Shameful memories

 

From Memorial Park

 Some years ago my brother, his wife and myself visited the The Shot at Dawn Memorial in Staffordshire. It is a remarkably poignant and tragic place. The Memorial is in memory of the 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers executed for cowardice and desertion during the Great War (World War I).  It portrays a British soldier blindfolded and tied to a stake in anticipation of his imminent execution by firing squad.

 

From Memorial Park

 

From Memorial Park

 It was modelled on the likeness of 17-year-old Private Herbert Burden, who lied about his age in order to enlist in the forces and was later shot for desertion. It is surrounded by a semi-circle of stakes on which are listed the names of every soldier executed under similar circumstances. All were teenagers or in their early twenties. Most were privates. 

From Memorial Park

 Few, if any, were guilty of any crime. Most of those executed were suffering from shell shock and/or total exhaustion after months in the trenches. Their names were subsequently omitted from war memorials and their relatives never received military pensions. The circumstances surrounding these shameful British military executions were kept secret for 75 years. 

From Memorial Park

 Britain was not alone in executing its own soldiers. The French are thought to have killed about 600, the Germans shot 48 of their own men, and the Belgians 13. In 2001, 23 executed Canadians were posthumously honoured by their government, and five troops killed by New Zealand's military command also recently won a pardon. No American or Australian soldiers were executed. 

From Memorial Park

 In 1997, Tony Blair's government announced a plan for granting posthumous pardons after individual cases had been reviewed by the Ministry of Defence but it was not until 2006 that the Labour government announced its intention to pardon all piteous 306 men who were executed for quasi-military offences. 

From Memorial Park

Web references: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_Act_2006

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_at_Dawn_Memorial

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/britain_wwone/shot_at_dawn_04.shtml

http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=554

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/tragic-statue-for-the-great-wars-executed-soldiers-675036.html

http://www.janpieterchielens.be/shotatdawn/index.html

A Rosedale Vignette

 Our new house is in the Rosedale neighbourhood of Austin, about five miles of the downtown.  

Rosedale

 In the 1860's, the neighbourhood was primarily farm and dairy land. The majority of the homes in Rosedale were built during the 1930s and 1940s and many of these have now been renovated and enlarged. It’s an eclectic neighbourhood and I have observed how remarkably friendly everybody seems to be while outside walking, gardening or just hanging-out. This is a typical renovated Rosedale house:

 

From Rosedale

 Some take gardening really seriously: 

From Rosedale

 Quirky yard art appears to be popular: 

From Rosedale

 

From Rosedale

 The politics seem sound: 

From Rosedale

 And activism is alive and well: 

From Rosedale

 

Shoal Creek 

Shoal Creek runs from north to south through Rosedale and eventually empties into Lady Bird Lake (formerly Town Lake). How benign it looks here:

 

From Rosedale

 The "Memorial Day Flood" of May 1981 in which 13 people drowned hit Shoal Creek particularly hard. Some areas received over 10 inches of rain in four hours. The Creek normally flows at 90 gallons per minute, but peaked during this flood at 6 million gallons per minute. “At one point, witnesses report a 15-20 foot wall of water. Not just the creek coming out of its banks, actually a wall of water moving down Shoal Creek to Town Lake” The water receded in four hours but damages were subsequently estimated at $36 million. Since then the City has spent oodles of dollars in flood control engineering which is hopefully effective. In fact there is another, smaller creek (Hancock Creek) that joins Shoal Creek in Rosedale:

 

From Rosedale

 Our new home on Great Oaks Parkway is outside the flood zone and in fact, the natural bed of the creek is quite deep there so we have about eighty feet or so of critical elevation. I studied the USGS topo map very carefully!

 Moore-Hancock Farmstead 

These now-restored log structures represent a rare surviving example of local pioneer farmstead architecture, and right in the middle of Rosedale! Martin Moore and his wife, Elizabeth Ann, moved to a farm north of town in about 1850. Their 521-acre farm, which included this property, was inherited by Elizabeth in 1846 and the buildings date from about this time.

 

From Rosedale

 

In 1866 Elizabeth sold the homestead to John Hancock, a prominent local judicial and political figure. Although Hancock never lived on the farm, it is believed that his former slave, Orange, and his family lived here in the late 1860s.

 

From Rosedale

 Great Oaks Parkway

 Our new home is on Great Oaks Parkway which was zoned for development by Francis Conley in March 1953. I think our house was built in 1957. It’s a wide street with large oak trees so the street is aptly named.

 

From Rosedale

It is a rather homogenous street by Rosedale standards, for better or worse.  After we do all the cosmetic work that we plan, I shall post photos on the blog but it will be several months away. 

Cycling

 Austin is a relatively bike-friendly city and there are many opportunities for urban rides.

 

From Rosedale

 We will be living close to Shoal Creek Boulevard which has wide bike lanes although parking is sadly allowed in them which can cause a major hazard by forcing riders out into the traffic. The latest City ordnances usually either ban parking in bicycle lanes or, where possible, stripe the roads to allow both.

 

From Rosedale

 To the south, the Boulevard connects to the Shoal Creek bicycle trail that allows safe passage all the way into the city and to the Lake. 

Homage to Pooh

Some time ago, Sharon and I went to New York with two of our friends, Steve & Patti Hale. We did all the Manhattan stuff but on one day, it became apparent that we all wanted to “do our own thing” and so we split up for a morning, with plans to reunite for lunch. 

For me, the Mission was quite clear. This was one of the reasons I wanted to come to New York. I needed to pay homage. 

In 1921, a teddy bear from Harrod's in London was given to Christopher Robin Milne on his first birthday. He was known as Edward Bear.  Later to be known as Winnie the Pooh, the world’s most famous bear gave rise to some of the most magical children’s’ stories ever written even though Shepard’s drawings of Pooh were not inspired by Pooh but by Growler, the bear belonging to the artist's son. 

In the 1940s, Pooh’s author, A.A. Milne “donated” Pooh and his friends (Eeyore, Piglet, Kanga and Tigger) to the American publisher, E.P. Dutton. They were subsequently passed on to the New York Public Library in 1988. 

And there they were. Tucked away on the third floor, in an unassuming glass cage.  But surely  …. wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.  The Library was hardly the spiritual resting place that Pooh deserves.  They have recently moved from there to the History and Social Science Library and one can only hope that their new home is more appropriate. 

From Pooh

 Pooh was the witty one and clearly did have a brain.  I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me. It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?” 

From Pooh

 Piglet is always coming up with excuses for being a total wuss.  It is awfully hard to be b-b-brave, when you're only a Very Small Animal. 

From Pooh

 Eeyore was an intellectual snob as well as being a miserable so-and-so.  To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks. 

From Pooh

Tigger just enjoyed himself.  Piglet was still a little anxious about Tigger, who was a very Bouncy Animal, with a way of saying How-do-you-do, which always left your ears full of sand, even after Kanga had said "Gently, Tigger dear," and had helped you up again. 

From Pooh

 Kanga was the stereotypical mother and interestingly, was the only female character in all the books that A.A. Milne ever wrote. 

From Pooh

 And so the trip to New York was complete. 

From Pooh

 Sharon’s homage was to a stringed instrument shop on Staten Island …. and, it might be added, I went with her. Perhaps to ensure that her credit card stayed firmly in her purse. But that’s another story.

 

Wordplay, how it sounds or what it means

Being married to a woman from Eastern Kentucky and living in the States on and off for 25 years or so, has given rise to innumerable etymological misunderstandings, most of them humorous.

For example, considerable mirth derives from my pronunciation of porn and pawn which are indistinguishable from one another and are therefore homophones (words that are pronounced the same as another but differing in meaning, whether spelled the same way or not). I can barely tell the difference even when I look both up on http://www.dictionary.com/ and listen to their “official” US pronunciation.

The word that gave me the impetus to write this blog entry is charnel and, as importantly, its pronunciation. It is used by Sharon’s family to mean “smells awful” and the dictionary definition is even more yucky: “gruesomely indicative of death or the dead; a charnel smell came from the chest filled with dead men's bones, the sepulchral darkness of the catacombs". Their pronunciation is more like ch’earn and seems to bear little resemblance to its spelling. Thanks to Tom Hall for helping me identify the word.

Early on in our relationship, I learned of Sharon’s Uncle Horace and Aunt Iris tho’ I never met either. However it took me a while to figure out who they were as the Appalachian pronunciations are Uncle Harse and Aunt Arse. The latter would be oh-so-rude in British English.

Talking about a brolly was bad enough but once in a while I used the synonym gamp. Of course they both mean umbrella but I had to admit that the latter would be seldom used in England these days and then only be the older generation and I guess that now includes me! And the original of the word is? Answer below.

When discussing a fellow bike rider some years ago, a group of us decided that he was unquestionably a misogynist. And then the question came up: what is the antonym and the opposite of misogynist? Answers below but with a caveat (thanks to Dave Berry for helping with this one).

Sharon and I argued about the word Calvary (the hill on which the crucifixion took place) and cavalry (soldiers mounted on horseback). She claimed that both words are interchangeable (synonyms) in American English. I argued that they were totally distinct and separate words. The words are often confused in spelling and/or pronunciation. What is the noun that would describe this? Answer below. More importantly, I have to confess that, at the time, we did find an online dictionary that supported her claim. However, more recently, both http://www.dictionary.com/ and http://www.merriam-webster.com/ would put me firmly in the right and I now revert to my original position.

When I was growing up, there was a group of lads (and some grown men but rarely lasses) who, usually on Saturday mornings, pursued the unfathomable passion of train spotting. These individuals typically wore anoraks, a parka-like outer garment. The word anorak then came to mean someone who pursues such an interest to an extent that was incomprehensible to most of the rest of humanity. And I have to confess that the description has been applied to me on two separate occasions; once regarding my infatuation for genealogy and the other for all things-cycling. No doubt somebody will say that this blog entry is pretty anorak in of itself.

Answers:

1) Antonym of misogynist = misandrist (hater of men). Actually is this not a gender-equivalent rather than an antonym? Is there a word for such a gender-equivalent?
2) Opposite of misogynist = philogynist (lover of women)
3) Origin of gamp = after the umbrella of Mrs. Sarah Gamp in Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit .
4) The mistaken transposition of sounds or syllables = metathesis.

Obama 2008

In 1961, John F. Kennedy inspired the American people to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Thereafter, if any employee at NASA was asked what their job was, the answer was easy …. “I am putting a man on the moon”. And so it was with the campaigning effort, the goal was crystal clear and equally brief: to put Obama in the White House.

Our small contribution with the canvassing trip to Green County in the battleground state of Missouri was an equally inspirational experience. Our 45-person bus group was perhaps the most diverse we have been involved with since Sharon & I returned to the States almost ten years ago. Diverse by gender, race, age and country of origin. Diverse, that is, in all ways other than politically. And I have to say that I think a majority seemed to be from backgrounds in education, social work, the arts and philanthropy.

From Election 08

The five-day commitment and the 13-hour bus rides each way were worth it, even though it appears that Missouri will be eventually lost by the very narrowest of margins. Talking about the energy of a group is admittedly a well-worn cliché but that was the reality. The group seemed tireless except, perhaps on the return trip but even then the adrenalin ran high. We had boarded the bus on Friday as strangers and disembarked on Wednesday as friends.

From Election 08

We were all distributed with host families around Springfield. Our gracious hosts, Doug and Barbara, were so generous and we are grateful to them. They have a wonderful house .......

From Election 08

......... and are clearly Halloween aficionados ............

From Election 08

I think that all of us had similar experiences with the warmth and hospitality of our new Springfield friends who opened up their houses to strangers.

And then there was the huge added bonus ….. Obama was to attend a rally on Saturday night and we were invited to the volunteer enclosure so we were three rows away from the podium.

From Election 08

From Election 08

Sharon and I had seen them both twice before in San Antonio but that in no way diminished the excitement of another rally so close to polling day.

From Election 08

From Election 08

The canvassing itself provided us with a curious vignette on far-right evangelical communities in the mid-West. Most were in extreme McCain country and it was sometimes rather unnerving to be wandering around some very conservative areas wearing Democratic attire and bedecked with multiple Obama pins.

From Election 08

Our job was no longer conveying The Message but rather simply “getting out the vote” ….. ensuring that both committed and Democratic-leaning registered voters were planning to be there on Tuesday 4th. Missouri is not a state that offers early voting and so it all came down to that one day. The local campaign headquarters had done a good job of providing us with databases that identified the likely Obama voters but the data were inevitably not perfect and there were instances where we unknowingly approached hard-line Republicans, asking them for support.

In these cases the response was undoubtedly very cool but generally not outwardly hostile. In other situations I was rather glad to be leaving the property. One volunteer was branded as a Satanist, Sharon was virtually accused of being a baby-killer and in another instance I was I was told to get the hell back to Chicago, Obama’s home state. Usually, however, the response we got from the people on our list was positive and in some instances quite ecstatic. It rather blew their minds that we had come all the way from Texas to do this.

From Election 08

On occasions, the only resident of a household on our database was a young person, usually late teens or early twenties, the implication clearly being that his or her parents were McCain supporters. In all these situations, it was a parent that answered the door and in no case was I allowed to talk to the young Democratic voter. This also happened with a few redneck husbands who made it quite clear that their wives were “unavailable”. In one sad instance, an 86 year-old woman was clearly being browbeaten by her family and I am convinced by the look in her eyes that she would have welcomed an opportunity to talk to me. She did not get a chance and I wonder if she was able to even get to a polling station on Election Day. I doubt it.

Election day evening found us at the Clarion Hotel watching events unfold on the three huge screens.

From Election 08

The celebration became inevitably rather wild and all were pretty giddy when it became clear that Obama was indeed President-Elect.

From Election 08

From Election 08

From Election 08

Sharon and I were somewhat restrained in that we were in bed before 1 am. I suspect that some of our group barely made it to bed that night, if at all.

In Texas, Obama won Bexar (San Antonio; 52%), Travis (Austin; 64%), Dallas (58%), Harris (Houston; 51%), El Paso (66%) and Presidido (The Valley, 71%). So we can surely, before too long .....

From Election 08

My global experiences that lead up to Election 08

In the late 1960s, at the start of my international career, I was posted to the Trucial States as they began the process of transition to become the United Arab Emirates under the leadership of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

I was subsequently posted to Nigeria after the end of the Biafran war of independence in 1970 which resulted in the downfall of General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu.

A decade later, in 1981, I was living in Egypt when President Muhammad Anwar Al Sadat was assassinated and Muhammad Hosni Mubarak took his place.

In Somalia, while Sharon and I were living there, the civil war broke out in 1989 that lead to the exile of President Mohamed Siad Barre and the collapse into the anarchy that prevails to this day.

In China, the doyen Deng Xiaoping died and the rise of the next generation of leaders was assured without one vote by the people being cast. We were there.

Finally, in Nigeria in 1998, we witnessed the transition of power back to a civilian government following the mysterious death of General Sani Abacha, said by the British High Commissioner, perhaps only partly in jest, to be from an overdose of Viagra.

In June 2007 I became eligible to vote in the United States presidential election and the other day I exercised that right. Hopefully I shall bear witness to another government change but this time through a democratic process.

And on Friday, Sharon and I will be bussed to Springfield, Missouri for five days to campaign in one of the five remaining swing states. Ten-hour overnight bus journeys and days of pounding the sidewalks will certainly not be any picnic but we can consider ourselves truly part of this democratic process and, perhaps, privileged to be a small part of history in the making.

Watch this space to see how we get on !!!!

p.s. ……. given that my presence in particular countries has coincided with the demise of no less than four heads of state, I am surprised that the CIA did not manipulate my being sent to North Korea, Libya or Cuba.