that held as few as 6 and as many as 100 bodies.
Almost all non-Cambodians had left the country by early May 1975, following an overland evacuation of the French Embassy in trucks. The few who remained were seen as a security risk. Though most of the foreign victims were either Vietnamese or Thai, a number of Western prisoners, many picked up at sea by Khmer Rouge patrol boats, also passed through S-21 between April 1976 and December 1978. No foreign prisoners survived captivity in S-21.
Even though the vast majority of the victims were Cambodian, some were foreigners, including 488 Vietnamese, 31 Thai, four French, two Americans, two Australians, one Laotian, one Arab, one Briton, one Canadian, one New Zealander, and one Indonesian. Khmers of Indian and Pakistani descent were also victims.
Two Franco-Vietnamese brothers named Rovin and Harad Bernard were detained in April 1976 after they were transferred from Siem Reap, where they had worked tending cattle. Another Frenchman named Andre Gaston Courtigne, a 30-year-old clerk and typist at the French embassy, was arrested the same month along with his Khmer wife in Siem Reap.
It is possible that a handful of French nationals who went missing after the 1975 evacuation of Phnom Penh also passed through S-21. Two Americans were captured under similar circumstances. James Clark and Lance McNamara in April 1978 were sailing when their boat drifted off course and sailed into Cambodian waters. They were arrested by Khmer patrol boats, taken ashore, where they were blindfolded, placed on trucks, and taken to the then-deserted Phnom Penh.
Twenty-six-year-old John D. Dewhirst, a British tourist, was one of the youngest foreigners to die in the prison. He was sailing with his New Zealand companion, Kerry Hamill, and their Canadian friend Stuart Glass when their boat drifted into Cambodian territory and was intercepted by Khmer patrol boats on August 13, 1978. Glass was killed during the arrest, while Dewhirst and Hamill were captured, blindfolded, and taken to shore. Both were executed after having been tortured for several months at Tuol Sleng. Witnesses reported that a foreigner was burned alive; initially, it was suggested that this might have been John Dewhirst, but a survivor would later identify Kerry Hamill as the victim of this particular act of brutality. Robert Hamill, his brother and a champion Atlantic rower, would years later make a documentary, Brother Number One, about his brother's incarceration.
One of the last foreign prisoners to die was twenty-nine-year-old American Michael S. Deeds, who was captured with his friend Christopher E. DeLance on November 24, 1978, while sailing from Singapore to Hawaii. His confession was signed a week before the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia and ousted the Khmer Rouge. In 1989, Deeds' brother, Karl Deeds, traveled to Cambodia in attempts to find his brother's remains, but was unsuccessful. On September 3, 2012, DeLance's photograph was identified among the caches of inmate portraits.
As of 1999, there were a total of 79 foreign victims on record, but former Tuol Sleng Khmer Rouge photographer Nim Im claims that the records are not complete. On top of that, there is also an eyewitness account of a Filipino, a Cuban and a Swiss who passed through the prison, though no official records of either are shown.
Out of an estimated 20,000 people imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, there were only twelve known survivors: seven adults and five children. One child died shortly after the liberation.[5] As of mid-September 2011, only three of the adults and four children are thought to still be alive: Chum Mey, Bou Meng, and Chim Meth. All three said they were kept alive because they had skills their captors judged to be useful. Bou Meng, whose wife was killed in the prison, is an artist. Chum Mey was kept alive because of his skills in repairing machinery. Chim Meth was held in S-21 for 2 weeks and transferred to the nearby Prey Sar prison. She may have been spared because she was from Stoeung district in Kampong Thom where Comrade Duch was born. She intentionally distinguished herself by emphasising her provincial accent during her interrogations. Vann Nath, who was spared because of his ability to paint, died on September 5, 2011. Norng Chan Phal, one of the surviving children, published his story in 2018.
The Documentation Center of Cambodia has recently estimated that, in fact, at least 179 prisoners were freed from S-21 between 1975 and 1979 and approximately 23 prisoners (including 5 children, two of them siblings Norng Chanphal and Norng Chanly) survived when the prison was liberated in January 1979. One child died shortly thereafter. Of the 179 prisoners who were released, most disappeared and only a few are known to have survived after 1979. It was found that at least 60 persons (out of the DC Cam list) who are listed as having survived were first released but later rearrested and executed.
The prison had a staff of 1,720 people throughout the whole period. Of those, approximately 300 were office staff, internal workforce and interrogators. The other 1,400 were general workers, including people who grew food for the prison. Several of these workers were children taken from the prisoner families. The chief of the prison was Khang Khek Ieu (also known as Comrade Duch), a former mathematics teacher who worked closely with Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. Other leading figures of S-21 were Kim Vat aka Ho (deputy chief of S-21), Peng (chief of guards), Mam Nai aka Chan (chief of the Interrogation Unit), and Tang Sin Hean aka Pon (interrogator). Pon was the person who interrogated important people such as Keo Meas, Nay Sarann, Ho Nim, Tiv Ol, and Phok Chhay.
The documentation unit was responsible for transcribing tape recorded confessions, typing the handwritten notes from prisoners' confessions, preparing summaries of confessions, and maintaining files. In the photography sub-unit, workers took mug shots of prisoners when they arrived, pictures of prisoners who had died while in detention, and pictures of important prisoners after they were executed. Thousands of photographs have survived, but thousands are still missing.
The defense unit was the largest unit in S-21. The guards in this unit were mostly teenagers. Many guards found the unit's strict rules hard to obey. Guards were not allowed to talk to prisoners, to learn their names, or to beat them. They were also forbidden to observe or eavesdrop on interrogations, and they were expected to obey 30 regulations, which barred them from such things as taking naps, sitting down or leaning against a wall while on duty. They had to walk, guard, and examine everything carefully. Guards who made serious mistakes were arrested, interrogated, jailed and put to death. Most of the people employed at S-21 were terrified of making mistakes and feared being tortured and killed.
The interrogation unit was split into three separate groups: Krom Noyobai or the political unit, Krom Kdao or the hot unit and Krom Angkiem, or the chewing unit. The hot unit (sometimes called the cruel unit) was allowed to use torture. In contrast, the cold unit (sometimes called the gentle unit) was prohibited from using torture to obtain confessions. If they could not make prisoners confess, they would transfer them to the hot unit. The chewing unit dealt with tough and important cases. Those who worked as interrogators were literate and usually in their 20s.
Some of the staff who worked in Tuol Sleng also ended up as prisoners. They confessed to being lazy in preparing documents, to having damaged machines and various equipment, and to having beaten prisoners to death without permission when assisting with interrogations.
When prisoners were first brought to Tuol Sleng, they were made aware of ten rules that they were to follow during their incarceration. What follows is what is posted today at the Tuol Sleng Museum; the imperfect grammar is a result of faulty translation from the original Khmer:
You must answer accordingly to my question. Don't turn them away.
Don't try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
Don't be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.
You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
Don't tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.
Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.
Don't make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.
If you don't follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.
If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.
During testimony at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal on April 27, 2009, Duch claimed the 10 security regulations were a fabrication of the Vietnamese officials that first set up the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.
In 1979, Hồ Văn Tây, a Vietnamese combat photographer, was the first journalist to document Tuol Sleng to the world. Hồ and his colleagues followed the stench of rotting corpses to the gates of Tuol Sleng. The photos of Hồ documenting what he saw when he entered the site are exhibited in Tuol Sleng today.
The Khmer Rouge required that the prison staff make a detailed dossier for each prisoner. Included in the documentation was a photograph. Since the original negatives and photographs were separated from the dossiers in the 1979–1980 period, most of the photographs remain anonymous to this day.
The buildings at Tuol Sleng are preserved, with some rooms still appearing just as they were when the Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1979. The regime kept extensive records, including thousands of photographs. Several rooms of the museum are now lined, floor to ceiling, with black and white photographs of some of the estimated 20,000 prisoners who passed through the prison.
The site has four main buildings, known as Building A, B, C, and D. Building A holds the large cells in which the bodies of the last victims were discovered. Building B holds galleries of photographs. Building C holds the rooms subdivided into small cells for prisoners. Building D holds other memorabilia including instruments of torture.
Other rooms contain only a rusting iron bedframe, beneath a black and white photograph showing the room as it was found by the Vietnamese. In each photograph, the mutilated body of a prisoner is chained to the bed, killed by his fleeing captors only hours before the prison was captured. Other rooms preserve leg-irons and instruments of torture. They are accompanied by paintings by former inmate Vann Nath showing people being tortured, which were added by the post-Khmer Rouge regime installed by the Vietnamese in 1979.
The museum is open to the public from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. On weekdays, visitors have the opportunity of viewing a 'survivor testimony' from 2:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Along with the Choeung Ek Memorial (the Killing Fields), the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is included as a point of interest for those visiting Cambodia. Tuol Sleng also remains an important educational site as well as memorial for Cambodians. Since 2010, the ECCC brings Cambodians on a 'study tour' consisting of the Tuol Sleng, followed by the Choeung Ek, and finishing at the ECCC complex. The tour drew approximately 27,000 visitors in 2010.
S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine is a 2003 film by Rithy Panh, a Cambodian-born, French-trained filmmaker who lost his family when he was 11. The film features two Tuol Sleng survivors, Vann Nath and Chum Mey, confronting their former Khmer Rouge captors, including guards, interrogators, a doctor and a photographer. The focus of the film is the difference between the feelings of the survivors, who want to understand what happened at Tuol Sleng to warn future generations, and the former jailers, who cannot escape the horror of the genocide they helped create.
A number of images from Tuol Sleng are featured in the 1992 Ron Fricke film Baraka.
The Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia where collectively more than 1,000,000 people were killed and buried by the Communist Party of Kampuchea during Khmer Rouge rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War (1970–1975). The mass killings were part of the broad, state-sponsored Cambodian genocide.
Analysis of 20,000 mass grave sites by the DC-Cam Mapping Program and Yale University indicates at least 1,386,734 victims of execution. Estimates of the total deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including death from disease and starvation, range from 1.7 to 2.5 million out of a 1975 population of roughly 8 million. In 1979, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime, ending the genocide.
The Cambodian journalist Dith Pran coined the term "killing fields" after his escape from the regime.
The Khmer Rouge regime arrested and eventually executed almost everyone suspected of connections with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals and intellectuals. Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Thai, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Cham, Cambodian Christians, and Buddhist monks were the demographic targets of persecution. As a result, Pol Pot has been described as "a genocidal tyrant". Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the Cold War era".
Ben Kiernan estimates that about 1.7 million people were killed. Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After five years of researching some 20,000 grave sites, he concludes that "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,386,734 victims of execution". A United Nations investigation reported 2–3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million had been killed. Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline suggests that between 1.17 and 3.42 million Cambodians were killed, while Marek Sliwinski suggests that 1.8 million is a conservative figure. Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion. By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to "the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot", who were saved by international aid after the Vietnamese invasion.
Process
The judicial process of the Khmer Rouge regime, for minor or political crimes, began with a warning from the Angkar, the government of Cambodia under the regime. People receiving more than two warnings were sent for "re-education," which meant near-certain death. People were often encouraged to confess to Angkar their "pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes" (which usually included some kind of free-market activity; having had contact with a foreign source, such as a U.S. missionary, international relief or government agency; or contact with any foreigner or with the outside world at all), being told that Angkar would forgive them and "wipe the slate clean." They were then taken away to a place such as Tuol Sleng or Choeung Ek for torture and/or execution.[citation needed]
The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using poison or improvised weapons such as sharpened bamboo sticks, hammers, machetes and axes. Inside the Buddhist Memorial Stupa at Choeung Ek, there is evidence of bayonets, knives, wooden clubs, hoes for farming and curved scythes being used to kill victims, with images of skulls, damaged by these implements, as evidence. In some cases the children and infants of adult victims were killed by having their heads bashed against the trunks of Chankiri trees, and then were thrown into the pits alongside their parents. The rationale was "to stop them growing up and taking revenge for their parents' deaths."[citation needed]
Prosecution for crimes against humanity
In 1997 the Cambodian government asked for the UN's assistance in setting up a genocide tribunal. It took nine years to agree to the shape and structure of the court—a hybrid of Cambodian and international laws—before the judges were sworn in, in 2006. The investigating judges were presented with the names of five possible suspects by the prosecution on 18 July 2007. On 19 September 2007 Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and its most senior surviving member, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. He faced Cambodian and foreign judges at the special genocide tribunal and was convicted on 7 August 2014 and received a life sentence. On 26 July 2010 Kang Kek Iew (aka Comrade Duch), director of the S-21 prison camp, was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment. His sentence was reduced to 19 years, as he had already spent 11 years in prison. On 2 February 2012, his sentence was extended to life imprisonment by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. He died on 2 September 2020.
Legacy
The best known monument of the Killing Fields is at the village of Choeung Ek. Today, it is the site of a Buddhist memorial to the victims, and Tuol Sleng has a museum commemorating the genocide. The memorial park at Choeung Ek has been built around the mass graves of many thousands of victims, most of whom were executed after interrogation at the S-21 Prison in Phnom Penh. The majority of those buried at Choeung Ek were Khmer Rouge killed during the purges within the regime. Many dozens of mass graves are visible above ground, many which have not been excavated yet. Commonly, bones and clothing surface after heavy rainfalls due to the large number of bodies still buried in shallow mass graves. It is not uncommon to run across the bones or teeth of the victims scattered on the surface as one tours the memorial park. If these are found, visitors are asked to notify a memorial park officer or guide.
A survivor of the genocide, Dara Duong, founded The Killing Fields Museum in Seattle, US.
The Khmer Rouge is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the regime through which the CPK ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name was coined in the 1960s by then Chief of State Norodom Sihanouk to describe his country's heterogeneous, communist-led dissidents, with whom he allied after his 1970 overthrow.
The Khmer Rouge army was slowly built up in the jungles of eastern Cambodia during the late 1960s, supported by the North Vietnamese army, the Viet Cong, the Pathet Lao, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Although it originally fought against Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge changed its position and supported Sihanouk following the CCP's advice after he was overthrown in a 1970 coup by Lon Nol who established the pro-American Khmer Republic. Despite a massive American bombing campaign (Operation Freedom Deal) against them, the Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian Civil War when they captured the Cambodian capital and overthrew the Khmer Republic in 1975. Following their victory, the Khmer Rouge, who were led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, and Khieu Samphan, immediately set about forcibly evacuating the country's major cities. In 1976, they renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.
The Khmer Rouge regime was highly autocratic, totalitarian, and repressive. Many deaths resulted from the regime's social engineering policies and the "Moha Lout Plaoh", an imitation of China's Great Leap Forward which had caused the Great Chinese Famine. The Khmer Rouge's attempts at agricultural reform through collectivization similarly led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, including the supply of medicine, led to the death of many thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria.
The Khmer Rouge regime murdered hundreds of thousands of their perceived political opponents, and its racist emphasis on national purity resulted in the genocide of Cambodian minorities. Summary executions and torture were carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during genocidal purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978. Ultimately, the Cambodian genocide which took place under the Khmer Rouge regime led to the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population.
In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge were largely supported and funded by the Chinese Communist Party, receiving approval from Mao Zedong; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which was provided to the Khmer Rouge came from China. The regime was removed from power in 1979 when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and quickly destroyed most of its forces. The Khmer Rouge then fled to Thailand, whose government saw them as a buffer force against the Communist Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge continued to fight against the Vietnamese and the government of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea until the end of the war in 1989. The Cambodian governments-in-exile (including the Khmer Rouge) held onto Cambodia's United Nations seat (with considerable international support) until 1993, when the monarchy was restored and the name of the Cambodian state was changed to the Kingdom of Cambodia. A year later, thousands of Khmer Rouge guerrillas surrendered themselves in a government amnesty.
In 1996, a new political party called the Democratic National Union Movement was formed by Ieng Sary, who was granted amnesty for his role as the deputy leader of the Khmer Rouge. The organisation was largely dissolved by the mid-1990s and finally surrendered completely in 1999. In 2014, two Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, were jailed for life by a United Nations-backed court which found them guilty of crimes against humanity for their roles in the Khmer Rouge's genocidal campaign.
The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Communist Party of Kampuchea general secretary Pol Pot. It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population in 1975 (c. 7.8 million).
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had long been supported by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its chairman, Mao Zedong; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which the Khmer Rouge received came from China, including at least US$1 billion in interest-free economic and military aid in 1975 alone. After it seized power in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge wanted to turn the country into an agrarian socialist republic, founded on the policies of ultra-Maoism and influenced by the Cultural Revolution. Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge officials met with Mao in Beijing in June 1975, receiving approval and advice, while high-ranking CCP officials such as Politburo Standing Committee member Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help. To fulfill its goals, the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and forced Cambodians to relocate to labor camps in the countryside, where mass executions, forced labor, physical abuse, malnutrition, and disease were rampant. In 1976, the Khmer Rouge renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.
The massacres ended when the Vietnamese military invaded in 1978 and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime. By January 1979, 1.5 to 2 million people had died due to the Khmer Rouge's policies, including 200,000–300,000 Chinese Cambodians, 90,000–500,000 Cambodian Cham (who are mostly Muslim), and 20,000 Vietnamese Cambodians. 20,000 people passed through the Security Prison 21, one of the 196 prisons the Khmer Rouge operated, and only seven adults survived. The prisoners were taken to the Killing Fields, where they were executed (often with pickaxes, to save bullets) and buried in mass graves. Abduction and indoctrination of children was widespread, and many were persuaded or forced to commit atrocities. As of 2009, the Documentation Center of Cambodia has mapped 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3 million suspected victims of execution. Direct execution is believed to account for up to 60% of the genocide's death toll, with other victims succumbing to starvation, exhaustion, or disease.
The genocide triggered a second outflow of refugees, many of whom escaped to neighboring Thailand and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam. In 2003, by agreement between the Cambodian government and the United Nations, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (Khmer Rouge Tribunal) were established to try the members of the Khmer Rouge leadership responsible for the Cambodian genocide. Trials began in 2009. On 26 July 2010, the Trial Chamber convicted Kaing Guek Eav (alias Duch) for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The Supreme Court Chamber increased his sentence to life imprisonment. Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were tried and convicted in 2014 of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. On 28 March 2019, the Trial Chamber found Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan guilty of crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and genocide of the Vietnamese ethnic, national and racial group. The Chamber additionally convicted Nuon Chea of genocide of the Cham ethnic and religious group under the doctrine of superior responsibility. Both Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were sentenced to terms of life imprisonment.
{telling me a joke after his shower}
my favorite portrait crop is square. something good about it, no?
oh...and i know...one post a day, but i couldn't hold back on this one after i processed. he's just so cute (says his biased momma).
To see details in this drawing, try the largest image size...
The weather was hot, the creeks were spring fed and cold.
There was a BLUE MOON at this gathering! I wrote a long story about our trip, full of run-on-sentences. No names were changed to protect the innicent. All facts are just my opinions. I am not a journalist. Here is the story....
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Rainbow Recollections
1996 Missouri
"Who fears today
His rites to pay
Deserves his chains to wear.
The forest's free!
This wood take we,
and straight a pile prepare.
Yet in the wood
To stay 'tis good
By day till all is still.
With watchers all around us placed
Protecting you from ill.
With courage fresh, then,
Let us haste
Our duties to fulfill......" - Goethe
My daughter Skater (aka: Pixie, Shine, age 13) and I had a grand time at the Missouri Rainbow. We arrived Sunday June 23 and left July 3, and those were 11 magical days! Our drive in was 12 hours, and started with thunderstorms and a downburst in central Illinois that forced us off the road near Springfield. Big booming lightning! Old Mother Nature's power chords! Ba-BOOM!! Ka-Pow!!!!!
We got in about 1 am, drove right past FS road 3173 in the dark. Whoops! When we hit Thomasville we turned around and headed back north. Right exactly at 3 miles on the odometer from Thomasville there was FS #3173 off to the right. We drove on in quietly without seeing a single cop. There was the big green and yellow "Welcome Home" banner and a quiet group with a lone drummer singing and pounding out his heartsongs. We parked in the dark fog and decided to get some sleep in our old pickup until the sunrise. Just before dawn it rained hard for about 45 minutes, and that made the air smell clean and sweet! :)
We got up and meandered through the parking lot and met a lot of kind folks at the front gate. Out in the lot we met Katie and Brian and Althea (shy white Siberian husky puppy with pretty blue eyes) in the green bubbletop "Save the Buses" bus from Chicago. We also shared munchies and explored with Funky (Matt) and Shannon in the green VW camper bus, and met Victor and Kevin. At dawn we started packing for the hike in towards Kiddie Village where we would set up our camp.
It was nearly 3 miles to Kiddie Village. The first mile was dry and hot, then we started crossing the streams and it was like heaven to stop and play in that cold water. There was a steep incline down to the first stream, too steep for bikes to ride, but not too steep for horses. Spring creek was it's name, filled with tadpoles and there were lovely Spicebush and Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies hovering about the banks.
The second creek crossing had MARVELOUS sand!! SO nice on bare feet! The White Dove kitchen settled here and had the secret luxury of a hidden beautiful white portable shitter with a lid. "Pixie" was a frequent stopper at White Dove and we kept their secret close to the vest. Up the hill from the "good sand" crossing was the first clearing, a beautiful meadow with five tipis. The path here was named Hanuman Highway.
The main path crossed Spring Creek again and opened onto the big meadow with main fire circle and C.A.L.M. and good water piped from underground springs. We drank copious amounts of the spring water for 11 days with no problem. Our friend Question Mark happily spent his time filtering the water for anyone patient enough to get that extra protection. The pipe system evolved and grew with the gathering, so that eventually you were always close to a source of underground spring fed clean drinking water. We give an A+ to all who hauled pipe and ran samples for tests. GREAT water is such a luxury! :)
The next creek crossing had a pipe with roaring spring water you could shower in! Fill up the canteens! No waiting! Cold clean showers! The bridge there was called H20 bridge or Rainbow Bridge, and the crossing was called "Copperhead Crossing" after a snake was sighted in the water by some shady bushes. The original location of C.A.L.M. was to the right just after H20 Bridge. Continuing up, the main path was called Son Dance Trail and opened onto another fine meadow.
At the end of the meadow on the left side was Kiddie Village, which eventually grew to a City of Wonder! We parked our camp halfway twixt original C.A.L.M. and Kiddie Village, up into the shade of the tree line in the raspberry bushes by a big broken tree. Flattening out a place for our sleeping tent we ate juicy raspberries as we stomped. There was poison ivy everywhere so we sacrificed a shade tarp to cover the ground for safe lounging and relaxing. We set up a second small dome tent for all our gear and food and clothes and schtuff. We were on the map, had our own gnome home at home!
Pixie donated a pile of her old Golden Books to Kiddie Village. She talked with the smaller kids while I helped a crew installing support poles and guy ropes for that immense circus-tent-sized tarp for the main play area. I was amazed how four folks could hold a 25' ladder firmly in the air while another person climbed fearlessly to the top to adjust rope connections. The kids were having a blast here! There were four teeter-totters and the kids had figured how to "launch" each other, so the adults were trying to calm their butts down. Then we gravitated over to Kiddie C.A.L.M. where she helped Pat take care of several kids. One had poison oak all around his eyes.
Water and Flame were the main healers at Kiddie C.A.L.M., but Pat and the Swedish Bitters woman also put in huge hours there. Pat's dog Gaia was hilarious to play stick with. Gaia would plunge pell mell into high thick weeds and come out in a nanosecond with the very same stick you'd thrown. We trudged back to parking and got a second load of supplies that day. We donated a lot of apple juice and zuzu drink (cola) and that made for heavy loads to haul.
We learned to linger in the shade. In the stretches of sun it was best to conserve energy and keep moving towards the shade. We drank constantly from our canteens and often poured as much on our heads as we put in our mouths. We quickly learned all the places we could get water and paced our water consumption accordingly. It was close to 100 degrees everyday, and only rained one other time just before dawn for about two hours (July 2nd). Two pack loads in one day (and setting up the camp) wore us out, so we collapsed at sunset and slept with rainbow dreams. The Missouri whippoorwills sang us to sleep.
The next morning we found our Lovin' Touch kitchen up in the trees on the hillside in the shade. The big sign said "Kitten Safety Zone, All Dogs On Leashes!" and we met Grace, who had three kittens and a full grown cat! Grace told us how she and Steps had come in on June 10th and started Lovin' Touch in a shady patch of poison ivy. They knew where to find the good spring water, and they brought in a reporter from the West Plains Daily Quill. Grace opened her trunk and showed us the beautiful photo of the start of Lovin' Touch kitchen that made the front page of the June 13th Quill, along with an excellent article. Great public relations!!
Steps gave us the best hugs of the gathering and Piper played his didgeridu, and Lizard had made some great pancakes with apples and strawberries in them. This was OUR kitchen! I helped Justin chop wood and Pixie found every cat and dog in the area and gave em all hello hugs! There was a big tie-dye of a pot frond and hammocks strung all over. John was reciting poetry in the corner and Buddy Paul floated in with his beautiful cutaway Applause guitar and just let anyone play away on it.
The next morning we went to Copperhead Crossing for a shower and to splash in the stream and we met Nancy who was entering 6th grade in the fall. She was lugging around a big heavy bedroll. Pixie and Nancy became best friends instantly. I put her gear in my backpack and we trudged off to her mom's van back in A-camp, then came back to Kiddie Village. On the way they caught 50 tadpoles at the first creek crossing and had them all in a single drinking cup! Nancy slept about half the time in a hammock at Lovin' Touch. Nancy traded for two matching filigree rings and gave one to Pixie, and they changed their names to Sunshine. Pixie was Sun and Nancy was Shine. Nancy showed us where the kids were swinging off a rope into a deep cold spot in the creek. It was too cold for me, but the kids could stand it and had a great time!
There was also a swing/hammock for kids to swing in over the creek, and children's toys scattered about. The milk for Kiddie village was stored in the cold water, a natural refrigerator. Then came early dinner call at Kiddie Village! Many courses! Seconds and thirds for all who wanted!! Filled us up (yummy!) and we went off burping to the main circle to hear all the news and see how big the OM circle was getting. My best guess was two to three thousand at the site on our arrival June 23rd. When we left on Wednesday, July 3rd there were maybe 10,000 and it was growing every hour with the four day weekend approaching.
About Thursday, June 27th, Pixie patiently had sat through another evening main circle and eaten good Rainbow food. She went to her first "Sister Circle" with an older friend. The hot topic was the rape of a sister in A-camp. It turns out a young woman had gotten real drunk and been passed around and passed out. She wasn't with the girls discussing the hearsay at Sister Circle, she was already back getting loaded with those same brothers at A-camp who had taken advantage of her. The news I heard was that she was "consenting" until she passed out, but I wonder how could she consent while unconscious? A sorry story, but she apparently knew and stood by her rapist friends even afterwards. They were her drinking buds. A more tragic story was a pregnant 14 year old who miscarried at the Rainbow. I never met either woman, just passing on what I heard at the site.
The RUMORS on the computer newsgroup alt.gathering.rainbow (when I got home to read it) were really silly! The National Guard was not called out! No one was shot in A-camp. Hillbillies were NOT beating up hippies! The locals thought we were a godsend and treated us kindly with smiles! The police traffic checks were only for driver's license/insurance/registration. We passed in and out many times and most times there was no traffic check, or they just waved us by without stopping. Pixie did catch an ancient box turtle at the gathering, and had it in her lap on our way in when we were stopped. The Forest Service made her set the turtle free, it was a protected citizen of the Irish Wilderness!!
There were about 8 horse cops we met on the main trail and we learned the names of all the beautiful horses. Rebel Command and Ollie were our favorites. The riders were especially courteous, three women and five men, I think. There were about four FS cops on mountain bikes, and they ate a lot of dust from the cars on FS road 3173 going from the site to the police command location about 2 miles down the road. We stopped and greeted the FS and Dept. of Interior police we met and they were all friendly and kind. We even had a FS cop by A-camp get out of his jeep and paw through his supplies to find Pixie a Band-Aid for a finger cut.
One woman (who was a little crazed) climbed on top of a FS jeep and jumped up and down, denting the roof! And she wasn't arrested! Many were openly rude to the cops, calling out "Six UP!" or "Doughnut!!" as they went by. A select few chanted OM towards them. I always asked if all was well, and never heard any problems, although some were nervous and would say, "No problems .... yet!" I give the cops a C+, they are only human. We saw very little of them inside the real gathering, and only on the main trail, and always preceded by shouts of warning. I wish they would have stayed out of the church altogether and turned in their guns. HA!
The main trail crosses Spring Creek again to the right of Kiddie village, and heads upwards past the Animal Rainbow Family first aid for dogs and cats (Arf Arf!!) and Teen Village and Granola Funk Express kitchen. If you follow it all the way to the end there were three ropes tied across the trail and a sign that said "Turn around, Private property". Just before that sign, if you turned left, you could meander down to Cafe Cough Fee (Coffee Coffee) and find the best swimming spot of the gathering! Spring Creek is 12 feet deep here, fifty feet across, and cold cold COLD! The bank on the Coffee Coffee side is full of good mud and music all day. Those who can handle the cold water swim across and scramble up the rocky bank, and the adventurous climb up to dive off rock ledges 20 and 30 feet up.
There was a cave upstream to explore, and some kind souls left an inflatable raft for kids to paddle back and forth. Frisbees hummed back and forth as didgeridus droned and the mud people drew designs on themselves. This was a hopping swim hole! Musicians would gravitate in and stay for hours singing heavenly songs. We met Megan out by Coffee Coffee and she blew Pixie dust on Skater, then told her she was now a Pixie and had Pixie dust in her blood! That's when Skater changed her name to Sunshine Pixie, but she shortened it to Pixie later, and we got some gold glitter dust so she could turn others into Pixies. Skater was a glittering gold-dusted free spirit the last five days we were there. One bottle of glitter covers a LOT of people! :) Sparkling like star dust in the moonlight and sunshine!
Early in the gathering we met Steve and Cheyenne and their daughter. Steve was giving out water about the 1 mile point from A-camp at the end of a long dry path in the hot sun. Each day Steve and Foxfire (aka: Bridge Troll, Pegleg) went on a water run to Birch Tree and brought back water to give out at the water station, as well as "PowerBurst" electrolyte drink. Steve and Cheyenne also brought two riding horses and hung out a sign that read "Horse Camp". They brought a white horse (age 13) named Patches, and another spirited brown horse, both elegant females. Cheyenne took Pixie for a four hour horse ride one day, while I baby-sat their younger girl Kailey. Kailey was 15 months old and an energetic whirlwind. Kailey was born premature at only 1 pound and hydrocephalic, but was obviously doing well and happy to be at her first rainbow!
Cheyenne and Pixie washed the two horses and brushed them and got them water. Then they rode them down the steep path to the first creek for an hour or so and tried to get them to drink. Pixie rode the white horse, Patches. The brown horse drank some and had a coughing fit, Cheyenne thought maybe she had swallowed a tadpole! Then they went up into the first meadow and galloped around the tipis. They decided to take them all the way in to Kiddie Village and back.
In the main circle meadow they walked the horses through the big fire pit and really stirred up some ashes and dust. Then Pixie had to hold on as Patches decided to take off and run some around the main meadow, even leaping over some logs by where the wash station was later set up by the water people. Patches was the type of horse that needed to be ridden firm or whacked a bit with a stick to get going. Pixie was uncomfortable doing that, but she had a great time riding nonetheless. They rode through the thick fog of the gathering at sunset and came back after dark with the fireflies twinkling around them in the mist.
When they returned, Pixie had bowlegs and saddleburns and was worn out! That's when Cheyenne's stomach began to hurt a LOT! She tried some herbal cures from C.A.L.M. but nothing seemed to help. We all felt for her. She wound up going in to the hospital the next day before feeling better, and came back to the Gathering again. After her long ride Pixie volunteered to run the water station. It was dark and she was lit by a lantern and offered weary incoming travelers water or electrolytes or pixie dust. Just about everyone wanted pixie dust! A kind soul gave her a bag of little chocolate bars with the instructions to only give them to girls, but she gave them to everybody! We were given strawberries and watermelon and also changed Kailey's diaper twice! We stayed until after midnight, then closed down the water station and finally wandered back to our tent by the light of the big smiling moon.
One evening after main circle I went to wash our dishes while Pixie played hacky-sack with a group of teens. I met George while washing. His 12-string guitar was autographed by Peter Yarrow (of Peter Paul and Mary) and Stanley Jordan and Kenny Burrell and John Prine and Stevie Ray Vaughan's nephew Roy Vaughan, and about 40 others. He was from Austin and sang me a song he wrote about the Wyoming gathering... "on July 1st there was a fire, on July 2nd there was a fire, on July 3rd there was a fire, on July 4th there was a Raaaaaaainbow!" ...and as he sang the sunset disappeared quickly... where was Pixie?
The hacky-sack group was nowhere to be seen. I started looking for Pixie in her dark purple shirt. I circled the fire twice, the drummers were already roaring, a BIG crowd! I had lost her! I circled inside right next to the fire so Pixie could see me if she was there, I was wearing her giant red & black Dr. Suess hat. Night had come on in a hurry and it was too dark to see faces even up close. Being a parent is a wonderful thing, and I was VERY concerned. The gathering had grown to a sizable city. I wandered away from the fire and hollered out "Ska-a-a-a-a-aterrrrr!!!!" and she called out "Right here, Dad!" right under my feet! What a relief! After that I stuck with her like glue, and brought a white T-shirt for her to wear after main circle sunset!
That night Pixie wanted to stay by the fire, so we crept in close between the drummers and found two saxophone players and sat near them listening to the sounds. Pixie kept wanting to sit closer and closer to the fire and we wound up almost IN the fire! The fire tenders had to walk over us as they added logs, and we were well-done and roasted by the heat of the flames! All our clothes were covered in soot and the next day our throats were sore from breathing so much smoke! But we stayed right in the thick of the drums and dancers and hung in there until that blue moon finally went down behind the trees over the mountainside. Just before the moon disappeared she met her friend Eagle, they talked as the fire crackled and the dark night settled in around us. After about six hours at the main drum circle we crept back to the tent and brushed our teeth and slept.
All that night and most every night we visited the fire there was a big menacing dude like Big Daddy in sinister sunglasses with a shaved head. He apparently thought he was King of the Fire or something and would stop the drums and recite a short poem to tell us to listen to the birds or hear the spirits talk. He also threatened to shove the trombone up the ass of a trombone player! He also would occasionally give slices of sweet melon to everyone in the inner circle of the fire, and maybe also drinks of electric punch. He never bothered us, thank goodness, and Pixie was able to dust him with Pixie dust the last day we were there. Good work, Pixie! We always ended the day by brushing out teeth and started the day by brushing our teeth. We were probably the only two at the gathering that didn't have morning breath!
Three nights later it was a full blue moon! The main circle was filled with pomp and drama, lots of poetry and heartsongs and then a special OM circle where we all laid back and chanted to the sky while holding hands laying down! After the food there was a Rainbow Wedding and we got right up close to observe and take part! The crowd was swept up and chanting "HO!" as the couple exchanged vows and were blessed and covered with incense smoke and then there was a huge group hug and OM chant. Pixie had big stars in her eyes and she said, "Dad, I want a hippie wedding!"
They had piled up a huge pile of logs for the fire, and after the wedding it ROARED into life and there were tons of wild dancers circling the fire. Little blond 13 year-old Eagle came up with half his head shaved and the other half dyed bright green with braided dreads. He raced naked around the fire in circles leaping and cavorting! We were among the first to spot the moon's entrance over the hill, and the drumming soared with that big lunar energy! We hung in with the drums and the fire and wailed on our bells and trumpet and rhythm egg up till the moment of fullness at 10:58 pm, then meandered back listening for vampires and werewolves on the paths!
The full moon night, Pixie was asleep by midnight and I wanted to stay close to the tent but soak up some sounds of the gathering. About 50 feet away by the trail that leads to Lovin' Touch kitchen was a couple of flute players and a drummer that were jamming their asses off. Both flutists were singing and scatting into their flutes as they played, and throwing wild jazz riffs back and forth like two Johnny Heartsman clones with Roland Kirk egging them on! A person nearby with a laser light did a light show at their feet with that eerie flashing red light, and Piper wandered down from Lovin' Touch with his "D" wood flute and joined in.
This was the best music I heard at the gathering, these souls were on FIRE! I nestled up right next to them and leaned on my walking staff and just inhaled the magic for a half hour in delight! Afterwards there was a couple banjos and a guitar and a real fine fiddle over at Tea & Toke kitchen a hundred feet to the north of our tent. I sat down and played on the rhythm egg, and a big golden lab drooled all over me wagging his tail. They were playing real Ozark bluegrass, and they ripped through a dozen tunes and had a captive audience of about 40 clapping for more each time they would stop!
The first day we packed in I was lured into the Popcorn Palace kitchen by the sounds of Robbie playing a mandolin and singing. Robbie was older and his legs were crippled, but he could and did sing like a songbird and played that mandolin all the time beaming a big rainbow smile! He'd also been at the 1980 gathering and told us about how they had finally jailed the guy that killed the two girls hitching to that West Virginia national. While I was talking to him and his friends, a 17 year old named Cheshire Cat was trying to attach himself to Pixie! Cheshire was hard to escape the next two days. He found and followed us wherever we went. Finally Pixie met Eric (age 17) and then it was in reverse, with Pixie dragging Dad all over trying to find and hang out with Eric. After Eric, Dad got dragged around as Pixie hung out with Eagle (age 13) all day.
Eagle had a fake English accent and claimed to have 190 wives. His Mom had brought him to gatherings about every year and also to regional gatherings in-between, and he was a creative soul! After Eagle, a different fellow named Weasel decided to hang with us non-stop and try wooing Pixie. Weasel was 19, but shorter than Pixie by a couple inches, and liked to hang out with the younger kids. Weasel was extremely polite and good company, but he really had no business with a 13 year old just out of grade school. After a couple of days I told Weasel he was a little too old for my girl and he respectfully backed off. Rainbow men are cut of a finer cloth, I think. I had done my utmost patient share of being flexible and mellow and allowing Pixie to meet and mingle with a LOT of folks, all the while never letting her too far out of my sight. I did about seven days of non-interfering chaperoning before explaining to Pixie that we weren't there to chase and be chased by boys. Amazingly, she agreed! The rest of the time we hung together and still managed to have major fun!
Out in the parking lot after an early visit to Steve and Cheyenne to see about riding horses, Pixie serenaded the FS with her trumpet. They drove past in a jeep and stopped right in front of us and asked if she would play them a song. She pulled out her sheet music for "This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land" by Woody Guthrie and blasted them with about three full verses with choruses! I was mighty proud! Afterwards we sang the two banned socialist verses to folks in the lot, and a day later I heard Pixie singing those verses to people at the Bliss kitchen!
"As I was walking, in the shadow of the steeple,
by the relief office, I seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there whistling..
(whistle melody to "This land was made for you and me")
As I was walking, I saw a sign there!
And on the sign it said, No Trespassing!
But on the other side, it didn't say nothing...
THAT side was made for you and me!"
The Krishna commune in West Virginia sent a bus and a couple of Swiss brown work bulls to the gathering. The bulls were twin brothers named Gita and Bhagavad. They were HUGE! We saw them as they arrived in a big trailer, and later grazing in a meadow. The Krishna's brought their usual assortment of fine musicians, including Indian drums and a harmonium, and put on theater in a stage in the first clearing. They had two big tipis and two large tents. Pixie and I stopped in their first tipi right after it went up, the incense was real fine and sweet and they were singing sweet songs to Krishna.
The inside of the tent had little triangular flags all around in a circle with some of the many names of god written on each flag. I wrote down the name of "Ksamah, one who is patient in all things!" Pixie grew impatient to leave and we tried to wait until their song ended, but it turned out to be an ENDLESS song so we snuck out quietly. They gave Pixie a glossy postcard of a blue lotus Shiva with four arms holding a nice talking drum and a ceremonial spear. Krishna was late arriving this year and we never made it to their kitchen, which opened about July 1st. Their kitchen has a reputation for the sweetest food!!
Josef arrived for the full moon sans his beard, but he brought his bagpipes! He remembered us from the Kentucky gathering where he worked communications and organized healers at the C.A.L.M. tipi. We also met Caribou, who maintains an unofficial Rainbow Family of Living Light homepage on the internet. Also it was a pleasure to meet Running Bear, an elder and cartoonist who posts regularly on the "alt.gathering.rainbow" internet newsgroup.
Early on we met Woody and his niece and her young friend David at the main circle. They were from West Virginia, and Woody told me an interesting tale of searching caves in Belize for artifacts. He was in a tight spot in a cave and poked at a mound of bat guano when a cloud of guano dust burst into the air and right down his lungs. He went into distress almost right away and developed histoplasmosis, a dangerous lung disease. After years of herbal and natural remedies, Woody's histoplasmosis is now in remission. Beware the guano dust in caves!
Woody's camp was near ours but on the other side of the Son Dance Trail and right next to Spring Creek. Woody heard some funny sounds one night and got up with a flashlight to find two armadillos had waddled out of the creek and were rummaging through his camp! He followed them a ways with the light as they waddled slowly off, and the next day he thinks he found their burrow a bit further downstream.
I would have loved to see those critters myself, but had to settle for the armadillos we saw hit by cars on the highway. Pixie and I stopped when we saw our first armadillo road-kill. The poor thing had really been clobbered by cars and we dragged it off the asphalt and into the weeds. Soon after we saw another armadillo in the classic four feet in the air bloated road-kill posture. Woody was a trader and kept business hours by his tent with wares on display luring folks in from the main trail. His demeanor was elegantly mellow and I liked him a lot. He had been at the Kentucky National in 1993, so I brought him some apple juice and a copy of the map I drew of that Gathering. He gave Pixie a beautiful ankle bracelet with bells. Later we brought him a set of juggling balls because the ankle bracelet was so sweet.
Everywhere we went we saw juggling sticks and Pixie was fascinated. The first juggler we saw with them was in Lovin' Touch kitchen, and he was a MOST excellent and smooooth juggler! Eric's friend Sage was playing an extended set of songs on Buddy Paul's guitar, and this juggler was sitting cross-legged in the dirt and working magic with those sticks in time with the music.
Sage was playing Nirvana and other tunes. He was real young but could play like my friend Johnny OH and sing like Kurt Cobain.
Sage and I traded songs later at their camp out by Granola Funk Express. Pixie was embarrassed to hear Dad chomping out bad versions of God Save The Queen (Sex Pistols) and Hey Baby (Hendrix) while she was trying to make eyes at Sage's friend Eric. Eric had a joker's hat and gave Pixie a necklace that came apart later. Pixie was sweet on this guy after getting that necklace! He was a drummer without a drum, promised to meet Pixie by the Kiddie Village swimming hole, but we couldn't find him. It's easy to lose folks at a Rainbow.
Trader's blankets were spread out at all the congested spots on the main trail, slowing foot traffic and bringing the shopping MALL spirit into the church. Call me a relic but I remember in 1980 the traders were NOT allowed to peddle inside until July 4th, when they flooded inside to the main meadow with all their trinkets glittering on their blankets. For many of these traders the Rainbow is just another stop on the flea market trail, and I resent this crass materialistic merchandising. Pixie was constantly drawn to gawk at their wares, and Dad (the Old Grouch) was given to grousing & crabbing & whining & beefing as I tried to pry her from those little portable stores. Jesus threw the bastards out of the temple on their ears, didn't he? Heeheheeheheee! Enough... :)
This was the first national where I didn't squirm my way into blowing the conch shell at main circle to call the family to grub. I must be getting old. The conch blowers I heard were doing their best but weren't getting the volume that the tuba player from Michigan got back in Kentucky in 1993! We had meadow neighbors from Urbana, Illinois, that brought a trombone and blew reveille way too EARLY one morning right next to our camp! Pixie had been sleeping but that blew her right out of the tent into the morning sunshine! Another trombonist at the Gathering liked to haunt the main drum circle and would let anyone pass around his trombone while he wandered off for hours. Way up by Arf Arf!! there was a cackle of five saxophones that regularly gathered in the shady trail and jammed together. They sounded to me like Frank Zappa's "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue // Dwarf Nebula Professional March & Dwarf Nebula", a real soaring pack of honkers in disarray.
Ours was the only trumpet we saw, and carrying it around a coupla days, we indulged a lot of requests from former trumpet players to play on it! It was played at the swimming holes with didgeridoos, tooted with wandering clarinets on the trail, and covered with fire soot at the main drum circle. We saw hordes of wood and orchestral flutes. There seemed to be a hundred didgeridoos! There were scores of guitars from the precious to the silly variety, and hundreds of big and small drums (the new Rainbow instrument of choice). SOOOO many drummers! Deep in the thundering buffalo stampede of oblivious amateur drumming there lurked a serious core of talented and demented real percussionists. The good drumming would surface and carry the energy in surprising places, even in the Walmart parking lot in West Plains!
There was a hilarious handbill posted at info about the telltale warning signs of drum abuse! It's interesting to note that lots of regional gatherings are just called "Drum Circles" now. The domination of the rhythmic ones has beaten the melodic minority to the sidelines! All hail the thumping BEAT!! Just kidding, I like drums a lot. Someday I would like to have a talking drum and a real low pitched booming tabla. I got a chance to play on both at the Shawnee regional in Early October! I didn't see many of either at this years National, but for all I know there were undoubtedly some real fine drums out there lurking in that foggy misty pulsing valley.
Pixie's new Rainbow friend Flipper was 19 and had been married and divorced twice already. Claimed to have already owned a house and had a high powered job at one point. He had a green spiked mohawk that kept lying down without his spray and mouse, and Pixie loved to take her fingers and mess it up! For him life was black leather and tattoos and musical angst (post-Punk) but he was obviously filled with joy and had a happy soul enjoying the Rainbow. He left July 2nd, hitching his way to Colorado with friends. A kind dude!
My Rainbow friend Jarrod had sliced three toes open in a farm accident loading hay bales a week before the rainbow. He wandered into Kiddie C.A.L.M. limping on a cane with no shoes or socks, and had flies crawling in & out of the mud caked around his wound! The Swedish Bitters woman decided he needed to clean that and apply Swedish Bitters. She prescribed Swedish Bitters for everything! We donated a clean sock for him to wear and he kept returning for more Swedish Bitters and cleaning each day. By the end of our stay he was walking without a cane, and new skin was growing on his wound. It was looking 100% improved! We poured through the ancient herbal tomes but never did find out the secret ingredients of Swedish Bitters. What the hay, Jarrod was healing fast! Center for Alternative Living Medicine does it again! May the Goddess praise Swedish Bitters!
A-camp, or Alcoholic Camp, lived up to it's bad reputation as usual. While there were a few kind souls welcoming folks home out on the road before parking, the welcome home info board area was home to a motley crue of sordid motorcyclists and macho self-designated Shanti Sena bosses. There was a giant "my-size" Barbi doll, naked, with duct tape over her mouth greeting everyone. The next day we went by and they were doing rather unspeakable things to her in the grass. I had Pixie turn her head and we walked quickly by.
The next time we went by, there was a crowd trashing a compact car. They had broken all the windows and were kicking in the doors. Some people have their own special forms of amusement, I guess. For a couple days there was a nice three-wheeled motorcycle that looked like a hearse parked right at the front gate, and the cycle gang members who brought it in were loading up on beer before hiking in where their feet would have to carry them.
The woman who had jumped up and down on the FS jeep without being arrested eventually calmed down a lot. We saw her several times being reeeeeally wacky but in better control. That day when she jumped on the jeep she had been hugging people on the trail, then tearing off their metal jewelry and throwing their rings and bracelets off into the weeds. Our friend Funky had his silver ring and silver bracelet thrown down into a ravine filled with poison ivy. Pixie and I and Cheshire Cat climbed down into it and helped him search. The bracelet was found quickly, but it was a long while later when Cheshire finally found the ring. Another brother lost an amulet and necklace and was extremely upset, but did not file charges against the woman.
One brother I met had the handle of "Less Stress". Now that is a good name! We can all use less Stress! Have you heard of "Vermin Supreme"? He is the infamous Disco Ball and giant toothbrush wielding hippie we met in Kentucky. He was here and passing out bumperstickers that said VERMIN SUPREME `96 "Brush Your Teeth, It's The Law!" We ran into him with a group that was asking cosmic questions of a Magic Eight Ball. I asked an important question and the 8-ball gave me the answer I was hoping for, but the exact words were, "Of course, you dork!"
The new summer edition of the 1996 Rainbow Guide was given away at info and there was a big color photo of Vermin Supreme with a shit-eating grin right on the cover! Fame!!! We had met Vermin in Kentucky in 1993. Vermin wandered around at night with a mobile and raucous party entourage. They carried that giant-size disco mirror-ball everywhere they went, shining flashlights on it and calling out for all to "Bow down and worship the Sacred Disco Ball!!" It was too-o-o-o hilarious! :)
Out in the parking lot we met and shared grub and laughs with Geo (George) from Minneapolis. The next night we heard machete whacking sounds back behind our camp in the trees, it seemed to go on all night! It was Geo and several of his Minneapolis friends carving out a shady campsite from the poison ivy and poison oak and raspberry brambles! Wack-a-wack-a-wack!! While we had set up at the tree line and had a tarp for protection from rain, the angle of the morning sun slanted in and heated up our tent in the early morning, ewwwwwwww!!!! Hot! Geo and friends did the extra work and wound up with a fine cool site with all day shade! A few set up tents out in the baking sun, only to move them the next day when they discovered how HOT the sun can be!
Our big hot meadow suddenly FILLED with tents on the weekend of June 29 and 30. An explosion of people arriving really changed the chemistry of the gathering from seed camp to full national homecoming! I crawled from our tent to find both paths we usually took to get to the main trail were now covered by new arrivals. There were tents everywhere!! A German shepherd from out of nowhere took umbrage at my emerging and growled and advanced on me to chew on my skinny leg!! I yelped backwards and grabbed my walking staff, which saved me! Dogs do not like big sticks wielded with a little bravisimmo! This big shepherd belonged to a tent two tents over, turned out to have a name (Nebraska) and took huge shits wherever he pleased.
The next night we tucked Pixie's sandals under the drop tarp next to the door of out tent because they were too raunchy and sandy to bring inside. The next morning Nebraska was using one of her sandals as a chew toy! I took several time outs during the gathering to move and cover other folks dog shit on the main trail. As much as I love cats, the Rainbow just makes me love cats all the more! I saw several people dive in to break up dog fights and almost got bowled over by fighting dogs a few times myself. As Bob Dylan says, "If dogs run free, then why not me? Across the swoop of tiiiiime........"
My favorite dog of the gathering was a three legged little black terrier that thought he was Napoleon! His name was Weasel. He stayed wherever he wanted, and had friends at Lovin' Touch and out at Horse Camp. His owner said he had picked a fight with a big German shepherd and got his leg bit off as a result. I was baby-sitting Kailey out at horse camp when a brother handed me Weasel and pleaded with me to hold him long enough for him to get away with his lady doggie that was in heat. Weasel had been romancing his pooch non stop, haahahaahaha! Who would bring a dog in heat to a Rainbow?
We also saw a beautiful brown/gray Afghan dog roaming without an owner (I like Afghans) and several big wolfhounds. There were a number of real classy fancy doggies whose owners kept them sensibly in tow, but 90% of the dogs just ran free. We came walking down the trail when two dogs locked in intercourse were captured by their owners who tried to separate them, but they were stuck! Pixie's eyes almost popped out of her head! Here were these silly humans pouring water and oil on these two pooches to no avail and trying to pull them apart. Oh the pain! I tried to move Pixie down the trail but all her friends had stopped to gawk at the sight.
Pixie was helping at Kiddie C.A.L.M. when a guy asked her to watch his little black cuddly puppy named Zodax while he ran a quick errand. Three hours later, the guy finally comes back! In the meantime, Pat had diagnosed Zodax as starving and loaded with worms! Pat and Pixie and I marched this guy down to the Animal Rainbow Family (ARF ARF!!) first aid camp. There he got medicine for his puppy and free food and a lecture, but the next day we found out he had given the puppy away. Rainbow people are BAD to their animals! Just my $.02 opinion! We met a family of 3 week old kittens in a sack. The mother had died, they said. They were taking care of them, they said. They had no milk, no food. My heart went out for them and their chances of surviving the Rainbow. :(
We saw lots of kittens but only about four adult cats. Adult cats will not put up with these conditions! Grace had a beautiful black and white cat named Fat Cat that ran free and safe at Lovin' Touch, but there was an uncomfortable and vulnerable black cat on a tied leash at the Popcorn Palace. We saw a couple of people on the trail carrying adult cats as they hiked. We saw people carrying mice and leading goats. Someone brought a rooster that crowed all day long! There were ferrets and pet birds and snakes and baby dwarf rabbits. Pixie caught and released her box turtle, caught and released butterflies and tadpoles. She got bit by a crawfish in the creek. We were all enjoyably nibbled on by little fish.
We both got chigger bites and TRIED not to scratch `em. We still have `em *scratch scratch* to tell ya the truth! There weren't many flies or mosquitoes or spiders. The great paranoia about Lyme disease from ticks was totally overblown. Any black bears or snakes probably fled the area after the first drum circle. Several folks went out of their way to seek out and kill some snakes, and their unlucky hides wound up as wares on the Trader's blankets. There were beautiful little golden finches fluttering around the kitchens and Red Tailed Hawks circling the updrafts above the hills. We spotted some fast little lizards that were black with narrow yellow stripes on their backs and bright blue tails.
I was really happy with the diversity of butterflies! Beautiful butterflies everywhere! Harvesters and Checkerspots and Blues and Viceroys and Fritillaries and lovely Dark Tiger Swallowtails! Saw my first live Zebra Swallowtail ever! And tattoos of butterflies! Tattoos everywhere! Tattoos in progress in the dust of the main trail! Pierced lips and tongues and nipples and belly buttons and ears and genitals and whole body irezumi tattoos. One woman from New Orleans wore an owl foot, alligator teeth, eagle feathers, and a gris-gris bag of zu-zu mamou! The further you got from A-camp, and the closer you got to the great swimming by Coffee Coffee, there were a lot of folks who wore only woven leaves of grape vine, or creative mud designs, or just shone with the light of their smiles! Rainbow spirit embraces all!!
Packing out the tents on our last trip down the trail, we came upon a man pushing his son (Zack) in a baby-buggy with little swivel wheels. The dirt path reached a rocky bUmPy stretch, so we swept the buggy up in the air and Zack was flying down the trail like a bird! We reached A-camp after a block-long flight, and set him back down on the dirt path. Dad suddenly took off and pushed that buggy about 200 yards down the path at a full sprint, with Zack laughing all the way! We were left smiling in clouds of buggy dust!
We saw a couple unloading a cello case from a van, so I asked about it. Sure enough, the kind brother got out his cello and treated us to a Bach concerto right there on the road in A-camp! Marvelous!!! I loooove cello! He was nailing the pitch and playing those hammer-ons and trills and getting those bow-stutters in there. I was in heaven! But soon we were loading the last of our gear into our old pickup truck. We ambled out of parking and onto FS road 3173. Eagle spotted us and ran to say farewell, then we headed out slowly, winding up through the Irish Wilderness towards Route 99. Farewell Rainbow `96!
Here's a partial list of kitchens and campsites we saw by July 3rd:
KITCHENS:
Tea Time
Granola Funk Express
Lovin' Touch/munchateria
Instant Soup
Ship of Love (Diva Diner)
White Dove
Bliss Kitchen
Brew Ha Ha
Popcorn Palace
Jah Love
Milliways (Cafe At The End Of The Universe)
Sun Dog
Musical Veggie
Have a Beautiful Day
The Woderfull Whirrled of OZ
Avalon
Everybody's Whatever Lovin' Ovins/NERT
Kool Aid Coroner
Cofee Cough (no fee, pop free)(Cafe Cough Fee)(Coffee Coffee)
Dee Bakery (Da Bakers)
Beeck Party
Jesus Soup Kitchen
Tow Back Go Kitchen
Krishna Kitchen
Turtle Soup
Dragon Kitchen
CAMPSITES and ORGANIZED MAYHEM:
Kiddie Village
Kiddie C.A.L.M.
C.A.L.M.
Info/Rumor control
Welcome Home
A-Camp
Bus Village
Teen Village
Kiddie Camping
Sorta First Aid
Celestial Tea & Toke
Lost Tribe
Kaw Valley
Mo Love/Dragon Camp
S.H.Y. Camp
Morning Star
Illinois Dysfunctional Family
Yoga Loca
Camp Got A Minute
Be Here Now
Butterflies & Roses
This Camp (Not That Camp)
That Camp (Not This Camp)
Thier Streak - Frier Camp
Sacred Space
Shama Lama Ding Dong
RME RUNE
Top Secret Research Facility
Area 51
Poison Ivy Camp
Teen Barbarian Space
Know Mun Land
FAEREYE Camp
Faerie Camp
Pixie Camp
Multi 4th Dimension
Polka Dot Camp
Safe Love Bowl
Baby Nap
H(({{OM}})) KLA HOMA
Sparrows Nest
Bliss Pit
Madame Frogs
World Peace Pilgrimage
Purple Gang
A.R.F. Animal Rainbow Family
Rest Area
Prop-A-Ghandi Camp
Seven Minit Low
Children Of The Sun
Health Info
Bench March
Calif Cove
Freedome Village L.P.
Camp Calm Union
Kamp U Can't Fine
Fallen Tree Tribe
Flip-N-Tripe E.E.
N.W. - S.W. Western Tribe (Scroll Deaf Tribe)
The Nurd Ick
Mother Ship of F.U.E.L.
NVR NVR LND
Bufins Party
Camp Of Know Repute
Yell Oh Flash Lite
No Feds Tree House
White Hawk
Kumformeee
Ora Gone Camp
Hum Zah
Bah Ree
Bi The Way
Serenity Ridge
Blissters
Cody Massage
Rooster Shack
Blues Party
Mayan Camp
Zoe (Ask For Oness)
High Times
Palm Tribe
Greenwitch Village
Sister Space
Aloha Camp
Om Home
Nowhere
Minnesota Camp
Turk's Head/East Wind
Katuah
No Butt Heads Be Us
The MADD Tea Party
Choc Olate Roomers
All Around The Universe
Coo Cool Ka Chew
Good Space Grove (New Amsterdam)
Well this rambling blathering spew has gone on long enough!
We had a great time and all was good!
The only way to describe a Gathering is to be there, really.
The vision doesn't get through to all,
but enough get the drift to keep this magical thing afloat now for 25 years!
Thanks for your patience and ear,
Lovin’ you,
guano
One of the oldest techniques in psychology, Sentence Completion often has been used to understand creativity, imagination, and personality.
How would you fill in the blank?
Star Trek, First Contact (Paramount, 1996).
youtu.be/wxyZQR2d6yw Trailer
Star Trek - 'Beyond First Contact' The Borg - Making The Movie.
Starring Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Alfre Woodard, James Cromwell, Alice Krige, Neal McDonough, Robert Picardo, and Dwight Schultz. Directed by Jonathan Frakes.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard awakens from a nightmare about his Borg assimilation experience to an incoming message from Admiral Hayes. Hayes informs Picard that Deep Space Five reported that a colony has been destroyed. Completing the Admiral's sentence, Picard realizes who destroyed the colony — the Borg.
Picard calls a meeting and informs his senior officers that their ship has been instructed to patrol the Neutral Zone. Their orders are to protect the area from any possible Romulan uprising during a Borg attack. Despite protests from his officers, Picard remains faithful to his orders and the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-E begins to patrol the area. Later, Picard regretfully tells Riker that it is his own fault they are stuck in the Neutral Zone. Starfleet believes Picard to be too emotionally involved with the Borg because of his previous assimilation to tactically complete a mission against them.
The men return to the bridge to learn that Starfleet has engaged in combat with the Borg. Intercepting messages between the starships, the crew learns that the Federation is losing. Picard, with his Borg experience, knows he can help the fleet. He informs his staff that he will make a decision directly in opposition to Starfleet commands. With no objections from his crew, Captain Picard gives the order and the starship Enterprise sets a course for Earth and the attacking Borg cube.
A massive battle ensues and it appears that the Federation will lose the fight. Despite serious structural damage to the Borg cube, their strength does not weaken. Even the U.S.S. Defiant, commanded by Worf, does not appear to be able to turn the tides of the battle. As the starship Defiant is about to ram the Borg ship on a suicide run, the U.S.S. Enterprise beams aboard its crew, including Worf. Picard, having an inside perspective of the Borg and their vessel, focuses the firepower of the fleet on coordinates he knows to be critical. Just as the main ship is destroyed, a spherical escape pod flies out. The sphere creates a temporal vortex, catching the starship Enterprise in its wake. Immune to the paradoxes created by the time travel, the starship's crew learns that Earth at the present time appears to be inhabited entirely by the Borg. The commanding officers realize that the Borg have gone into the past and assimilated Earth, so they follow them back in time to repair the damage the Borg have done.
On Earth, over three centuries earlier, a somber Lily Sloane accompanies a stumbling, drunk Zefram Cochrane out of a bar after a night of revelry. Then, Lily notices a fast moving light. She hardly has time to ask what the object is, when the Borg vessel attacks. Back aboard the Enterprise, Picard demands that Data tell him the exact date and location the Borg ship is attacking. The location: central Montana. The date: April 4, 2063 — the day before First Contact. Realizing that the Borg have come to prevent first contact between alien life forms and humans, the crew knows they must stop the Borg and facilitate this exchange. They destroy the Borg sphere, and Dr. Crusher, Captain Picard, Commander Data, Commander Riker, Counselor Troi and other U.S.S. Enterprise crew transport down to Earth to survey the damage.
At the Borg attack site in Montana, the crew finds destruction and chaos. They split into groups to search for Cochrane. Data and Picard hunt for Cochrane's warp ship, the Phoenix. There they encounter a very angry and confused Lily, who believes Data and Picard to be members of a coalition that broke the cease-fire after World War III. She shoots at them in a rage, but impervious to bullets, Data approaches Lily. Overcome by fear and radiation, she falls to the ground. Dr. Crusher diagnoses Lily with radiation sickness caused by the damaged Phoenix, and inoculates the entire crew. Against Picard's better judgment, Crusher takes Lily to sickbay. Geordi is called to help repair the warp vessel and Picard becomes intrigued by its historical significance. In this vessel began the future as the world would know it, and the past as Picard remembers it. He reaches out to touch the ship. Data, curious about the human need for tactile reinforcement, attempts to create the same feelings he observes in Picard, but is unsuccessful in duplicating this aspect of humanity.
Aboard the ship, two crewmembers are sent to examine unexplained maintenance problems, and both disappear. Picard is called to the ship and discovers that the survivors from the Borg sphere have transported onto the ship and are taking over Deck 16. While Picard arranges teams to fight them, the Borg manipulate the climate of the deck to suit their needs and begin to spread throughout the ship. When the Borg attack sickbay, Crusher, her staff, and Lily escape through a Jeffries tube, thanks to a distraction by the ship's Emergency Medical Hologram. While Crusher leads the group down the passageway, Lily steals away in a different direction.
On Earth, Riker finds Troi and Cochrane drunk in a bar. Troi justifies that the only way she could get Cochrane to talk to her was by shooting Tequila with him. Denying her drunken state, Troi offers her professional opinion on Cochrane. She explains, "He's nuts."
Picard and his team are tracking the Borg through the starship. As Crusher and her staff find Worf's team, Picard's team encounters the Borg, who have begun to assimilate U.S.S. Enterprise crewmembers. Worf's team engages the Borg in combat, but the enemies adapt to the crew's weapons too quickly to make any difference. The teams are ordered to regroup on Deck 15, but Data is captured. Picard cannot save him, so he quickly crawls into a Jeffries tube to escape. Face to face with Picard, Lily steals his phaser and demands an explanation and escape route. Picard agrees.
Geordi shows Cochrane the starship Enterprise through a large telescope on Earth and tries to convince him to launch his vessel the next morning. Geordi glorifies Cochrane by explaining that his ship will make first contact with alien life forms. Humanity will be saved if Cochrane launches his ship. Still drunk, Cochrane agrees.
Aboard the ship, the Borg Queen introduces herself to a bound Data, claiming that she is the Collective. Reactivating Data's emotion chip, the Borg begin to graph organic, human skin onto the android's arm. As Data is overcome by this new human sensation of touch, something he never thought possible, the Borg continue their work.
Lily and Picard wander through the service deck as the captain attempts to explain what has happened between Lily's time and his own. She begins to calm down until they suddenly run into a Borg-infested area. Quickly escaping in the Holodeck, Picard activates a Dixon Hill program. At a dance, he and Lily try to blend in without being noticed by the Borg. Following the Holodeck's story, Picard searches for Nicky the Nose and takes his machine gun. Killing the Borg with the gun, Picard retrieves the memory chip that contains all of the information the Borg has received. Lily then notices that the two dead Borg were once crewmembers of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
Back on Earth, Cochrane keeps hearing what an amazing historical figure he is and begins to question whether or not he wants to go through with the launch. He doubts his own nobility and flees the launch site. Geordi and Riker attempt to catch up with Cochrane in the woods and are forced to stun him with a phaser to return him to the Phoenix.
Lily and Picard join the rest of the surviving crew and discover that the Borg are outside of the ship. The retrieved memory chip reveals that they are reconfiguring the main deflector in order to contact the Borg of this century, calling them to Earth to assimilate the planet. Picard, Worf and Lieutenant Hawk put on space suits and venture onto the surface of the starship to stop the Borg.
Aware of Data's desire to become human, the Borg Queen offers him the chance to be entirely covered in human flesh and join the Borg, in an attempt to get the encryption codes from Data so she can obtain total control over the U.S.S. Enterprise. Outside the Enterprise, Hawk, Worf and Picard attempt to unlock the deflector dish. Attacked by a Borg, Worf's suit begins to depressurize. Two Borg are killed and Hawk is attacked. As the dish is released, a now-assimilated Hawk attempts to kill Picard. Worf saves the captain, but Hawk is killed. Picard and Worf then destroy the free-floating deflector dish.
On Earth, Cochrane explains to Riker that his only motivation for inventing warp travel was money. He never expected to save mankind, become a hero, or be instrumental in the founding of a new civilization. He simply wanted to retire in peace.
An argument ensues aboard the Enterprise as the majority of the senior officers believe that they should evacuate the ship, destroying it and the Borg. Picard won't give up, and insists they stay. Challenged by Worf, Picard orders him off the Bridge. Lily follows Picard into his ready room and demands that he explain his obsession with fighting the Borg. Picard declares he won't sacrifice the starship, and swears to finally make the Borg pay for all they've done. Lily quietly and calmly compares Picard to Captain Ahab, forever fighting his white whale — the Borg. Realizing that this fight could only destroy himself and his crew, Picard decides to evacuate the ship. Worf, Picard and Crusher activate the ship's self-destruct sequence. The countdown begins, and the crew leaves in escape pods. Picard surveys his ship and prepares to leave when he hears Data calling him.
Meanwhile , the earth-bound crew and Cochrane begin takeoff. Cochrane, Geordi and Riker take off in the Phoenix, and with music blaring, the three men launch successfully into orbit.
On the ship, Lily and Picard say good-bye and the captain goes to save Data. Entering Engineering, Picard confronts the Borg Queen, whom he knows from his experience with the Borg. The queen reminds Picard that it was not enough that he was assimilated, but that he needed to give himself freely to the Borg — she wished him to stand by her side as an equal to further the power of the Collective. Picard offers himself in exchange for Data, but the android does not comply. He refuses to leave, and at the queen's command, disarms the self-destruct sequence. He quickly enters the encryption codes, offering full control of the Enterprise to the Borg.
As Cochrane's ship nears warp, Data arms the U.S.S Enterprise's weapons and aims them at the defenseless Phoenix. At the Borg Queen's order, Data fires, but the missiles fail to hit the Phoenix. His deception of the Borg complete, Data smashes a conduit, releasing a gas that floods engineering, killing all organic material. As the Borg are destroyed, Picard climbs to safety and the Borg Queen falls into the deadly gas. With the Borg threat gone, Cochrane safely completes humanity's first warp flight.
Celebrating the flight back on Earth that night, Cochrane and the Enterprise crew see an alien ship land nearby. The doors open, and Zefram Cochrane makes Earth's first contact with an alien race — the Vulcans. Picard and his crew beam out, having witnessed this historic event, and the U.S.S Enterprise NCC 1701-E returns to the 24th century.
Bangladeshi people gather for a protest demanding death penalty for Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Mollah in Chittagong Press Club.
The leader of Bangladesh's largest Islamic party was Tuesday convicted and sentenced to life in prison in a series of killings during the country's 1971 independence war.
Press Club,Chittagong.
The Painter mused on whether we might meet up at the railway station, spend some time over lunch then venture to the court where she has been framed.
Unremarkably, we met at the bus station. The court is The High Court, Australia's constitutional court. She is hung in the foyer, not literally, but as one of the artists to embellish its brutalist concrete walls. How was she framed? In wood. Her complaint was that the unfinished linen edge of her work was raw and undignified. Now was her opportunity to see how the framing sat with her work.
For such a momentous and solemn building, the attendants are charming and welcoming. Once The Painter introduced herself, it was as though we were old friends. They hold that the figure on the ramp is the lady who each morning rubs the smudges from the brass railing. It's true! This scene captures the morning light; the polishing hour.
We didn't use the terms rectilinear and orthorhombic as such, but when we ascended to the balcony that is the viewpoint for this work, The Painter did admit to taking liberties in the composition and perspective of her rendering of this scene. It's none the worse for taking on her expression.
For the curious, and just for fun, this was shot in "Pro" mode, cropped and "deskewed" in the device and posted as I watch the cycling on the idiot box… The white balance was set to daylight despite being indoors because, well, all the glass means that provides the most true colour rendering of this scene.
Olympus E-M1 camera, Olympus 12-60mm lens, Olympus FL-50 flash. Flash shot off camera through umbrella on stand.
Location: Acton Arboretum, Acton Massachusetts
2015.09.19-17.19.05
The inscription reads:
"The Struggle Is My Life"
NELSON MANDELA Gaoled 5th August 1962
Sentenced to life Imprisonment 12th June 1964 for his actions against Apartheid.
Erected by the Greater London Council.
Unveiled by Oliver Tambo President of the African National Congress 28th October 1985"
"Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years imprisonment
11th February 1990. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 10th December 1993. Inaugurated President of the Republic of South Africa and its Government of National Unity 10th May 1994."
_______________________________
§ "Nelson Mandela sculpture returns to South Bank. The bronze sculpture of Nelson Mandela has been returned to its plinth alongside the Royal Festival Hall.
Source: London SE1 Community website. Friday 16 February 2007.
§ The sculpture is by Ian Walters who died in August 2006. Tony Benn wrote an obituary in The Guardian.
§ Google Street View of the Mandela Sculpture.
John Storey was sentenced to 1 month at Newcastle City Gaol for stealing wood.
Age (on discharge): 32
Height: 5.8
Hair: Light
Eyes: Grey
Place of Birth: Newcastle
Status: Single
Occupation: Labourer
These photographs are of convicted criminals in Newcastle between 1871 - 1873.
Reference:TWAS: PR.NC/6/1/1279
(Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk.
To purchase a hi-res copy please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk quoting the title and reference number.
Death sentence, December 23, 1941 Poventsa.
••••••••
Kuolemantuomio, 23.12.1941, Poventsa.
••••••••
[ sa-kuva | A.Viitasalo | 68127 ]
For SW Factions. Mato has a moment of clarity, and makes a choice.
Story below:
“Take the woman before the Hutt Lords.”
It was a death sentence. He had carried it out before.
His life was three things: putrid smells, fear of death, and orders from the Hutts. Mostly orders to kill.
He had killed people for talking back. He had killed people for failing Baga’s orders. He had even killed other enforcers, when the Hutts demanded entertainment during dinner. And now he would probably have to kill this woman.
The girl walked proudly in front of him. She was some sort of spy, trying to undermine the Hutts. He shook his head; he couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. She’d gotten in over her head.
“Have you lived on Nal Hutta long?”
The young woman’s question came out casual, almost flippant. Before he realized what he was doing, he stammered a reply.
“My whole life,” he said, then he corrected himself, twisting his weathered face into a snarl. “. . . Shut up and keep walking!”
The girl kept walking, but she kept talking too.
“My name is Yigs. I’m from a planet called Wayland. It’s beautiful there. The rain is fresh, there’s cool breezes . . . nothing like this toilet. You should see it, if you get the chance.” She frowned back, a sympathetic look that startled him. “I’m sorry that you’re stuck here.”
He growled. “There’s nothing to see. Nal Hutta is where the Hutt Lords rule. It’s an honor to even be in the same system.”
Even as he said it, he thought of his quarters. Swamp water pooling on the floor from the drain overhead. The smell of garbage rising from under the door. He had to keep a constant eye on his stained blankets, otherwise they’d be stolen. You couldn’t trust anyone. But that was just the way life was.
“You don’t even know, do you? You’ve never seen anything better than this stinkhole.”
He was silent.
She went on. “That’s why I’m here. There’s so many beautiful worlds out there, but they’re being ruined by the Hutts. People are free, and happy. They laugh at jokes and watch the sunrise. They have friends.”
The Weequay snarled. “Friends. Useless.”
“Hah!” her laugh was clear, strong. She wasn’t afraid, even though she must have known what was ahead for her. “Have you ever had a friend?”
It wasn’t condescending. She meant it.
He grumbled a non-committal answer, then said, “You should shut up. The Hutt Lords want a word with you. You can talk then.”
“What’s your name?”
“What?”
“What do people call you?”
“. . . Enforcer,” he joked, a bitter edge creeping into his voice. “Or wrinkle-head. Leatherskin. Sometimes just trash. Take your pick.”
“What did your parents call you? You had parents, right?”
What was he doing, talking to this dead woman? She was getting into his head. He’d be lashed if anyone heard them.
“Mato,” he heard himself say.
“Mato,” she said, her voice full of a fire and surety and fierceness he’d only seen in the Hutts themselves. But there was something else there that the slugs never had; genuine care. He figured either she had never had a boot on her neck, or she threw it off the moment it was placed there. Both boggled his mind.
“Give me your blaster,” she said seriously. “I can get us both out of here. I can get you to free skies, to friendly people. You don’t have to serve the slugs.”
He felt something new, bright, and frightening rising in his chest. He tried to push it away. “You’re a slave,” he spat. “What could you possibly do?”
“No,” she said firmly. “You’re a slave. And I’m going to free you.”
“No,” he said again, and his voice gave out. “Even if you could, I’ve . . . done too much. No one wants to help a Hutt enforcer.”
A sad smile twisted her mouth. “Really? I’m helping you right now, and you’ll probably have to kill me soon.” She caught his gaze, which had been set dully on the floor.
“Please, Mato,” she said. “Give me your gun, and I promise to get us both out of here.”
When he met her eyes, he was suddenly shocked with clarity. It was a moment of destiny, like a waking dream, where he saw two courses of life stretch forward. One was a stream of steaming swamp water. It was killing for the Hutts, eventually dying alone.
The other was what he imagined clean water might look like. He’d heard it was blue. That stream was helping the girl. With her, either he would die, or he would be free. No more Hutts. No more orders. No more slime.
When he compared the two streams, what did he have to lose? All he had to do was trust. To put his life in someone else’s hands. Could he do that?
He’d seen her fire. The light in her eyes. The care in her voice. Unlike anything he’d ever seen or heard.
He undid her cuffs, unbuckled his holster, pulled his blaster, and held it out to her.
“I hate the Hutts. I hate this killing. I’m done,” he snarled. “I choose the blue water.”
She nodded.
He felt sweat roll down his temple. He’d been so sure of his choice, but now there was no going back. “W-What now?” he asked.
She primed the blaster. A reassuring grin—confident, but not cocky—played on her face.
“Now, Mato, we ditch this place forever.”
He tried to smile back, but he was too nervous. He took a deep breath, and hefted his vibroaxe.
“Okay,” he exhaled, and nodded. “Okay.”
They turned to face the fight ahead. He felt so much better that she was in it with him.
Was this what having a friend was like? It was a brand new feeling. And he had a sneaking suspicion—though it was still just a hunch—that she wouldn’t even try to steal his blankets when he wasn’t looking.
Life would be different from now on.
Part 2 is here: www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/178764-s...
Charles Dickens stayed here and used this experience to include a few sentences in the Pickwick Papers
Sam Weller, follows the charlatan Alfred Jingle towards Bury St Edmunds
"The coach rattled through the well-paved streets of a handsome little town, of thriving and cleanly appearance, and stopped before a large inn situated in a wide open street, nearly facing the old abbey."
Photo taken on the The Angel Hill Bury St Edmunds. For those who have never visited the Town in Suffolk was, until the early 1870s, the site of the famous Bury Fair. People from Europe and across the Far East came to buy and sell. In recent years the Christmas Fayre held all over the Town has its focal pint here on Angel Hill and is now one of the biggest in the Country.
It is one of the finest Georgian Squares in England and is a tourist hotspot with the Abbey Gardens , Angel Hotel and the Athenaeum all of significant interest to the visitor.
The Abbeygate is probably Bury's most photographed building. It was rebuilt in 1347 after the locals pulled the original down.
Charles Dickens stayed at the Angel and read to audiences at the Athenaeum
ADAW 11/52
Ahaha, sorry about the pretentious teenager-y quote from the fault in our stars, it's just that I just reread the book, and this is probably my favourite quote from the book. I like it, I think, because it sort of says what I think: we don't really have a great individual influence on the universe. The next sentence in the book after this quote tells us that we are not likely to do either.
We talk about pure evil people, about how they are rare. Truth is, both good and bad is rare. People are neither. It's not so black and white, not so easy to navigate this word.
Most people just are, just exist in a grayzone.
And I'm afraid I'll turn out to be nothing but a ghost my entire life, to not make a difference, to be ordinary. And, oh, the irony. That is probably one of the most ordinary fears.
But no matter what, we're building our lives on top of others, stacking it all on top. We are not grand gestures, unsolvable mysteries or neverending mazes in a universe that keeps expanding. Does this make us unimportant? I hope not. I don't think so. We just keep dreaming, reaching for the stars, expecting for the universe to notice us, when really it is us who need to notice the universe.
Maybe the most extraordinary thing to do is to be content with an ordinary life. Even so, an ordinary life is relative, as is everything, a shout in the void, a weak pair of legs stumbling towards a meaning, a point. Who knows, maybe there is one, maybe there isn't, but why would the universe share that?
----
On another note, I've gotten a microwave and made friends with little kids who seek my attention as if it were the sun, I made a 10 on a math assignment which probably converts to a B, which is a great grade, compared to the fact that math is probably my worst subject and I did really poorly last year, and I'm really looking forward to staring on a new school next (school) year, it's going to be extremely exciting!
((sorry about my rant-y text, I dont know if it was nonsensical haha))
I hope you also had a really great time, flickr friends!
Three men and a woman have been sentenced after being rumbled by our detectives in Tameside investigating a drugs line that profited around £80k from the criminal exploitation of teenage boys.
Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court heard today (18 November 2021) how Ryan Wall, 24, Claire Daniels, 36, Christopher Thornton, 20, and Leigh Sleddon, 38, were involved in an organised crime group that trafficked class A drugs as well as vulnerable young people from Tameside to Blackpool.
Wall, of Lakenheath Road, Liverpool and Thornton, of Barlow Road, Dukinfield, were sentenced to a total of 17 years after admitting arranging or facilitating the travel of another person with a view to exploitation under the Modern Slavery Act - becoming GMP's first county lines offenders guilty of this offence.
Despite not being charged with the same offence, the court also accepted that Daniels - herself a mother - of Fitzroy Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, was aware and complicit in the movement of the teenagers in order for them to deal drugs and she was given a one year and two month suspended sentence.
Sleddon, of Claremont Court, Blackpool, admitted that the children had stayed at his address in return for him being supplied with drugs. He was given a two year suspended sentence.
The verdicts conclude an eighteen-month investigation into the transportation of drugs and children - aged between 13 and 16 - led by detectives in GMP Tameside's Complex Safeguarding Team.
Investigators began the operation - codenamed 'Fairview' - following the report of a boy missing from the Hyde area. After close work with Lancashire Police, it was identified that he had been moved to Blackpool and that he was being used by the gang to supply class 'A' drugs on the streets.
Enquiries confirmed that two other teenage boys who had been missing from the nearby Ashton area had been in contact with a number associated with Ryan Wall - who was jailed for nine years today.
Already a picture was starting to develop of a group conspiring to supply class A drugs - namely heroin and crack cocaine - and also transporting the young boys to Blackpool to deal these drugs on the streets, often leaving them to fend for themselves for days.
While it is not thought the two boys - and a third boy also found to be exploited - were ever injured, detectives believe by leaving the boys alone to be involved in illicit enterprises in towns miles away from home was exposing them to a real and significant danger.
Officers ensured the boys were immediately referred to relevant specialist agencies and safeguarded away from further harm, and have pursued with a victimless prosecution to ensure that the gang are still held to account for their crimes.
A strike day was executed at the start of October 2020 where eight people - aged 16 to 67 - were arrested, before Wall, Thornton and Daniels were charged and eventually admitted two counts of conspiracy to supply a controlled drug. The detectives were also able to prove to the court that Thornton, who was jailed for eight years today, was also controlling a 'drug line' local to the Tameside area supplying heroin, cocaine and cannabis. He had also entered guilty pleas for these matters.
Wall and Thornton pleaded guilty of four modern slavery offences between them while Sleddon pleaded guilty to participating in the activities of an organised crime group.
While similar charges have been secured in other complex safeguarding teams in Greater Manchester for offences relating to Child Sexual Exploitation, the unit in Tameside is the first to land a conviction under the Modern Slavery Act in relation to Child Criminal Exploitation 'county lines' gangs - with support from the Crown Prosecution Service.
Comprising of specially-trained detectives, safeguarding officers, and partners from Tameside Council; the Complex Safeguarding Team currently has nine ongoing investigations and a number of suspects have been arrested. Children who have been identified as needing to be safeguarded have in some cases been re-homed.
Detective Constable Matthew Elliot, from Operation Fairview, said: "Today, this group has been jailed for their roles in a county line gang - wrecking lives along the way through the dissemination of illegal drugs.
"But what we've been able to prove to the court during this investigation, is that Wall and Thornton - in particular - were not just trafficking drugs but also trafficking people.
"They were running their drugs line to Blackpool by deliberately targeting teenage boys, and exploiting them for their own illicit gains.
"These were boys who were identified by the group as vulnerable, and groomed into travelling between counties - left to fend for themselves and exposed to danger - to do the dirty work on the ground that these offenders didn’t wish to do themselves.
"The act of exploiting children and peddling them for such selfish and criminal ways is an abhorrent crime - but one that is complex and wide-ranging which makes today's outcome all the more of a success.
"And it isn’t just putting offenders behind bars that makes this operation a great result. The fact we have been able to work with partners and ensure victims have been safeguarded and away from harm is just as - if not more - significant.
"I would like to thank our partners at Tameside Council, Lancashire Police, and the Crown Prosecution Service, for the extensive support they have offered to this investigation and helping us ensure these historic convictions for GMP.
"This has been a tireless eighteen-month investigation by our Complex Safeguarding Team in Tameside, and hopefully the first good result of many.
"We have demonstrated how by working with local police forces, local authority, and other relevant supporting agencies, that we are able to target and dismantle those involved in this truly despicable criminal activity - while identifying and protecting victims in the process.
"If you feel you are being criminally exploited, or know someone who is, then please come forward to the police or Crimestoppers, knowing information will be treat with the strictest confidence."
Tameside Council Executive Member for Children and Families, Councillor Bill Fairfoull, said: “Superb partnership working has resulted in this first conviction of Modern Day Slavery in Greater Manchester. We have removed these drug dealers from our streets and stopped them from exploiting our children. Our Children’s Services staff have worked tirelessly with the police to secure this result and I’d like to thank everyone involved for their hard work.
“All of the children involved are being supported by our Tameside Complex Safeguarding Team and Tameside Youth Justice Service. I’m also pleased that the learning from this successful operation with be shared across Greater Manchester Complex Safeguarding Teams as a model of best practice.”
Title: Prisoners Awaiting Sentence, Juarez Prison. [No. 821]
Creator: Horne, Walter H., 1883-1921
Date: ca. 1910-1918
Part of: Elmer and Diane Powell collection on Mexico and the Mexican Revolution
Place: Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, New Mexico
Description: A real photographic postcard featuring an image of a prison guard sitting outside of Juarez Prison, with prisoners looking out of a barred window behind him.
Physical Description: 1 photographic print (postcard): gelatin silver; 9 x 14 cm
File: ag2014_0005_01_005_03_horne_079_prisoners_r_opt.jpg
Rights: DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
For more information, see: digitalcollections.smu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/pwl/id/732
View the Elmer and Diane Powell Collection on Mexico and the Mexican Revolution: sites.smu.edu/cdm/cul/pwl/
I'd never heard a sentence begin that way until today,when I met Nathan. Like many of the travelers I've met, he was just passing thru when he became stranded. In Nathan's case, he was supposed to jump an outbound freight but unfortunately overdosed on heroin and ended up dead. Yes, dead. For 17 minutes. Two shots of Narcon later, he woke up. I had to ask if he'd experienced anything unusual (or even supernatural) during his absence. "All the other time I've died..." he began. I stopped him there. "Other times?" I asked. He explained that as a teen he'd tried suicide: four times. Each time he was revived. After one such resurrection, he cold-cocked the ER doc in the jaw. The OD, he said, was different. "There was just this dark space." He said he could hear a breeze but couldn't feel it. He could move about, but since everything was dark, there was no place to go. Since then he's quit heroin. But he's still in Philly. So his problems aren't exactly over.
MMA (ex-BN) C30-7 #5018 and ex-NS (nee-CR) C39-8 #8208 sit outside of Willard, awaiting to be sent out by CSX to LTE in Lordstown for disposal.
A street portrait caught somewhere between the expression and the gesture.
Series: Portraits
Leica M10 Monochrom · Summicron-M 35mm f/2
StreetSoul.me
يقول علماء النفس إن 99 بالمائة من مخاوفنا وهمية
لا توجد إلا بخيالنا و ليس لها أي أساس من الصحة
الخوف ليس إلا مجرد حالة ذهنية و الحالة
الذهنية قابله للسيطرة و التوجيه إذا وجدت الدوافع
نجد هذا الطفل دوافعه للركوب كانت أكبر من مخاوفه
ربي يحفظه وهو كاتب وصيته بجيبه
خخخخخ
China, Beijing, Zoo, lebenslänglich, life sentence, à perpète, essere condannato all'ergastolo, condenado por vida, condanna a vita, sentença de vida
Dieses Foto steht symbolisch für alle Tiere in Käfigen, egal in welchem Land, Zoo oder Privat.
This photo is symbolic of all the animals in cages, no matter what country, zoo or private.
Cette photo est symbolique de tous les animaux dans des cages, peu importe le pays, zoo ou privé.
Esta foto es simbólico de todos los animales en jaulas, sin importar el país, zoológico o privada.
Questa foto è il simbolo di tutti gli animali in gabbia, non importa quale paese, zoo o privato.
Esta foto é simbólica de todos os animais em gaiolas, não importa o país, jardim zoológico ou privada.
Der Korrektheit halber, der Zoo in Beijing hat auch sehr große Außengehege!
For the sake of correctness, the zoo in Beijing also has very large outdoor enclosure!
Le souci d'exactitude, le zoo de Pékin a également une très grande enceinte en plein air!
Por la exactitud, el zoológico de Beijing también tiene muy gran recintos al aire libre!
L'amor di correttezza, lo zoo di Pechino ha anche molto grande recintosi all'aperto!
A causa correção, o jardim zoológico de Pequim também tem muito grande recinto ao ar livre!
👉 One World one Dream,
...Danke, Xièxie 谢谢, Thanks, Gracias, Merci, Grazie, Obrigado, Arigatô, Dhanyavad, Chokrane to you & over
6,6 million visits in my photostream with countless motivating comments