Lush Spring
Helen Frankenthaler
18.3.05
Spring
Yasu Eguchi
Neun junge Damen in Frühlingslandschaft
Wilhelm Menzler
Galerie Koller
International Auctioneers
13.3.05
Boynton links I like, who in turn links Emily Bowling, photographer.
Bowling's biography mentions her restoring stained glass at WHITEWAY & WALDRON Ltd, purveyors of religious antiques, who have now become Graham Kirkland, "A real shop in London full of religious antiques and second hand church items". Under miscellaneous they proffer such desirables as this lectern
this sanctuary lamp
this relic - "'From the column of the Flagellation of Jesus Christ'. No cert."
also these bells, rung by the altar boy at key moments during the Catholic Mass, one of whom I was myself, in the past.
The ones I learned to ring were four in number, rather than three as here, and all of a golden hue.
I was very good at ringing them.
Also W&W/GK offer this tabor for sale.
Tabor being an unfamiliar term, outside the percussive, I launched the google bar for images thereof and discovered
this image upon which I refuse to comment.
Also this site of postcards from early 19th c. McHenry Co. Illinois.
The Tabor house therein is evocative, I've lived in more than one like it, and my dreams hold townsful.
This google-returned image, Baby Doe's cabin, piqued my interest, and the site it led to as well.
Baby Doe, at her cabin.
And led to the following excerpts:
When Horace built a palatial mansion in Denver, she refused to live upstairs in the master bedroom, instead preferring the servants quarters next to the kitchen. She also kept a cow tethered to the front door, which she insisted on milking herself. Horace, who by then had been made the Lieutenant Governor of the state, was embarrassed. He wanted to live in a style befitting his station, but Augusta only scoffed at such statements.
[...]
With all the tension at home, Tabor's eyes began to stray. His newfound wealth and power brought him much attention, and he loved to spend money on beautiful women and lavish them with gifts. In a chance meeting at the old "Saddle Rock Cafe" in 1880, the "Silver King", for which he was by then known, met the beautiful Elizabeth McCourt "Baby" Doe, and both of their lives would change forever
[...]
On the lawn outside the mansion, a hundred peacocks strutted and the landscape was adorned with more controversial decorations, which included some nude statues that so further offended Baby's highly proper female neighbors. In response, the highly spirited Baby Doe had her dressmaker come in and make dresses for the statues.
[...]
The fairytale ended in 1893, when the country moved to the gold standard. Silver, Horace's main holding, along with parcels of highly mortgaged property came crashing down, along with the Tabors' lifestyle. Horace, failing to listen to the advice of others and diversify, faced ruin. In the interim, and adding to the crisis, Tabor had also made a number of unsuccessful, if not unwise, investments in foreign mining ventures that failed. He lost huge amounts of money in Mexico and South America.
[...]
Still beautiful and relatively young, Baby Doe could easily have remarried. She chose, instead, to "hold on to the Matchless," continuously seeking funds to "work" it. With her two children in tow, Baby returned to Leadville and took up residence in the one-room, 12 by 16-foot structure that originally served as a tool shed at the Matchless Mine. Her elder daughter, 15-year-old Lillie, so resented the place, she boldly stated that she was leaving, and borrowing the money for the train fare from her uncle, she went to Wisconsin to live with her grandmother, ceasing all contact with her mother and sister.
[...]
Baby Doe was living in the tiny cabin only due to the generosity of the current owners of the worthless mine, where she scribbled page after page of her increasingly paranoiac and, ultimately delirious thoughts.
As years passed, Baby, with no income and unable to buy anything, would rap her feet in burlap sacks held with twine. When sick, she would doctor herself with turpentine and lard. With the help of creditors and through the kindness of her Leadville neighbors, she was supplied with the bare necessities of life.
[...]
Baby Doe's later life is represented by a worn leather satchel that sits in the corner of the room and appears in a photo taken only a few years before she died. Her most prized possession was a framed statue of the Virgin Mary, which hangs on the wall above a narrow, quilt-covered bed.
Baby Doe, who turned to religion and a sort of mysticism as time went by and her isolation grew, also used a calendar on display to keep track of the dates on which she said she communed with spirit voices.
And thus the small circle completes.
12.3.05
Between 1845 and 1850, more than a million Irish people starved to death while massive quantities of food were being exported from their country. A half million were evicted from their homes during the potato blight, and a million and a half emigrated to America, Britain and Australia, often on-board rotting, overcrowded "coffin ships". This is the story of how that immense tragedy came to pass.
[...]
In Ireland Before and After the Famine, author Cormac O’Grada documents that in 1845, a famine year in Ireland, 3,251,907 quarters (8 bushels = 1 quarter) of corn were exported from Ireland to Britain. That same year, 257,257 sheep were exported to Britain. In 1846, another famine year, 480,827 swine, and 186,483 oxen were exported to Britain.
Cecil Woodham-Smith, considered the preeminent authority on the Irish Famine, wrote in The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845-1849 that, "...no issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered relations between the two countries (England and Ireland) as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation."
"Although the potato crop failed, the country was still producing and exporting more than enough grain crops to feed the population. But that was a 'money crop' and not a 'food crop' and could not be interfered with."
According to John Mitchel, quoted by Woodham-Smith, "Ireland was actually producing sufficient food, wool and flax, to feed and clothe not nine but eighteen millions of people," yet a ship sailing into an Irish port during the famine years with a cargo of grain was "sure to meet six ships sailing out with a similar cargo."
One of the most remarkable facts about the famine period is that there was an average monthly export of food from Ireland worth 100,000 Pound Sterling. Almost throughout the five-year famine, Ireland remained a net exporter of food.
[...]
Dr. Christine Kinealy, a fellow at the University of Liverpool and the author of two scholarly texts on the Irish Famine: This Great Calamity and A Death-Dealing Famine, says that 9,992 calves were exported from Ireland to England during "Black'47", an increase of thirty-three percent from the previous year. In the twelve months following the second failure of the potato crop, 4,000 horses and ponies were exported. The export of livestock to Britain (with the exception of pigs) increased during the "famine". The export of bacon and ham increased. In total, over three million live animals were exported from Ireland between 1846-50, more than the number of people who emigrated during the famine years.
[...]
Dr. Kinealy's most recent work is documented in the spring, 1998 issue of "History Ireland". She states that almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women and children died of starvation and related diseases. The food was shipped under guard from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland: Ballina, Ballyshannon, Bantry, Dingle, Killala, Kilrush, Limerick, Sligo, Tralee and Westport.
Dr. Kinealy's research proves beyond a reasonable doubt that there was sufficient food in Ireland to prevent mass starvation, and that the food was brought through the worst famine-stricken areas on its way to England. British regiments guarded the ports and warehouses in Ireland to guarantee absentee landlords and commodity speculators their "free market" profits.
When Ireland experienced an earlier famine in 1782-83, ports were closed in order to keep home grown food for domestic consumption. Food prices were immediately reduced within Ireland. The merchants lobbied against such efforts, but their protests were over-ridden. Everyone recognized that the interests of the merchants and the distressed people were irreconcilable. In the Great Famine, that recognition was disregarded.
[...]
Charles Edward Trevelyan, the British Treasury Secretary in charge, was the civil servant most involved in Irish famine relief. He firmly believed in the economic principles of laissez-faire, or noninterference by the government. Trevelyan opposed expenditure and raising taxes, advocating self-sufficiency. He was convinced of Malthus' theory that any attempt to raise the standard of living of the poorest section of the population above subsistence level would only result in increased population which would make matters worse.
In October, 1846, Trevelyan wrote that the overpopulation of Ireland "being altogether beyond the power of man, the cure has been applied by the direct stroke of an all-wise Providence in a manner as unexpected and as unthought of as it is likely to be effectual." Two years later after perhaps a million people had died, he wrote, "The matter is awfully serious, but we are in the hands of Providence, without a possibility of averting the catastrophe if it is to happen. We can only wait the result." Later that year Trevelyan declared: "The great evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people." In 1848 Trevelyan was knighted for his services in Ireland.
The Great Irish Famine
Nebraska Department of Education
Ireland-Australia transportation database
SURNAME: GRIFFIN OTHER NAMES: CATHERINE-
AGE: 34 SEX: F ALIAS:
PLACE OF TRIAL: Dublin City TRIAL DATE: 01/06/1837
PLACE OF IMPRISONMENT: DOCUMENT DATE:
CRIME DESCRIPTION: Felony keys and money
SENTENCE: Transportation 7 yrs
SHIP: DIAMOND, 15/11/1837
Felony keys and money
Sheep stealing
Cow stealing
Being concerned in a robbery of clothes
Manslaughter
Killing sheep with intent to steal
-
SURNAME: GRIFFIN OTHER NAMES: MICHAELNational Archives of Ireland
AGE: 16 SEX: M ALIAS:
PLACE OF TRIAL: Galway City TRIAL DATE: 02/11/1852
PLACE OF IMPRISONMENT: DOCUMENT DATE:
CRIME DESCRIPTION: Cow stealing
SENTENCE: Transportation 7 yrs
SHIP:
PETITIONER: RELATIONSHIP:
DOCUMENT REFERENCES: TR 12, p 62
MICROFILM REFERENCES:
COMMENTS:
Convict died at Spike Island Gaol, Co. Cork, 06/01/1855
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Post on early French balloons and ballooning, and other things aeronautique, with many images,
moved to DB Annex,
as a gesture toward liberty, fraternity, and especially, equality
V.1 over England June 4, 1944
Post on Apaches, Geronimo, Mangas Coloradas, Cochise
moved to DB Annex, in the spirit of broader communication
10.3.05
Helen Keller FBI file post moved to DB annex
in the interest of parity
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."
Helen Keller
-
peace without victory
Now you know, and the voters of New York know, when they are in their right minds, that it is neither treasonable nor seditious to criticize any statute or law. Nor is it treasonable to agitate for the repeal of any act. We are within our constitutional rights as citizens to agitate for the abolition of conscription. Why should we give up the best things we have, freedom of speech, of the press and of assemblage and establish Kaiserism in this country while we send our armies to destroy it in Europe? I am not discussing the war, its causes, its origin, its righteousness or unrighteousness, or whether the Christian spirit is eternally opposed to it or not.Letter to Morris Hillquit New York Call, November 5, 1917
I am not opposed to war for sentimental reasons. The blood of fighting ancestors flows in my veins. I would gladly see our young men go forth to battle if I thought it was a battle for true freedom. I would gladly participate in a war that would really make the world safe for democracy. By making the world safe for democracy I do not mean simply to put down autocracy in Germany...
I do not know if your election would bring about a speedy peace. But I do know that it would encourage us to look forward to a people's peace--a peace without victory, a peace without conquests or indemnities. I would that a large vote cast for you would be a stong protest against the Prussian militarism that is taking possession of our government. It would be an unequivocal denial that New York City stands for the kind of democracy that prevails here just now, a democracy where freedom of assemblage is denied the people, a democracy where armed officials behave like thugs, forcibly dispersing meetings, burning literature and clubbing the people; a democracy where workingmen are arrested and imprisoned for exercising their right to strike, a democracy where the miners of Bisbee were torn from their homes, huddled in freight cars like cattle, flung upon a desert without food or water and left to die; a democracy where Negroes may be massacred and their property burned, as was done in East St. Louis; a democracy where lynching and child labor are tolerated, a democracy where a minister who follows the feet of the Messenger of Peace beautiful upon the earth was flogged almost to death, and the only comment of the press upon this outrage was a series of facetious remarks, and a half-concealed approval of the "hot-headed Kentuckians whose earnestness and patriotism carried them a little too far."
If I had the right to vote, I would vote for you, Mr. Hillquit, because a vote for you would be a blow at the militarism that is one of the chief bulwarks of capitalism, and the day that militarism is undermined, capitalism will fall.
Helen Keller
Written when neither she, nor any other woman in the US, could vote.
CONSISTING OF HISTORICAL AND ROMANTIC BALLADS, COLLECTED IN THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES OF SCOTLAND; WITH A FEW OF MODERN DATE, FOUNDED UPON LOCAL TRADITION.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I
The songs, to savage virtue dear,
That won of yore the public ear,
Ere Polity, sedate and sage,
Had quench'd the fires of feudal rage.
—WARTON.
1806.
TO HIS GRACE,
HENRY, DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH, &c.&c.&c.
THESE TALES, WHICH IN ELDER TIMES HAVE CELEBRATED THE PROWESS, AND CHEERED THE HALLS, OF HIS GALLANT ANCESTORS, ARE RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED
BY
HIS GRACE'S MUCH OBLIGED AND MOST HUMBLE SERVANT,
WALTER SCOTT
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Kinmont Willie:
In the following rude strains, our forefathers commemorated one of the last, and most gallant atchievements, performed upon the border. The reader will find, in the subjoined extract from Spottiswoode, a minute historical account of the exploit; which is less different from that contained in the ballad than might perhaps have been expected.
[...]
And, upon intelligence that the castle of Carlisle, wherein the prisoner was kept, was surprisable, he employed some trusty persons to take a view of the postern gate, and measure the height of the wall, which he meant to scale by ladders, and, if those failed, to break through the wall with some iron instruments, and force the gates. This done, so closely as he could, he drew together some two hundred horse, assigning the place of meeting at the tower of Morton, some ten miles from Carlisle, an hour before sun-set. With this company, passing the water of Esk, about the falling, two hours before day, he crossed Eden beneath Carlisle bridge (the water, through the rain that had fallen, being thick), and came to the Sacery, a plain under the castle. There making a little halt, at the side of a small bourn, which they call Cadage, he caused eighty of the company to light from their horses, and take the ladders, and other instruments which he had prepared, with them. He himself, accompanying them to the foot of the wall, caused the ladders to be set to it, which proving too short, he gave order to use the other instruments for opening the wall nigh the postern; and, finding the business likely to succeed, retired to the rest whom he had left on horseback, for assuring those that entered upon the castle against any eruption from the town...
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Project Gutenberg
9.3.05
Helen Keller post moved to DB Annex
for those of less rigorous bandwidth
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