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Thank you to the vast majority of fans last night for your excellent behaviour while watching the England game.
Although the score didn’t go our way, fans by-and-large were brilliant and watched the #WorldCup semi-final between England and Croatia in good spirits.
Nine arrests were made in total in Manchester City Centre including public order offences and being drunk and disorderly, but thankfully no serious incidents took place.
We would also like to thank all the officers who worked hard to keep everyone safe last night, with many having to give up their plans of watching the game with friends and family.
Yesterday was a testament to fans – you came together, helped look after each other and dealt with the result graciously.
Bring on Euro 2020!
To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit www.gmp.police.uk
You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.
Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.
You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give a statement.
Problems with uploading today! Photos obviously not being seen - no views. Flickr is apparently working to fix the upload issue.
Wednesday, 10 June 2020: our temperature around 2:00 pm is 20C (windchill 20C). Sunrise is at 5:21 am, and sunset is at 9:50 pm. Sun and cloud.
Yesterday, 9 June 2020, I drove SE of the city to the Frank Lake area. Though the gate has been open for a while, the water level is higher than I have ever seen it in years. Really not worth the drive at the moment, as the blind is boarded up to prevent people going in there while social-distancing is in effect. The boardwalk is totally under water and the blind looks like it is floating out in a lake. I stayed on the road, rather than walk across the grass to get closer - had visions of suddenly sinking down into flooded grass. Presumably the water level of the whole area will eventually lower. The only photos I took was when I was driving along the gravel road.
I did see one interesting thing along the gravel road - a Brown-headed Cowbird doing a head-down display. This was something I had never seen before and I was totally unaware that Brown-headed Cowbirds have this behaviour. Many times, I have seen several of these highly gregarious birds sitting together on a fence railing, with their heads all pointing upwards at the exact same angle. When I first saw this bird, it had its back to me and it was lying flat on a rock. It looked iridescent and reminded me a little of a Tree Swallow. Then it stood up and eventually put its head down and spread its wings. There were several other Cowbirds flying around. Nice to learn something new!
After checking out the blind area from my car, I drove around the lake, finding just a handful of birds to photograph. Nothing unusual, but I enjoyed seeing and photographing 'anything' right now : ) From there, I drove north and out on to the main highway back to the city.
The weather was absolutely gorgeous - blue sky with masses of white clouds. Pretty windy, but I was in my car most of the time, so it didn't matter.
I happened to get video of this SESA as it appeared to (at times) be stalking stalk prey items somewhat reminiscent of a Spotted Sandpiper technique
but, of course, without the tail pumps :)
then ...it looks to be hunkering down for some rest time
Focus on
Semipalmated Sandpiper SESA (Calidris pusilla)
at one point passes
Least Sandpiper LESA (Calidris minutilla)
(Lying down resting)
East Beach
Saanichton* Spit
aka
Cordova Spit
aka
TI̸X̱EN 'the Spit" ( Tsawout First Nation )
TIXEN
DSCN9412
Taken on July 1, 2019
Observing rat behaviour during a sleep monitoring session. On the left screen, you can see software used to record EEG & EMG as well as behaviour. The right screen (a TV screen) shows the rat in its cage (from another room).
It still fascinates me, how different life forms, of many sizes and scales can create a micro-ecosystem directly relevant to the surface, temperatures, exposures etc. etc. etc.
Album Title: Exotic Behaviour
Model: 虹羚
Photographer: Edwin Setiawan
Place: 士林官邸
Date: 2009/07/12
Just about Photography: edwinsetiawan.wordpress.com
Edwin Setiawan Photography: www.edwinsetiawan.com
I was up at one of our local churchyards for my walk this morning when I noticed this female Mallard.
She was quacking away and then flew up into a hole in a tree, if she's nesting there I worry about the babies when they hatch.
The pond is just across a fairly busy road if they try to get there.
The Dead Kennedy's use a photograph by Neal Ulevich, showing the dead body of a left-wing student being defiled by ultra royalist right-wing activists in 1976. The photograph was awarded the Pullitzer Prize in 1977.
History, today is repeating itself...
First, the history
First published in Radicalising Thailand: New Political Perspectives. (2003) G.J. Ungpakorn –Contributing editor. Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University.
data3.blog.de/media/661/2347661_35e0d731fd_d.pdf
"In the early hours of 6th October 1976, Thai uniformed police, stationed in the grounds of the National Museum, next door to Thammasat University, destroyed a peaceful gathering of students and working people on the university campus under a hail of relentless automatic fire. At the same time a large gang of ultra-Right-wing “informal forces”, known as the Village Scouts, Krating-Daeng (or “Red Gaurs”) and Nawapon, indulged in an orgy of violence and brutality towards anyone near the front entrance of the university. Students and their supporters were dragged out of the university and hung from the trees around Sanam Luang; others were burnt alive in front of the Ministry of “Justice” while the mob danced round the flames.
Women and men, dead or alive, were subjected to the utmost degrading and violent behaviour. One woman had a piece of wood shoved up her xxxxxxx. Hopefully she was already dead. Village Scouts dragged dead and dying students from the front of the campus and dumped them on the road, where they were finished-off. A young man plunged a sharp wooden spike into the corpses while a boy urinated over them.
Not only did the state’s “forces of law and order” do nothing to halt this violence, some uniformed members of the police force were filmed cheering-on the crowd."
continues here... data3.blog.de/media/661/2347661_35e0d731fd_d.pdf
- - - - -
Forty years on...
" Those Defaming The Monarchy Are "Trash" To Be Removed."
The Nation
Pravit Rojanaphruk
April 23, 2014
So says Dr Rienthong Nanna, the leader of a new ultra-royalist vigilante group. The group that Rienthong, a retired major general, founded on Facebook is aptly named in Thai, "Organisation for the Removal of Trash of the Land".
To Rienthong and his supporters, those who criticise or offend the monarchy are no longer regarded as humans, but as trash. Rienthong, director of Monkutwattana General Hospital, rose to fame literally within days after leading the latest vigilante crusade to eliminate all expressions of dissent, criticism and defamation against the royal institution.
"I don't accept differing ideas from those who think differently by defaming or citing academic freedom that enabled lese majeste acts [to occur]. I can conclude that these people who think differently are trash of the land," he declared on the organisation's Facebook page last week
Besides the call to hunt down all those who insult the monarchy, Rienthong, who appears to be in his late fifties, is also calling for the practice of "corporate loyalty responsibility"...
As of Monday, the organisation's Facebook page was asking for police to refrain from taking any action against the group, which will arm itself with war weapons for its own safety and protection."
and today...
Thai Activist Who Opposed Lese Majeste Law Killed
The Associated Press
April 23, 2014
"BANGKOK — A pro-government activist who opposed a law punishing critics of Thailand's monarchy was fatally shot Wednesday in the capital, police said.
The killing came as tensions continue over the political fate of Prime Minister
Police Col. Thanawat Watthanakul said Kamol Duangphasuk was shot by gunmen on a motorcycle in a restaurant parking lot in northern Bangkok. Kamol, a poet also known as Mainueng Kor Khuntee, was a member of the "Red Shirt" political movement which supports Yingluck and her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Thailand has been plagued by political strife since a 2006 military coup ousted Thaksin from office, after demonstrators accused him of corruption, abuse of power and disrespect for King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
Kamol was a strong opponent of Thailand's lese majeste law, which provides up to 15 years in prison for anyone who defames the country's monarchy. A newly formed vigilante group has threatened to hunt down people who oppose the monarchy, describing them as trash.
Kamol's poetry had a hard political edge, and he advocated that the Red Shirts organize in a military fashion at the local level in order to protect Yingluck's government.
Yingluck faces court rulings that could force her from office, in what her supporters call a "judicial coup."
The judiciary is seen as part of the Thai establishment, which has long been hostile to Thaksin. Thaksin's supporters believe the country's elite felt their privileges threatened by Thaksin's popularity."
A variety of authors (Ashkenazi, 2001; Askew, 2007; Gerster, 2006; Rea, 2000; Robertson, 1988) suggest that the Japanese love of historical tourism, be it for Japan related history or histories of pre-modern ideals, is due to the modernisation of Japan. According to these authors, Japanese are seeking a nostalgic return to pre-modern, pre-Western self.
I claim that the the Japanese love of historical theme parks, such as Furusato (home-towns/villages), Heide in Switzerland, Beatrix Potter in the UK, Anne of Green Gables in Prince Edward Island Canada, is indeed because the Japanese are attracted to nostalgia. But I believe the Japanese always have been wallowing in nostalgia because nostalgia is just pandemic in Japan. In the UK nostalgia is for boring old farts like myself, or those of my age or older, but in Japan even young people - my students - like to proclaim that something is "natsukashii!" (nostalgic). Things do not need to be all that old to be nostalgic. Indeed it helps if they are not so that young people can remember them.
The point I want to make is that the Japanese interest in nostalgia has little to do with a yearning for a pre-modernised, pre-Westernised Japan. The Japanese have been into nostalgia for a long time, well before anything that might be described as modern or western and an impact upon Japanese society. Nostalgia lies on the same emotional seam as wabi, sabi and and aware, the wet, masochistic love of the unfolding of time, as manifested in solitude and decay, and the Japanese were into this aesthetic since the dawn of recorded history.
The Japanese love of nostalgia has nothing to do with the West.
I mentioned Matsuo Basho waxing lyrical about ruins (Hudson, 1999) in my previous post. Donald Keene (1999) claims that Basho was so into nostalgia, or at least reliving literary precedent, that he only commented on scenes that had been mentioned by previous poets.
"He (Basho) had absolutely no desire to be the first ever to set foot atop a mountain peak or to notice some site that earlier poets had ignored. On the contrary, no matter how spectacular a landscape might be, unless it had attracted the attention of his predecessors, the lack of poetic overtones deprived it of charm for Basho. When, for example, he travelled along a stretch of the sear of Japan coast that inspired no important poems, he did not mention the scenery" (Keene, 1999, p 311 in Watkins, 2008, p101).
Basho was not alone but part of a tradition. When a lowly warrior was sent from Kurume City (my old town) to Tokyo, then Edo, as part of the alternate attendance/hostage system (Sankinkoutai), he wrote in his diary "While in Edo, we may also go to see the places where Basho visited, and this brings on great nostalgia."(Vaporis, 1996, p296)
One of the many great things about scholars like Donald Keene and Constantine Vaporis is that they can read Japanese from any era. I get the feeling, however, that some of the learned scholars in the tourism and anthropology field, even the main man -- Nelson Graburn ---can not, judging by the fact that they rarely cite sources in the vernacular.
Despite the fact that I am in no way of equal academic calibre to any possibly non-Japanophone scholars, I am okay with Japanese, so this inspired me to have a go at finding an original source, or proof of pre-Western-influenced Japanese nostalgia myself. So I did a quick Google of "nostalgia" and "travel diary" and, since there were two hits for "nostalgia" on the same page, came across the Suma Diary (Kagawa, 1847) about a trip to what is now Hyougo Prefecture, to the ruins of the palace of one of the poets whose poem was featured in the famous collection of 100 poets used on Japanese playing cards, originally from the second most famous old book of poetry (Saeki, 1981). 1847 was more than a decade prior to the opening of Japan to the West.
Here below is the excerpt from the travel diary above, translated with a little help from my Japanese wife, and with my attempt at a modern Japanese, non poetic version in brackets.
願ひし須磨の浦につく。 (願った行き先である須磨の浦に到着しました。）
I arrive at Suma Bay, the place I had been yearning to reach.
先ここよりの見渡し。海上のけしき。（この先からの見渡しは海上の景色）
The view from here is out over the sea.
更に類なし。只あはれあわれと見るのみ。（類がないほど、ただ哀れみな光景だけを見る）
There is nothing like it. Just a wasteland, a wilderness of water.
中々に事の葉に。言続けむも。今更びたり。（書き続けてもなかなか言葉になりません。）
It is not easy to put into words, even if I go on talking. And even now??
家毎に。かの竹簾かげ下ろして。故ありげに住みなしたる。(家ごとにその竹のすだれが下ろされて、理由があるかのように住み。。。。？）
At each house the bamboo blinds are down. As if they have a reason for (not) living here?? (Maybe suggesting that they are waiting).
いかでかゝげ寄らまほしきまで。なつかし。（さっぱり分かりません。懐かしい！）
???? Nostalgic.
案内の翁を雇ひ出たり。先にたして行く行く語らく。あれ見給へ。かの小さき山こそ。（おじいさんの案内者を雇って出発しました。語りながら先に進んでいった。あれ見てよ。この小さい山こそ！
I hired an old man guide. We went on together talking. Look at that. At that little mountain there.
中納言行平の君。この浦に汐くみしておはせし時。（中納言行平という昔の偉い詩人がこの浦から汐をくみにきたとき）
When Lord Yukihira Chunagon went to get water from the bay.
立帰りいなばの山のと。（（百人一首にでる）「立ち別れの因幡の山」のことですよ！）
This is the Inaba Mountain in the poem (one of the 100 that are told at new year).
ながめ給し濱にて侍れ。（眺めて、濱においで？？）
Stare and go (come?) from/to the beach.
いでとく書きとめ給へなどを。？えもあらぬくさぐさの事をいふなむ。（？？）
?????
中々興ある。さるあひだ。（中々興味深い。？？？）
Very interesting! ???
須磨寺を始め。内裏の跡。一の谷。（須磨というお寺を始め、中納言の宮殿の奥の部分の跡。一の谷？）
Starting with Suma temple,then the remains of the palace. The first valley.
上の秋草をさへ。かぞへ見廻りて。（その跡の上に生える草をさえ数えるかように見回っていた）
I even started to count the autumn grass above (the ruins) with my eyes.
海ばたの松陰なる。（海辺の松影になるように）
Becoming like the shadow of a pine (this may be another reference to the poem
to the woman that may have waited for the Lords return.)
敦盛りぬしの塚を拝む。（あつもりの塚を拝む）
I prayed at the burial mound of Atsumori?
たえず浪風の音。ひヾき通ひて。（浪と風の音がたえず響き通って）
And all the while, the sounds of the wind and waves, runs through me.
昔のおもかげ。目の前に浮かびつ。（昔の面影が目の前に浮かびうがってきた）
And the memory of you, (my lord) rises before my eyes.
たちよれば君を忍ぶの草おひてあらぬ露さへおきそはりけり （たちよったら中納言の君を忍ぶ草にあった露さえ落ち添わった。）
Paying my visit, even the dew on the grass that remembers you has increased.
(This is a reference to another ancient poem, and suggests that the author is crying and
thus increasing the dew)
見る處なつかしかるぬはなし。（見るところ、光景は懐かしく思わずにいられない。）
I can't but be nostalgic about what I am seeing.
(Corrections please!)
In other words, the author, went to some lonely spot on the coast of Japane, to the site of the residence of one of the poets who had been famous one thousand years years previously, and then, staring at sea and grass, he felt an image of that lonely ancient love-struck poet spring to mind. And imagining the ancient poet, this author wept, mega-nostalgically. Contra Urry (2002), in this most quintessentially Japanese touristic experience, there was *nothing to be seen*. There was only grass, only sea. There was nothing that the traveller could not have seen in many other places far nearer to home. But at the same time, the author did see, did experience nostalgia and the pity of things (mono no aware), because the traveller called images to mind.
Japanese "site-seeing" (thing seeing: kenbutsu, 見物) is about seeing but not of sights, not of visual things, but rather named sites (meisho) juxtaposed with images in the heart.
Afterword
Whereas words are always differed (Derrida, 1998), mean something in the future, images are always of something in already in the past, which if loved generate nostalgia. The opposite of nostalgia is hope and we, Westerners, are probably awash with it.
Bibliography
Derrida, J. (1998). Of Grammatology. JHU Press.
Hudson, M. (1999). Ruins of identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands. University of Hawaii Press.
Keene, D. (1999). Travellers of a Hundred Ages. Columbia University Press.
Vaporis, C. N. (1996). A Tour of Duty: Kurume hanshi Edo kinban nagaya emaki. Monumenta Nipponica, 51(3), 279–307.
Kagawa, K. 香川景周. (1847). 須磨日記 (Suma Diary my trans). In 岸上質賢 (Ed.) "續紀行文集". Retrieved from books.google.co.jp/books?id=qKk9as-h84kC&printsec=fro...
Watkins, L. (2008). Japanese Travel Culture: An Investigation of the Links between Early Japanese Pilgrimage and Modern Japanese Travel Behaviour. New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 10(2), 93–110.
【百人一首講座】立ち別れいなばの山の峰に生ふる まつとしきかば今かへり来む─中納言行平 京都せんべい おかき専門店【長岡京小倉山荘】. (n.d.). Retrieved April 24, 2012, from www.ogurasansou.co.jp/site/hyakunin/016.html
Saeki, U. 佐伯梅友. (1981). 古今和歌集. 岩波書店.
Ashkenazi, M. (2001). Omiyage: Constructed Memories and Reconstructed Travel in Japan. In H. Walker (Ed.), Food and the Memory: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cooker, 2000 (p. 31). Oxford Symposium.
Askew, R. K. (2007). The politics of nostalgia: museum representations of Lafcadio Hearn in Japan. museum and society, 5(3), 131–147.
Gerster, R. (2006). The past as a foreign country: nostalgia and nationalism in contemporary Japanese tourism. Tourism Review International, 9(3), 293–301.
Rea, M. H. (2000). A furusato away from home. Annals of tourism research, 27(3), 638–660.
Robertson, J. (1988). Furusato Japan: the culture and politics of nostalgia. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 1(4), 494–518.
Urry, J. (2002). The Tourist Gaze. SAGE.
Watkins, L. (2008). Japanese Travel Culture: An Investigation of the Links between Early Japanese Pilgrimage and Modern Japanese Travel Behaviour. New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 10(2), 93–110.
The Postcard
A postcard bearing no publisher's name that was posted using a 2d. stamp in Weymouth, Dorset on Thursday the 4th. July 1957 to:
Miss Doswell,
77 Ryedale,
East Dulwich,
London SE.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Miss Doswell,
We are having a nice
holiday. We had a bad
storm on Tuesday night -
thunder and lightning
all night.
Nice yesterday and
today again.
We hope you are keeping
well.
We have just had a boat
trip around Portland
Harbour.
Best wishes,
Mr. & Mrs. Voak."
Weymouth
Weymouth is a seaside town in Dorset, England, situated on a sheltered bay at the mouth of the River Wey on the English Channel coast. The town is 11 kilometres (7 mi) south of Dorchester and 8 kilometres (5 mi) north of the Isle of Portland. The town's population in 2011 was 52,300.
Weymouth is a tourist resort, and its economy depends on its harbour and visitor attractions; the town is a gateway situated halfway along the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site on the Dorset and east Devon coast, important for its geology and landforms.
Weymouth Harbour has provided a berth for cross-channel ferries, and is home to pleasure boats and private yachts, and nearby Portland Harbour is home to the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy, where the sailing events of the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games were held.
The history of the borough stretches back to the 12th century; including involvement in the spread of the Black Death, the settlement of the Americas, the development of Georgian architecture, and a major departure point for the Normandy Landings.
Greenhill Gardens
Greenhill Gardens in the Greenhill suburb of Weymouth is a public garden positioned at the edge of the town centre, sloping up from the beach and promenade.
The Gardens were originally part of the Wilton Estate and were handed over as a gift to the local council in 1902 for 'the benefit of the inhabitants of Weymouth.'
Bennett's Shelter
Within the gardens, Bennett's Shelter, a benevolent donation made by Mayor V. H. Bennett, was constructed in 1919. The original shelter had lower wooden sections that have since been replaced by Portland stone walling, whilst the upper timber structure and tiled roof are essentially in their original form. The shelter continues to provide shelter to today's visitors.
The Schneider Trophy Weathervane
The Schneider Trophy weathervane is a memorial to the former Weymouth College student, Lieutenant George Stainforth, who set a world record air speed in a Schneider Supermarine S6B seaplane in 1931. The weather vane was originally presented to Weymouth College in 1932 as a memorial to Stainforth. Made of hardwood and covered in a copper sheath, the vane was erected above Weymouth College chapel in 1932, but moved for safety at the start of World War II.
The weathervane was later presented to the Borough Council and placed in the gardens in May 1952. In 1996, the vane had to be taken down after the effects of years of sea spray and coastal winds had taken their toll; however it was restored in 1999 by a local marine engineer.
The Floral Clock
In 1936, a floral clock with a cuckoo type chime was built by Ritchie & Sons of Edinburgh. The Company also designed the famous floral clock in Princes Street Garden in Edinburgh.
It features an adjacent clock house, holding the original mechanism that keeps the clock ticking. The clock house has two holes in the side where the noise of a cuckoo comes out.
Since its creation, it has become one of the most popular features of the gardens.
The Wishing Well
In the late 1980's, a wishing well, donated by Melcombe Regis Rotary Club, was introduced into the lower gardens, and any monies thrown into the well are collected and presented to a local charity.
The Tennis Courts
In 2006, the council were considering plans to erect a large restaurant on the tennis courts in the Gardens. This plan was received with almost universal dismay, and was subsequently shelved.
The Floral Bedding Design
Each year a large crescent shaped bed is given over to a charity or organisation which is celebrating a significant anniversary. The Gardeners painstakingly plant out thousands of tiny bedding plants, and where necessary, use coloured gravel to replicate the selected organisation's logo.
Eleanor Boucher
The gardens were highlighted on national news in the summer of 2009 when pensioner Eleanor Boucher from Glastonbury, Somerset, found a postcard from Weymouth on her doormat of the gardens.
After looking at it for a few moments she realised she was there - sunning herself in the picture taken 17 years before as a photographer snapped the shot for the postcard as Boucher and her two daughters enjoyed a family day trip to Weymouth in 1992.
Seventeen years later, her brother-in-law and his wife, who were visiting the resort, picked out the postcard by chance without noticing her in the picture.
Jenny Seagrove
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 4th. July 1957 marked the birth of the English actress Jenny Seagrove.
She trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, and first came to attention in the film Local Hero (1983), as well as playing the lead in a television dramatisation of Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance (1984).
Jenny starred in the thriller Appointment with Death (1988) and William Friedkin's horror film The Guardian (1990). She later played Louisa Gould in Another Mother's Son (2017).
Jenny is known for her role as the character of Jo Mills in the long-running BBC drama series Judge John Deed (2001–07). Her credits as a voiceover artist include a series of Waitrose television advertisements.
-- Jenny Seagrove - The Early Years
Jenny was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya (now Malaysia) to British parents, Pauline and Derek Seagrove. Her father ran an import-export firm, which afforded the family a privileged lifestyle.
When Seagrove was less than a year old, her mother suffered a stroke, and was unable to care for her. Seagrove attended St. Hilary's School in Godalming, Surrey, from the age of nine.
After leaving school, Seagrove attended the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, in spite of her parents' wishes for her to have a career as a professional cook.
Seagrove developed bulimia in her early adulthood, but recovered:
"I could feel myself tearing my stomach,
and I kind of pulled out of it. It was a
very slow process."
-- Jenny Seagrove's Career
(a) Theatre
Seagrove's theatre work includes the title role in Jane Eyre at the Chichester Festival Theatre (1986); Ilona in The Guardsman at Theatr Clwyd (1992); and Bett in King Lear in New York, again at Chichester (1992).
Jenny played opposite Tom Conti in Present Laughter at the Globe Theatre (1993); Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker at the Comedy Theatre (1994); and Dead Guilty with Hayley Mills at the Apollo Theatre (1995).
She played in Hurlyburly for the Peter Hall Company when the production transferred from the London Old Vic to the Queen's Theatre (1997); co-starred with Martin Shaw in the Parisian thriller Vertigo (Theatre Royal Windsor October 1998) and then with Anthony Andrews (also Windsor, 1998).
In 2000 she appeared in Brief Encounter at the Lyric Theatre; followed by Neil Simon's The Female Odd Couple at the Apollo (2001). Again at the Lyric Theatre in 2002 she played the title role in Somerset Maugham's The Constant Wife, followed by a revival of David Hare's The Secret Rapture in 2003, and The Night of the Iguana two years later in 2005.
Coming to the West End from a UK tour, she played Leslie Crosbie in Maugham's The Letter at Wyndham's Theatre (2007), co-starring with Anthony Andrews.
In December 2007, Jenny played Marion Brewster-Wright in the Garrick Theatre revival of Alan Ayckbourn's dark, three-act comedy Absurd Person Singular.
In 2008, she and Martin Shaw starred in Murder on Air, at the Theatre Royal, Windsor.
In 2011, Jenny once again starred alongside Martin Shaw in The Country Girl at the Apollo Theatre, playing the part of Georgie Elgin.
In early 2014, she appeared as Julia in a revival of Noël Coward's Fallen Angels. The production was produced by her partner Bill Kenwright, and also starred Sara Crowe.
In 2015, she and Martin Shaw starred in an adaptation of Brief Encounter, using an original radio script from 1947 and staged as "A live broadcast from a BBC radio studio", at the Theatre Royal Windsor.
Returning to the West End in October 2017, Seagrove played Chris MacNeil in The Exorcist at the Phoenix Theatre.
(b) Film
Jenny Seagrove starred alongside Rupert Everett in the Academy Award-winning short film A Shocking Accident (1982), directed by James Scott. Her first major film appearance was in Local Hero (1983) in which she played a mysterious environmentalist with webbed feet.
Roles in a number of films including Savage Islands (1983) opposite Tommy Lee Jones, and Appointment with Death (1988) followed.
One of her lead starring roles was in The Guardian (1990), directed by William Friedkin, in which she played an evil babysitter.
In 2017, she played the lead role in Another Mother's Son, starring as Louisa Gould, a member of the Channel Islands resistance movement during World War II, who famously sheltered an escaped Russian slave worker in Jersey and was later gassed to death in 1945 at Ravensbrück concentration camp.
(c) Television
Seagrove first came to mass public attention in the 10-episode series of the BBC production Diana (1984) adapted from an R. F. Delderfield novel, in which she played the title role as the adult Diana Gaylord-Sutton (the child having been played in the first two episodes by Patsy Kensit).
Seagrove starred in two American-produced television miniseries based upon the first novels of Barbara Taylor Bradford: as Emma Harte in A Woman of Substance (1984) and Paula Fairley in Hold the Dream (1986).
Jenny portrayed stage actress Lillie Langtry in Incident at Victoria Falls (1992), a UK made-for-television film. As the female lead, Melanie James in the film Magic Moments (1989), she starred with John Shea, who played the magician Troy Gardner with whom she falls in love.
Seagrove, along with Simon Cowell, presented Wildlife SOS (1997), a documentary series about the work of dedicated animal lovers who save injured and orphaned wild animals brought into their sanctuary.
Most of Seagrove's filmed work since 1990 has been for television. Between 2001 and 2007, she appeared as QC Jo Mills in the series Judge John Deed. She was the subject of This Is Your Life in 2003 when she was surprised by Michael Aspel.
With John Thaw she guest starred in the episode "The Sign of Four" (1987) of the series Sherlock Holmes. She also guest starred in episodes of Lewis ("The Point of Vanishing", 2009) and Identity ("Somewhere They Can't Find Me", 2010).
A few years later, she appeared in the series Endeavour (the prequel to the Inspector Morse series), in the episode "Rocket" (2013).
-- Jenny Seagrove's Personal Life
Seagrove is an animal rights activist and an advocate for deregulation of the herbal remedy industry in the United Kingdom, and promotes a vegetarian diet.
Since 1994, her partner has been the theatrical producer Bill Kenwright, chairman of Everton F.C. The couple appeared together as contestants on a charity edition of ITV1's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, winning £1,000. They also appeared together on a celebrity edition of the BBC's Pointless which aired on 3 January 2014.
Seagrove was previously married to British and Indian actor Madhav Sharma from 1984 to 1988, and then dated film director Michael Winner from 1989 until 1993.
-- Mane Chance Sanctuary
Mane Chance Sanctuary is a registered charity that provides care for rescued horses, based in Compton, Guildford. The charity aims:
"To provide sanctuary and relief from suffering
for horses, while promoting humane behaviour
to all animals and mutually beneficial relationships
with people who need them".
Mane Chance Sanctuary was established in 2011 by Seagrove, who stepped in to support a friend facing financial difficulties. Seagrove was able to secure land on Monkshatch Garden Farm, and has since grown the charity which today cares for over 30 horses using a unique system of equine welfare.
The charity's trustees include the actor Sir Timothy Ackroyd and the philanthropist Simrin Choudhrie. The chairman is James McCarthy.
In 2014, she performed a duet alongside singer Peter Howarth called The Main Chance, as part of a promotion for the Mane Chance Sanctuary.
Lonnie Donegan
Also on that day, the Number One chart hit record in the UK was 'Gambling Man' by Lonnie Donegan.
Lonnie Donegan
Also on that day, the Number One chart hit record in the UK was 'Gambling Man' by Lonnie Donegan.
Anthony James Donegan MBE, who was born in Bridgeton, Glasgow, on the 29th. April 1931, was known as Lonnie Donegan. He was a British skiffle singer, songwriter and musician, referred to as the "King of Skiffle", who influenced 1960's British pop and rock musicians.
Born in Scotland and brought up in England, Donegan began his career in the British trad jazz revival, but transitioned to skiffle in the mid-1950's, rising to prominence with a hit recording of the American folk song "Rock Island Line" which helped spur the broader UK skiffle movement.
Donegan had 31 UK top 30 hit singles, 24 were successive hits and three were number one. He was the first British male singer with two US top 10 hits.
Donegan received an Ivor Novello lifetime achievement award in 1995, and in 2000 he was awarded an MBE. Donegan was a pivotal figure in the British Invasion due to his influence in the US in the late 1950's.
-- Lonnie Donegan and Traditional Jazz
As a child growing up in the early 1940's, Donegan listened mostly to swing jazz and vocal acts, and became interested in the guitar.
Country & western and blues records, particularly by Frank Crumit and Josh White, attracted his interest, and he bought his first guitar at 14 in 1945.
He learned songs such as "Frankie and Johnny", "Puttin' on the Style", and "The House of the Rising Sun" by listening to BBC radio broadcasts. By the end of the 1940's he was playing guitar around London and visiting small jazz clubs.
Donegan first played in a major band after Chris Barber heard that he was a good banjo player and, on a train, asked him to audition. Donegan had never played the banjo, but he bought one for the audition, and succeeded more on personality than talent.
Lonnie's stint with Barber's trad jazz band was interrupted when he was called up for National Service in 1949, but while in the army at Southampton, he was the drummer in Ken Grinyer's Wolverines Jazz Band at a local pub.
A posting to Vienna brought him into contact with American troops, and access to US records and the American Forces Network radio station.
In 1952, he formed the Tony Donegan Jazzband, which played around London. On the 28th. June 1952 at the Royal Festival Hall they opened for the blues musician Lonnie Johnson.
Donegan adopted Lonnie's first name as a tribute. He used the name at a concert at the Royal Albert Hall on the 2nd. June 1952.
In 1953, after cornetist Ken Colyer was imprisoned in New Orleans over a visa problem, he returned to Great Britain and joined Chris Barber's band. The band's name was changed to Ken Colyer's Jazzmen before making their first public appearance on the 11th. April 1953 in Copenhagen.
The following day, Chris Albertson recorded Ken Colyer's Jazzmen and the Monty Sunshine Trio—Sunshine, Barber, and Donegan—for Storyville Records. These were amongst Donegan's first commercial recordings.
-- Lonnie Donegan and Skiffle
While in Ken Colyer's Jazzmen with Chris Barber, Donegan sang and played guitar and banjo in their Dixieland set.
He began playing with two other band members during the intervals, to provide what posters called a "skiffle" break, a name suggested by Ken Colyer's brother, Bill, after the Dan Burley Skiffle Group of the 1930's. In 1954 Colyer left, and the band became Chris Barber's Jazz Band.
With a washboard, tea-chest bass, and a cheap Spanish guitar, Donegan played folk and blues songs by artists such as Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie.
This proved popular, and in July 1954 he recorded a fast version of Lead Belly's "Rock Island Line", featuring a washboard but not a tea-chest bass, with "John Henry" on the B-side.
The record was a hit in 1956, but because it was a band recording, Donegan made no money beyond his session fee. It was the first debut record to go gold in the UK, and it reached the Top Ten in the United States. It also later inspired the creation of a full album, An Englishman Sings American Folk Songs, released in America on the Mercury label in the early 1960's.
The Acoustic Music organisation made this comment about Donegan's "Rock Island Line":
"It flew up the English charts. Donegan had
synthesized American southern blues with simple
acoustic instruments: acoustic guitar, washtub bass,
and washboard rhythm. The new style was called
'Skiffle'.... and referred to music from people with
little money for instruments. The new style captivated
an entire generation of post-war youth in England."
Lonnie's next single for Decca, "Diggin' My Potatoes", was recorded at a concert at the Royal Festival Hall on the 30th. October 1954.
Decca dropped Donegan thereafter, but within a month he was at the Abbey Road Studios in London recording for EMI's Columbia label. He had left the Barber band, and by the spring of 1955, had signed a recording contract with Pye.
Lonnie's next single "Lost John" reached No. 2 in the UK Singles Chart.
He appeared on television in the United States on the Perry Como Show and the Paul Winchell Show.
Returning to the UK, he recorded his debut album, Lonnie Donegan Showcase, in summer 1956, with songs by Lead Belly and Leroy Carr, plus "Ramblin' Man" and "Wabash Cannonball". The LP sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
The skiffle style encouraged amateurs, and one of many groups that followed was the Quarrymen, formed in March 1957 by John Lennon. Donegan's "Gamblin' Man"/"Puttin' On the Style" single was number one in the UK in July 1957, when Lennon first met Paul McCartney.
Lonnie's Skiffle rendition of Hank Snow's Country song "Nobody's Child" was also the inspiration for Tony Sheridan's blues version which he recorded with the Beatles as his backing band.
Donegan went on to successes such as "Cumberland Gap" and "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour on the Bedpost Overnight?", which was his biggest hit in the US.
Lonnie turned to music hall style with "My Old Man's a Dustman" in 1960. This was not well received by skiffle fans, and unsuccessful in America, but it reached number one in the UK.
Donegan's group had a flexible line-up, but was generally Denny Wright or Les Bennetts playing lead guitar and singing harmony, Micky Ashman or Pete Huggett—later Steve Jones—on upright bass, Nick Nichols—later Pete Appleby, Mark Goodwin, and Ken Rodway on drums or percussion, and Donegan playing acoustic guitar or banjo and singing the lead.
His last hit single on the UK chart was his cover version of "Pick a Bale of Cotton." Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, his fall from the chart coincided with the rise of The Beatles and the other beat music performers whom he inspired.
-- Lonnie Donegan's Later Career
Donegan recorded sporadically throughout the 1960's, including sessions at Hickory Records in Nashville with Charlie McCoy, Floyd Cramer, and the Jordanaires. After 1964 he was a record producer at Pye Records. Justin Hayward was one of the artists with whom he worked.
Donegan was not popular through the late 1960's and 1970's (although his "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" was recorded by Tom Jones in 1967 and Elvis Presley in 1976), and he began to play the American cabaret circuit.
A departure from his normal style was a cappella recording of "The Party's Over". Capella means a purely vocal recording with no musical backing.
Donegan reunited with the original Chris Barber band for a concert in Croydon in June 1975. A bomb scare meant that the recording had to be finished in the studio, after an impromptu concert in the car park. The release was titled The Great Re-Union Album.
He collaborated with Rory Gallagher on several songs, notably "Rock Island Line" with Gallagher performing most of the elaborate guitar work.
Lonnie had his first heart attack in 1976 while in the United States, necessitating quadruple bypass surgery. He returned to prominence in 1978 when he recorded his early songs with Rory Gallagher, Ringo Starr, Elton John, and Brian May. The album was called Putting on the Style.
A follow-up featuring Albert Lee saw Donegan in less familiar country and western vein.
By 1980, he was making regular concert appearances again, and another album with Barber followed. In 1983, Donegan toured with Billie Jo Spears, and in 1984 he made his theatrical debut in a revival of the 1920 musical Mr Cinders.
More concert tours followed, with a move from Florida to Spain. In 1992 Lonnie had further bypass surgery following another heart attack.
In 1994, the Chris Barber band celebrated 40 years with a tour with both bands. Pat Halcox was still on trumpet (a position he retained until July 2008).
Donegan had a late renaissance when in 2000 he appeared on Van Morrison's album The Skiffle Sessions – Live in Belfast 1998, an acclaimed album featuring him singing with Morrison and Chris Barber, with a guest appearance by Dr John.
Donegan also played at the Glastonbury Festival in 1999, and was made an MBE in 2000.
Donegan also appeared at Fairport Convention's annual music festival on the 9th. August 2001. His final CD was This Yere de Story.
-- Peter Donegan
Peter Donegan started touring as his father's pianist when he was aged 18. In 2019, Peter appeared on the show The Voice as a contestant, and dueted with Tom Jones with a song Lonnie had written for Tom, "I'll Never Fall in Love Again". Anthony Donegan also performs under the name, Lonnie Donegan Jr.
-- Lonnie Donegan's Private Life and Death
Donegan was the son of an Irish mother (Mary Josephine Deighan) and a Scots father (Peter John Donegan), a professional violinist who had played with the Scottish National Orchestra.
In 1933, when Donegan was aged 2, the family moved to East Ham in Essex. Donegan was evacuated to Cheshire to escape the Blitz in the Second World War, and attended St. Ambrose College in Hale Barns. He lived for a while on Chiswick Mall in Middlesex.
Donegan married three times. He had two daughters (Fiona and Corrina) with his first wife, Maureen Tyler (divorced 1962), a son and a daughter (Anthony and Juanita) with his second wife, Jill Westlake (divorced 1971), and three sons (Peter, David and Andrew) with his third wife, Sharon whom he married in 1977.
Lonnie Donegan died on the 3rd. November 2002, aged 71, after having a heart attack in Market Deeping, Lincolnshire mid-way through a UK tour. He died before he was due to perform at a memorial concert for George Harrison with the Rolling Stones.
-- The Legacy of Lonnie Donegan
Mark Knopfler released a tribute to Lonnie Donegan titled "Donegan's Gone" on his 2004 album, Shangri-La, and said that Lonnie was one of his greatest influences.
Donegan's music formed a musical starring his two sons. It was called Lonnie D – the musical took its name from the Chas & Dave tribute song which started the show.
Subsequently, Peter Donegan formed a band to perform his father's material, and has since linked with his father's band from the last 30 years with newcomer Eddie Masters on bass.
They made an album together in 2009 titled Here We Go Again. Lonnie Donegan's eldest son, Anthony, also formed his own band, as Lonnie Donegan Junior, who also performed "World Cup Willie" for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
On his album A Beach Full of Shells, Al Stewart paid tribute to Donegan in the song "Katherine of Oregon". In "Class of '58" he describes a British entertainer who is either Donegan or a composite including him.
In a 2023 video interview with Steve Houk, Al Stewart stated:
"'Rock Island Line' is a record that completely
changed the complexion of English society,
and changed my life and everybody else's".
Peter Sellers recorded Puttin' on the Smile featuring "Lenny Goonagain", who travels to the "Deep South" of Brighton and finds an "obscure folk song hidden at the top of the American hit parade", re-records it and reaches number one in the UK.
David Letterman pretended to try to remember Jimmy Fallon's name during the Tonight Show conflict between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien, calling Fallon "Lonnie Donegan."
In the 2019 movie Judy, the actor John Dagleish portrays Lonnie Donegan, who replaces an ill Judy Garland. He is shown in the (entirely fictional) final scene generously allowing her to make one last appearance on stage.
-- Quotations Relating to Lonnie Donegan
"He was the first person we had heard of from
Britain to get to the coveted No. 1 in the charts,
and we studied his records avidly. We all bought
guitars to be in a skiffle group. He was the man."
– Paul McCartney
"He really was at the very cornerstone of English
blues and rock."
– Brian May.
"I wanted to be Elvis Presley when I grew up,
I knew that. But the man who really made me
feel like I could actually go out and do it was
a chap by the name of Lonnie Donegan."
– Roger Daltrey
"Remember, Lonnie Donegan started it
for you."
– Jack White's acceptance speech at
the Brit Awards.
-- Final Thoughts From Lonnie Donegan
"I'm trying to sing acceptable folk music. I want to
widen the audience beyond the artsy-craftsy crowd
and the pseudo intellectuals–but without distorting
the music itself." NME – June 1956
"You know in my little span of life I've come across
such a sea of bigotries and prejudices. I get so fed
up with it now. I feel I have to do something about it."
- BBC Panorama
"In Britain, we were separated from our folk music
tradition centuries ago, and were imbued with the
idea that music was for the upper classes. You had
to be very clever to play music. When I came along
with the old three chords, people began to think
that if I could do it, so could they. It was the
reintroduction of the folk music bridge which did
that." – Interview, 2002.
Nestlé Research Center studies behaviour to understand drivers of pleasure and healthy food choices.
22 February 2015. Stoneleigh Road N17.
In my opinion, our local street cleaners - working for Veolia - do a good job; collecting and bagging waste in the company's purple bags.
Which are supposed to be collected reasonably quickly.
But while the "official" bags await collection, they act like a "magnet" - tacitly encouraging a few people to add their own waste bags to the pile.
This is a unique behaviour of this species I observed after a long time, for which I had no idea before! It seemed to me like a kind of mating rituals. I waste not my time to record this event. I remained scared lest they get disturbed, and thereby I knew that I was breaking some basic ethics of a nature lover. The whole event went for 20 minutes or so, and I recorded only a fraction of this whole event.
My sweet water aquariums are always my wonderful windows to underwater nature. These are of my amazing micro-nature study and I spend hours and hours to experience and document fascinating behaviour of fishes and other creatures, plants, and even macroscopic members of a micro ecosystem under various conditions. Sometimes I study activities of minute creatures at night under low light conditions when all the fishes sleep. My hobby educates me every single moment I observe so close to them. I enjoy beauties of life everyday from so close, and they are my immense source of energies to stay happy.
I think this is a Warbler, possibly an Audubon Warbler, getting at food on the underside of this rock formation.
Clay nest pot of heath potter wasp ( Eumenes coarctatus) on gorse. Dorset, UK.
The female lays a single egg in each pot and supplies it with paralysed caterpillars before sealing the entrance.
Models: Palvi Sharma & Sandy M
Makeup: Simran Sagoo - Hair Stylist & Make Up Artist
Jewellery: Accessoreez Bazaar
Outfits: Onitaa - The Essence of Asia Couture
Showing aggressive behaviour after close-approach for check-up. On Codfish Island / Whenua Hou, New Zealand.
Tried to take a picture of a really pretty Robin in a tree, right when I took the pic it took flight. For a minute I was annoyed at how not clear the image is, but then I realized I had captured a pretty awesome moment!
Most Western tourism theorists agree that tourism is about seeing. People go to places to gaze (Urry, 2002) at images (Boorstin). Even the most semiotic of analyses (MacCannell, Culler) has (Western) tourists go to sites where they apply "markers" (guidebooks, signs, labels) to sights. Very occasionally MacCannell notes, such in the case of a piece of moonrock, the labels maybe of more interest than the sights themselves.
The Japanese have been going to see markers since time immemorial. The author of Japan most famous travellogue - The Narrow Road to the Deep North - went to see "Ruins of Identity" (Hudson) Matsuo Basho, places were once great things happened but where now there is no trace even of ruins, only the markers (such as a commemorative stone) remains. Basho wrote a poem and wept. This trope is continued in other Japanese travellogues, and tourism behaviour, which is often described as being "nostalgic".
This "nostalgia" is sometimes thought to be a reaction to Westernisation, but it has clearly been going on for a lot longer. The Japanese have been waxing lyrical about ruins, since the beginning of recorded time. This practice originates in Shinto. Shinto shrines and visiting them - the central praxis of the Shinto religion - are themselves ruins, markers to events that, supposedly, took place in the time of the gods.
The first Tourist attraction that Matsuo Basho visitied Muro no Yashima, is a shrine to the a god that gave birth to one of the (divine) emperial ancestors in a doorless room (Muro) which was on fire. It has since been traditional to use the word "smoke" (kemuri) in poems about that location.
The Japanese worship markers. In Japan the sign has fully present and evident corporeality.
I thought at first that the Japanese were going to names to provide the sights, the images. In these days of television, sight is as portable as information. While (as described below) Westerners are inclinded to believe in the spooky immateriality of the sign (used as they are to talking to themselves in the "silence" of their minds) so the thought of travelling to a sign is probably not very attractive. Signs are everywhere and no-where. Signs are within. We travel to see "it" that thing out there "with our own eyes".
But for the Japanese signs have to be transported. The first of these, the Mirror of the sungodess was transported from heaven, to be the marker of the most important deity. The imperial ancestors then distributed mirrors to the regional rulers and some of these were enshrined. Subsequently Japanese gods have been be stamping their namess on pieces of paper and being transported all around the country to be enshrined far and wide.
The Japanese do not travel for sights but for markers and since markers are portable, then one might think that it would be the Japanese that might stay at home. Why don't they set up a marker saying Paris and visit it instead? This is indeed what they do. As Hendry points out, throughout Japan there are markers to places abroad, Spanish towns, shakespeare's birthplace "more authentic than the original!" (Hendry's exclamation mark). If the marker has been transported, and the sights have been provided, then the Japanese are happy to visit that transported marker instead, or in preference to the original. "Foriegn villages" (gaikoku mura) have a tremendous history streatching back as far as their have been shrines but more recently, again, the first tourist attraction that Matsuo Basho visited, as well as being associated with the actions of the gods, was also "the shrine of seven islands." In the grounds of the Muro no Yashiam (Room of Seven Islands) shrine there are miniature version of eight other shrines all around the country (in those days abroad). In other words, Basho's first destination of call was a "foriegn village." Likewise as Vaporis elucidates the most popular site in the Tourism City which was Edo (the place which all feudal lords had to travell to, the place with the most famous sites and still today the most visited place in Japan: Tokto) was Rakan-ji a temple in which all of the 88 buddha statues of a famous pilgrimage were collected to gether. As if going to an international village, by going to that one temple, the Japanese were able to feel that they had completed a pilgrimage in the afternoon. The 88 stop pilgrimage has itself been copied into many smaller, piligrimages all around Japan, sometimes at a single temple, including at my village of Aio Futajima. In sort of nested copying, the copied 88 sites of the larger pilgrimage are themselves copied to one of the temples where again, one can complete the pilgrimage at one visit.
The Japanese are also fond of post-tourism via the use of guildebooks and maps, which are like super-minature "foreign villages."
Taking a deconstructive turn, I associate the Western practice of going to see sights, such as Frenchyness and proclaiming them Frenchy, with the ongoing efforts of Western philosophers to promote dualism (Derrida). Derrida argues that the dualisms for mind and body, or thinking matter and extendend matter, locutionary and illoluctionary acts, speech and writing, etc, are all designed to purify the habit of listening to oneself speak, to frame this habit as thinking. As other deconstructive criticism has argued, the creation of dualities does not only take place at the Philosophers' desk but also in pictorial art, literature, mythology (Brenkman) and society. If the philosophers are interesting it is because they give us clues of to the tactics by which dualities can be preserved. One of the most recent such tactics is that provided by Jackson in his papers regarding Mary in a black and white room.
Mary grows up in a black and white room. She sees the world through black and white monitors. She knows everything there is to know, physically, about the world except she has never seen colour. When she leaves here room and sees some red flowers, she is (we are persuaded) surprised. "Wow, so that is what red is." This demonstrates to somethat there is something non-physical about the world. Even if one has all the data, all the information, all the language about the world, there is something about the sights, the seeing, the images, that makes us go wow, and proves that the world is not only physical. This thought experiment persuades some of duality.
Tourists are all Mary. They go in search of Frenchiness and in a mass trancendental meditation, they see Frenchiness, the niagra falls, and are assued that there there is a world out there, and a private world in here.
But what of the Japanese? The seem to be going to see the marker, the sign saying "This is red." I had thought perhaps they they then provide the sight from their imagination to go with it. I.e. we go to sights to mark them, Japanese go to markers to site them. But this is not entirely the case. Yes, there is some "image provision" going on on the part of the tourists. Someone intending to visit the site of the famous duel between Miyamto Musashi and XYZ in the straits of Kanmon -another completely empty ruin of a tourist attraction - said that the the place brought up many images (omoi wo haseru). Someone taking a super miniature foreign village style-tour aroud a map of Edo said that just looking at the map brought back "the mental image of the Edo capital" (omokage wo shinobaseta).
But that is not what is going on in Japanese tourism as I found out this weekend. Before writing about Japanese tourism I thought it would be a good idea to do some, so I visited some of the J-Tourism style ruins in my local village and was powerfully impressed.
In the local town there is a ruin of an ancient governmental site from about 1200 years ago. All that remains is a field and some commemorative stones. There are benches lined up beneath the trees at one side of the site, in front of the empty field with some "markers" explaining what used to be in the field. Imaging the tourists rathe than the ancient town hall, I could not but laugh out loud.
In my village of Aio, there are ten tourist attractions, two of which are empty. One is to the early twentieth century European style Japanese painter Kobayashi Wasaku. There is a bust. Two commerotive stones and an empty area of tarmac. And finally and most movingly, close to our beach house, on the road on the way there is the site of the birthplace of one of the Choushu Five, Yamao Youzou a young revolutionary, who was sent to study in my hometown, London, towards the end of the nineteenth century. He studied engineering in London and Scotland and came back to Japan to lead the Westernization of its technology education, founding what is now the engineering department of the University of Tokyo. At the site of his birth place there is a large black stone upon which there is a poem.
There is a poem which goes something like
At the end of a long journey
Which is the heart
Is Japan
はるかなる心のすえはやまとなる
Nothing beside remains. Laughing at myself all the while, I had a Matsuo Basho momement and cried. It was not that I imagined the figure of Mr. Yamao but, as was suggested to the readers of a modern guide to Basho's work, he travelled all over Japan to the sites visited by the ancient so as too "commute with their hearts" (kokoro wo kayowaseru) and that we by visiting the same sites, or just reading the guide book can do the same through the filter of Basho. By the same logic, can you feel my heart in the above photo?
The attraction of the small hillock next to a stone surrounded by bamboo it was not the sights, or the marker, nor the tourists gaze (my gaze), but the gaze of Mr. Yamao who had also stood there well before setting off to London, and back to change the world. I felt I saw the world through Mr. Yamao's eyes.
Had I imagined things, then I might have attempted to keep up the dualism between name and vision. On the contrary however this desination seemed to have been designed to make me feel the gaze of another, together. I will have to use Kitayama Osamu's gazing together theory too.
A distant shot but at least with the action spread out you don't require such a drastic crop.
St Aidan's Nature Park.
Male Buffalo beetles use their wings to move between populations and search out females.
Video by Chris Boccia
Ebony Jewelwing (Calopteryx maculata) female ovipositing while male hover-guarding nearby.
Location not recorded. :-(
July 3, 1992.
Scanned from original (underexposed) Kodachrome 64 transparency
*NOTE: Since posting this image, I've taken technically superior digital photographs of this hover-guarding behaviour here:
www.flickr.com/photos/74102791@N05/18622073071/
www.flickr.com/photos/74102791@N05/18617846475/
I include this photo not for its photographic excellence, but because it demonstrates some very cool natural history--the way Ebony Jewelwings lay their eggs.
Males "hover-guard" the female they've mated with, while they oviposit, chasing away all potential rivals. This ensures that his genes safely make it to the next generation.
Other species or families of damselfly remain joined (in tandem) while the female oviposits. Here are some examples of that behaviour...
www.flickr.com/photos/74102791@N05/7468510762
www.flickr.com/photos/74102791@N05/7475360860
www.flickr.com/photos/74102791@N05/7475470762
Male damselflies are pretty devious when it comes to sex. The male damselfly's penis has a little scooping device. When they mate, they can actually clear out the previous male's sperm and replace it with their own. You can see why it would be advantageous to guard their mate and supervise her safe delivery of his progeny.
Photographs, Text and Videos ©Jay Cossey, PhotographsFromNature.com (PFN)
All rights reserved. Contact: PhotographsFromNature@gmail.com
My second book, "Familiar Butterflies of Indiana and their Natural History" is now available!
Please check out my first book, "Southern Ontario Butterflies and their Natural History". :-)
www.flickr.com/photos/74102791@N05/32381163732/
My website: www.PhotographsFromNature.com
EXPLORE FEB 2 2009
Human vision is untrustworthy, subjective and selective. Camera vision is total and non – objective. - Andreas Feininger,