Tuesday, March 31, 2009

White House News: Kitchen Garden Dug on South Lawn

The Kitchen Garden Returns to the White House

Last week First Lady Michelle Obama organized a digging party at the White House--the first step in planting a kitchen garden. A crew of twenty-six enthusiastic school children helped dig up sod so that crops such as spinach, broccoli, raspberries, and various herbs can be planted on the South Lawn. The garden's harvest will not only help feed the first family and White House guests, but also visitors to the nearby soup kitchen, Miriam's Kitchen. Not since Eleanor Roosevelt lived in the White House has a kitchen garden contributed to the daily meals of the first family.

In an interview with the New York Times, Mrs. Obama stated her purpose in planting the garden, “My hope is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”

Young people can learn more about the delicious history of White House kitchen gardens by reading Stephanie Loer's essay "White House Colonial Kitchen Gardens" in the NCBLA's art and literature anthology Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out. Our White House is available in libraries and bookstores throughout the country.

Also be sure to read A Taste of the Past: White House Kitchens, Menus, and Recipes
by Mary Brigid Barrett, which is available exclusively on ourwhitehouse.org. A Taste of the Past provides a tasty sampler of White House kitchen stories, recipes, menus, and activities for young people. You can discover what Abraham Lincoln ate at his Inaugural Luncheon and decide whether you might be tempted by President Eisenhower's personal recipe for Green Turtle Soup. (Squeamish minds BEWARE! The recipe begins, "Cut off the head from a live green turtle and drain the blood.")

For more information about Mrs. Obama's ground-breaking ceremony for the garden, visit "Ground is broken for White House 'kitchen garden'."

To learn more about Our White House, visit ourwhitehouse.org.

Our White House Named Teachers' Choices Selection

Our White House Recognized as Enjoyable for Kids

Teachers’ Choices is an annual project of the International Reading Association. Each year, teachers, reading specialists, and librarians from different regions of the United States select books for readers ages 5 to 14 to include on an annotated reading list of new books that will encourage young people to read. The Teachers' Choices project aims to select books "that kids will enjoy—and that contribute to learning across the curriculum." Books are selected from new publications donated by North American publishers. At least six teachers or librarians in each region read each book; some books are read by as many as 200 people in a single region.

The NCBLA is thrilled that Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out has been selected as one of this year's Teachers' Choices!

The complete Teachers’ Choices list of 30 titles will be announced at the IRA Conference this May and then published in the November issue of The Reading Teacher. The list will also be made available online on the IRA website, where you can also find lists of winning titles from previous years.

The Awards for Our White House Keep Coming!

Our White House has been making headlines since it was published in September 2008. An incomparable collection of essays, personal accounts, historical fiction, poetry, and a stunning array of original art, Our White House offers a multifaceted look at America's history through the prism of the White House. In addition to being named a Teachers' Choice selection, Our White House has also been awarded the following:

2009-2010 National Endowment for the Humanities We the People “Picturing America” Bookshelf Award

2009 American Library Association Notable Children’s Book for All Ages, Nonfiction

2009 National Council for Social Studies and the Children’s Book Council Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People

2009 International Reading Association Teachers’ Choices Booklist Selection

Amazon.com Best Books of 2008 Top 10 Editors’ Pick for Middle Readers

Parents’ Choice Foundation Recommended Book Award, Fall 2008

School Library Journal Best Books of the Year 2008

The Horn Book Fanfare, Best Books of 2008

Publisher’s Weekly 2008 Best Books of the Year, Children’s Nonfiction

Publishers Weekly 2008 Cuffie Award, Best Nonfiction Treatment of a Subject, Honorable Mention

Scripps-Howard News Service Favorite Children's Book of 2008

Learn more at ourwhitehouse.org and thencbla.org.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Gran Torino



The Celtic Sage has long complained about the endless popcorn movies emanating from the US of A and the stranglehold on movie distribution in the UK which means non-mainstream offerings find it impossible to find a screen. So our wide choice multiplexes fill up with derivative offerings designed by committees of cynical marketing wallahs. Therefore Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino” is proof that America can still make great movies which have something to say, and the fact that the 78 year old leading actor is also the Director and turns in a wonderful performance is a bonus. Say what you like but at 78 Clint is still the Man!

Gran Torino is a 2008 American drama film directed by, produced by and starring Clint Eastwood. The film marks Eastwood's return to a lead acting role after four years - his last leading role being Million Dollar Baby. The film features a predominantly Hmong cast, as well as Eastwood's younger son, Scott Eastwood. Eastwood's older son, Kyle Eastwood, provided the score.

Considering that Clint Eastwood's most iconic roles have been serious ones, it's easy to forget that he can be funny — that he possesses terrific timing with his sly sense of humour. He grumbles and growls his way through his most entertaining performance in years in Gran Torino as Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran and lifelong auto worker who's disgusted with the changes in his blue-collar, suburban Detroit neighbourhood. There are unshakable shades of Dirty Harry here, as well as Frankie Dunn, the curmudgeonly character he played in 2004's Million Dollar Baby, his most recent screen appearance. At 78, Eastwood combines both the tough and playful sides of his personality — in front of and behind the camera as star and director — with "Gran Torino," which begins in broadly entertaining fashion but ultimately reveals that it has weightier matters on its mind.


The Man!

Having just buried his saintly wife, all the retired Walt wants to do is be left alone with his dog, his guns and his beer — a seemingly never-ending supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon, which he drinks with an old-school earnestness rather than a kitschy, hip way. The film opens at her funeral service in the local church, and we immediately see that Walt has little patience for other human beings, even those in his own family. He literally snarls at anyone who pisses him off...which is pretty much everyone. He's mad at two people whispering and smiling during the service; he's mad at the way his granddaughter dresses for the event; he's mad at the young priest (Christopher Carley) who was friendly with Walt's wife and who promised her before she died that he'd check in on Walt to make sure the crotchety bastard was doing alright. Every offer for help, every attempt by his grown kids to move Walt out of the terrible neighbourhood where he lives (he is apparently the only white guy still living in the crime-ridden area) is met with something that goes beyond resistance. Walt hates the world and the world responds in kind.

As a sharp-tongued bigot, he certainly doesn't want to be bothered by the growing Asian population all around him, and especially not the Hmong family living next door. Despite hurling every imaginable epithet at these people - Nick Schenk's script is unabashed in its political incorrectness - Walt can't seem to avoid them.

First, he catches shy teenage son Thao (Bee Vang) trying to steal his mint-condition 1972 Ford Gran Torino as part of a gang initiation he's forced into by his thug cousin. Then, cultural tradition dictates that Thao must make up for the transgression by working for Walt for free. (This is basically an excuse for Walt to force the boy, whom he nicknames "Toad," into doing chores around the house in some of the movie's more amusing scenes.)

But the old man also finds an unexpected connection with Thao's older sister Sue (Ahney Her), who shares his blunt-talking attitude. And when he orders a group of gang members at gunpoint to "Get off my lawn" - with echoes of Eastwood's classic "Go ahead, make my day," - he's perceived as a vigilante hero among the Hmong community.


Get off my lawn!

Sure, the premise is predictable. You know from the beginning that Walt's contact with his neighbour’s will soften him. And maybe the performances are a bit stiff from his young actors, all untrained first-timers. But "Gran Torino" becomes more intriguing as the journey its takes us on evolves and grows darker, albeit with Eastwood's trademark, no-nonsense aesthetic.

In the early 1990s, Schenk discovered the history and culture of the Hmong while working in a factory in Minnesota. He also learned how they had sided with the South Vietnamese authorities and its U.S. allies in the Vietnam War, only to wind up in refugee camps, at the mercy of communist forces, when American troops pulled out and the government forces were defeated. Years later, he was deciding how to develop a story involving a widowed Korean War veteran trying to handle the changes in his neighbourhood when he decided to place a Hmong family next door and create a culture clash.

In the 60’s and 70’s Detroit was a wealthy city as the world capital of the automobile industry and its subsequent decline has been dramatic, even Motown Records left the Motor City for LA. The “Gran Torino” is a metaphor for this decline in the manufacturing rust belt areas of America. The name is in itself strange because it was the “muscle car” development of the Ford Fairlane but GT is an abbreviation for “Gran Turismo” or Grand Tourer. However the marketing men at Ford created the name Gran Torino with the latter word referring to Turin, the centre of the Italian auto industry.

(http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/08/bella-torino.html )


1972 Ford Gran Torino

Furthermore, the 1972 model, which is Walt Kowalski’s pride and joy as an ex-Ford worker, heralded the sad end of the muscle-car era, and of Detroit's unquestioned dominance of the automotive market. Motown's high-horsepower big-block beasts were suddenly a dying breed, thanks to new emissions regulations, spiralling insurance costs, and a changing social climate. The '72 Gran Torino's highest-horsepower engine option was a lukewarm 248-horsepower 351 V8 - a far cry from the 370 horsepower-plus big blocks of just two years prior. And the road ahead for Detroit held depressing developments like 5-mph bumpers that wreaked havoc on sleek styling, an OPEC oil embargo, and sinking quality control standards. Foreign car manufacturers gained a foothold in the U.S. as American buyers began moving to import cars in larger numbers. Clearly, the makers of Gran Torino didn't just happen upon this car... they chose it very carefully for its symbolic value. Both Walt and his car are products of another time--they don't make 'em like that anymore.

The setting for the movie is not Detroit but its suburb (and separate city) of Highland Park. Henry Ford and his collaborators, the Dodge Brothers, created the modern world and with their mass production methods both unleashed the most strident era of wealth creation and technical innovation in history and changed the lives of millions. Detroit’s very name betrays the French influence as this was an important trading post on Lake St. Clair where the Great Lakes and rivers led into the interior of the continent. The French history can be heard in the names of the cars from here; Buick, Cadillac, Chrysler, de Ville, Chevrolet, Sedan, Limousine, Pontiac.


Henry Ford poses on his 78th birthday,in a suit made from soybeans


Rising on a bank of the Rouge River in Dearborn is Henry Ford's Fairlane Mansion

What is less well known is that Henry Ford never built a single car in Detroit itself but started off in Dearborn before moving his factory to Highland Park. He lived in a Mansion on Lake St. Clair named, like the precursor to the Grand Torino, after the Fair Lane in Cork City, Ireland where his parents lived before they emigrated to America to escape grinding poverty. The Henry Ford Fairlane Estate in Dearborn, MI. sits on 1300 acres. In addition to the residence and its powerhouse, the estate included a summer house, man-made lake, staff cottages, gatehouse, pony barn, skating house, greenhouse, root cellar, vegetable garden, thousand-plant peony garden, ten thousand plant rose garden, a "Santa's Workshop" for Christmas celebrations, maple sugar shack, working farm for the Ford grandchildren built to their scale, agricultural research facilities, and five hundred birdhouses to satisfy Mr. Ford's interest in ornithology. Henry Ford was an interesting person of strong opinions including disgraceful racist and ant-Semitic views and an evangelical belief in the health giving properties of Soybeans! It is ironic given how much the motor car have contributed to the destruction of rural life that he saw his Model-T as helping to preserve rural America and its way of life.

While Gran Torino is entirely of a piece with Eastwood's other work, it also stands apart from his artful films of the past six years in its completely straightforward, unstudied style. There are underlying themes and understated points of view, most fundamentally about the need to get beyond racial and ethnic prejudice, the changing face of the nation and the future resting in the hands of today's immigrants. In a way that clearly could not have been intended, Eastwood could be said to have inadvertently made the first film of the Obama era.

Eastwood has dealt very intelligently and matter-of-factly with race throughout his career -- in Bird, Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima, among others - and in this respect, the key scene here is one in which Kowalski takes Thao to an Italian barber and, with the intention of making him “man up," teaches him the relevant ethnic insults, which, in his world, everyone should be able to withstand and humorously throw back at the perpetrator. For the two older adults, it's a game - a rite of passage that incorporates a healthy, if superficially abrasive, acknowledgment of their differences.

So here we have a movie which speaks of important issues in America. The decline of neighbourhood and traditional industries in a town where a car is today worth more than a house. It deals with an aging America and the alienation of youth, with immigration and racism, with gang culture and gun crime (“Hmong girls go to college, Hmong boys go to prison.”). And how does the American movie industry respond to this movie which deals with themes important to contemporary society?

Well the film was snubbed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the 81st Academy Awards, and thus was not nominated for a single Oscar, leading to heated criticism from critics and moviegoers alike. Take this as an inverse endorsement and strike a blow against popcorn dross by seeing “Gran Torino” and The Man for yourself!

Gran Torino



The Celtic Sage has long complained about the endless popcorn movies emanating from the US of A and the stranglehold on movie distribution in the UK which means non-mainstream offerings find it impossible to find a screen. So our wide choice multiplexes fill up with derivative offerings designed by committees of cynical marketing wallahs. Therefore Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino” is proof that America can still make great movies which have something to say, and the fact that the 78 year old leading actor is also the Director and turns in a wonderful performance is a bonus. Say what you like but at 78 Clint is still the Man!

Gran Torino is a 2008 American drama film directed by, produced by and starring Clint Eastwood. The film marks Eastwood's return to a lead acting role after four years - his last leading role being Million Dollar Baby. The film features a predominantly Hmong cast, as well as Eastwood's younger son, Scott Eastwood. Eastwood's older son, Kyle Eastwood, provided the score.

Considering that Clint Eastwood's most iconic roles have been serious ones, it's easy to forget that he can be funny — that he possesses terrific timing with his sly sense of humour. He grumbles and growls his way through his most entertaining performance in years in Gran Torino as Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran and lifelong auto worker who's disgusted with the changes in his blue-collar, suburban Detroit neighbourhood. There are unshakable shades of Dirty Harry here, as well as Frankie Dunn, the curmudgeonly character he played in 2004's Million Dollar Baby, his most recent screen appearance. At 78, Eastwood combines both the tough and playful sides of his personality — in front of and behind the camera as star and director — with "Gran Torino," which begins in broadly entertaining fashion but ultimately reveals that it has weightier matters on its mind.


The Man!

Having just buried his saintly wife, all the retired Walt wants to do is be left alone with his dog, his guns and his beer — a seemingly never-ending supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon, which he drinks with an old-school earnestness rather than a kitschy, hip way. The film opens at her funeral service in the local church, and we immediately see that Walt has little patience for other human beings, even those in his own family. He literally snarls at anyone who pisses him off...which is pretty much everyone. He's mad at two people whispering and smiling during the service; he's mad at the way his granddaughter dresses for the event; he's mad at the young priest (Christopher Carley) who was friendly with Walt's wife and who promised her before she died that he'd check in on Walt to make sure the crotchety bastard was doing alright. Every offer for help, every attempt by his grown kids to move Walt out of the terrible neighbourhood where he lives (he is apparently the only white guy still living in the crime-ridden area) is met with something that goes beyond resistance. Walt hates the world and the world responds in kind.

As a sharp-tongued bigot, he certainly doesn't want to be bothered by the growing Asian population all around him, and especially not the Hmong family living next door. Despite hurling every imaginable epithet at these people - Nick Schenk's script is unabashed in its political incorrectness - Walt can't seem to avoid them.

First, he catches shy teenage son Thao (Bee Vang) trying to steal his mint-condition 1972 Ford Gran Torino as part of a gang initiation he's forced into by his thug cousin. Then, cultural tradition dictates that Thao must make up for the transgression by working for Walt for free. (This is basically an excuse for Walt to force the boy, whom he nicknames "Toad," into doing chores around the house in some of the movie's more amusing scenes.)

But the old man also finds an unexpected connection with Thao's older sister Sue (Ahney Her), who shares his blunt-talking attitude. And when he orders a group of gang members at gunpoint to "Get off my lawn" - with echoes of Eastwood's classic "Go ahead, make my day," - he's perceived as a vigilante hero among the Hmong community.


Get off my lawn!

Sure, the premise is predictable. You know from the beginning that Walt's contact with his neighbour’s will soften him. And maybe the performances are a bit stiff from his young actors, all untrained first-timers. But "Gran Torino" becomes more intriguing as the journey its takes us on evolves and grows darker, albeit with Eastwood's trademark, no-nonsense aesthetic.

In the early 1990s, Schenk discovered the history and culture of the Hmong while working in a factory in Minnesota. He also learned how they had sided with the South Vietnamese authorities and its U.S. allies in the Vietnam War, only to wind up in refugee camps, at the mercy of communist forces, when American troops pulled out and the government forces were defeated. Years later, he was deciding how to develop a story involving a widowed Korean War veteran trying to handle the changes in his neighbourhood when he decided to place a Hmong family next door and create a culture clash.

In the 60’s and 70’s Detroit was a wealthy city as the world capital of the automobile industry and its subsequent decline has been dramatic, even Motown Records left the Motor City for LA. The “Gran Torino” is a metaphor for this decline in the manufacturing rust belt areas of America. The name is in itself strange because it was the “muscle car” development of the Ford Fairlane but GT is an abbreviation for “Gran Turismo” or Grand Tourer. However the marketing men at Ford created the name Gran Torino with the latter word referring to Turin, the centre of the Italian auto industry.

(http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/08/bella-torino.html )


1972 Ford Gran Torino

Furthermore, the 1972 model, which is Walt Kowalski’s pride and joy as an ex-Ford worker, heralded the sad end of the muscle-car era, and of Detroit's unquestioned dominance of the automotive market. Motown's high-horsepower big-block beasts were suddenly a dying breed, thanks to new emissions regulations, spiralling insurance costs, and a changing social climate. The '72 Gran Torino's highest-horsepower engine option was a lukewarm 248-horsepower 351 V8 - a far cry from the 370 horsepower-plus big blocks of just two years prior. And the road ahead for Detroit held depressing developments like 5-mph bumpers that wreaked havoc on sleek styling, an OPEC oil embargo, and sinking quality control standards. Foreign car manufacturers gained a foothold in the U.S. as American buyers began moving to import cars in larger numbers. Clearly, the makers of Gran Torino didn't just happen upon this car... they chose it very carefully for its symbolic value. Both Walt and his car are products of another time--they don't make 'em like that anymore.

The setting for the movie is not Detroit but its suburb (and separate city) of Highland Park. Henry Ford and his collaborators, the Dodge Brothers, created the modern world and with their mass production methods both unleashed the most strident era of wealth creation and technical innovation in history and changed the lives of millions. Detroit’s very name betrays the French influence as this was an important trading post on Lake St. Clair where the Great Lakes and rivers led into the interior of the continent. The French history can be heard in the names of the cars from here; Buick, Cadillac, Chrysler, de Ville, Chevrolet, Sedan, Limousine, Pontiac.


Henry Ford poses on his 78th birthday,in a suit made from soybeans


Rising on a bank of the Rouge River in Dearborn is Henry Ford's Fairlane Mansion

What is less well known is that Henry Ford never built a single car in Detroit itself but started off in Dearborn before moving his factory to Highland Park. He lived in a Mansion on Lake St. Clair named, like the precursor to the Grand Torino, after the Fair Lane in Cork City, Ireland where his parents lived before they emigrated to America to escape grinding poverty. The Henry Ford Fairlane Estate in Dearborn, MI. sits on 1300 acres. In addition to the residence and its powerhouse, the estate included a summer house, man-made lake, staff cottages, gatehouse, pony barn, skating house, greenhouse, root cellar, vegetable garden, thousand-plant peony garden, ten thousand plant rose garden, a "Santa's Workshop" for Christmas celebrations, maple sugar shack, working farm for the Ford grandchildren built to their scale, agricultural research facilities, and five hundred birdhouses to satisfy Mr. Ford's interest in ornithology. Henry Ford was an interesting person of strong opinions including disgraceful racist and ant-Semitic views and an evangelical belief in the health giving properties of Soybeans! It is ironic given how much the motor car have contributed to the destruction of rural life that he saw his Model-T as helping to preserve rural America and its way of life.

While Gran Torino is entirely of a piece with Eastwood's other work, it also stands apart from his artful films of the past six years in its completely straightforward, unstudied style. There are underlying themes and understated points of view, most fundamentally about the need to get beyond racial and ethnic prejudice, the changing face of the nation and the future resting in the hands of today's immigrants. In a way that clearly could not have been intended, Eastwood could be said to have inadvertently made the first film of the Obama era.

Eastwood has dealt very intelligently and matter-of-factly with race throughout his career -- in Bird, Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima, among others - and in this respect, the key scene here is one in which Kowalski takes Thao to an Italian barber and, with the intention of making him “man up," teaches him the relevant ethnic insults, which, in his world, everyone should be able to withstand and humorously throw back at the perpetrator. For the two older adults, it's a game - a rite of passage that incorporates a healthy, if superficially abrasive, acknowledgment of their differences.

So here we have a movie which speaks of important issues in America. The decline of neighbourhood and traditional industries in a town where a car is today worth more than a house. It deals with an aging America and the alienation of youth, with immigration and racism, with gang culture and gun crime (“Hmong girls go to college, Hmong boys go to prison.”). And how does the American movie industry respond to this movie which deals with themes important to contemporary society?

Well the film was snubbed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the 81st Academy Awards, and thus was not nominated for a single Oscar, leading to heated criticism from critics and moviegoers alike. Take this as an inverse endorsement and strike a blow against popcorn dross by seeing “Gran Torino” and The Man for yourself!

Friday, March 27, 2009

In Tribute to an Esteemed Scholar of American History-


John Hope Franklin, 1915-2009


I was first introduced to John Hope Franklin by NCBLA Board Member Patricia McKissack ten years ago when the NCBLA Board of authors and illustrators panel discussion was the launch event for the Library of Congress's first National Book Festival. Pat and I were walking outside the Madison building crossing the street to get to the Jefferson, when Pat let out what can only be described as a delighted squeal, not unlike a teen's reaction to spotting a pop artist or a major league sports star--except that Pat had not spied Tiger Woods or Beyonce, she had seen John Hope Franklin walking down the street, one of our nation's most honored historians. Pat went right up to Mr. Franklin, reintroducing herself, and introduced me, too. We had a lovely chat with Pat sharing with Mr. Franklin how much his work had influenced her own historical research and notable writing. The phrase "scholar and gentleman" only begins to describe the impression made by Professor Franklin on one not so well versed in his work, and that fascinating encounter inspired me to read much more of John Hope Franklin's writing.

Over the course of eight years researching the NCBLA's recent publication, Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out, I ran into Professor Franklin a couple of times. He expressed interest in the progress of Our White House, offered fascinating perspectives on the American Presidency, and helped me to visualize what the city of Washington would have looked like 200 years ago, the new capital of democracy, where slave pens and auction blocks were literally steps away from the President's House.

To be in the company of a great scholar, even for a few short moments, is such a privilege and an honor. John Hope Franklin vastly enriched our nation with his work. All of our children's lives are better because he walked on this planet. -- Mary Brigid Barrett, President and Executive Director, NCBLA

To read the New York Times obituary of and editorial tribute to Professor Franklin, go to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26franklin.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/opinion/27fri4.html?ref=opinion

For a three hour interview of John Hope Franklin, go to:
http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=7433&SectionName=In%20Depth&PlayMedia=Yes

The John Hope Franklin Collection for African and African American Documentation:
http://library.duke.edu/specialcollections/franklin/

Thursday, March 26, 2009

For St. George and England?




Engerland - where that?



The 23rd of April is St. Georges’s Day and a campaign is afoot to have it celebrated as a National Holiday in England in the words of the Stgeorgesday.com “A site for England":

“As you may know, other countries all over the world celebrate their patron saint or have other days, the closest to us and probably the most well known is Saint Patrick's Day for Ireland! This day is celebrated all over the UK and also widely in the USA, what about Burns night for Scotland, for a well celebrated Scottish poet where the toasting of his words culminates in the eating of haggis, why then can we not have our own patron saint's day?”

In tandem with this the Government quango, English Heritage has launched a campaign to dispel the apathy surrounding St George's Day and encourage more people to celebrate the country's patron saint. A survey by the government agency revealed that fewer than one in five people mark St George's Day on April 23rd, suggesting that the English feel less national pride than the Welsh, Irish and Scottish. In an attempt to rectify the situation, English Heritage has produced a St George's Day Guide, which suggests recipes and traditional games with a St George and the Dragon theme. For those of you unfamiliar with English Heritage it is the Quango which took over historic public properties and sites from the Board of Works and by pretending to be separate from Government now charges to go into these sites which we already paid for and own as taxpayers. Nice work if you can get it!



Lady Godiva didn't need all this gear!

Now, those of you who have read The Paddy’s Day Blog

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/03/st-paddys-day-blog.html

will know that I compare unfavourably the very real connection St. Patrick has with Ireland with the situation of George of Cappadocia who may or may not be the St. George of England, who didn’t even know England existed and who was foisted on England by Richard the Lionheart, a French Plantagenet who spent less than six months in England during his reign. Or St. Andrew, crucified on a saltire in Patras and whose bones are now in Patras and the Duomo in Amalfi who had absolutely no connection with Scotland, unless you believe a cock and bull storey about his bones (he must have had a lot of bones as they also claim to have his arm in Kephalonia!) being brought under “divine guidance” to St. Andrews in Scotland!





What can be said with certainty about George is that he is a very busy saint. St. George's Day is celebrated by several nations of which Saint George is the patron saint, including Catalonia (Spain), England, Portugal, Georgia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of Macedonia. For England, St. George's Day also marks its National Day. Most countries who observe St. George's Day celebrate it on 23rd. April, the traditionally accepted date of Saint George's death in 303 AD. St. George's Day is a provincial government holiday in Newfoundland, Canada. All very well and all very busy but none of this answers the question of what does he mean to England and how can you identify with a saint who didn’t really care about you because he never knew you even existed? St. George's Day is not celebrated as much in England as other National Days are around the world. The celebration of St. George's Day was once a major feast in England on a par with Christmas from the early 15th century. However, this tradition had waned by the end of the 18th century. On the other hand, there have also been calls to replace St. George as patron saint of England, on the grounds that he was an obscure figure who had no direct connection with the country. However there is no obvious consensus as to whom to replace him with, though names suggested include St. Edmund, St. Cuthbert, or St. Alban, with the latter having topped a BBC Radio 4 poll on the subject.


St. George attacking Ali Baba?

There is very little known in reality about Saint George. He's popularly identified with England and English ideals of honour, bravery and gallantry - but actually he wasn't English at all. Pope Gelasius said that George is one of the saints "whose names are rightly reverenced among us, but whose actions are known only to God." The little we do know is from accounts written well after the fact. What we believe to be the truth is that George was born in the Cappadocia region of central Turkey in the 3rd century; that his parents were Christians; and that when his father died, George's mother returned to her native Palestine, taking George with her. George became a soldier in the Roman army and rose to the rank of Tribune. The Emperor of the day, Diocletian (245-313 AD), began a campaign against Christians at the very beginning of the 4th century. In about 303 AD George is said to have objected to this persecution and resigned his military post in protest. George tore up the Emperor's order against Christians. This infuriated Diocletian, and George was imprisoned and tortured - but he refused to deny his faith. Eventually he was dragged through the streets of Diospolis (now Lydda) in Palestine and beheaded.



As was common there were many fanciful accounts of Saints and their wonderful deeds and a whole cult of veneration of their relics. After (with a gap) the Emperor Diocletian, Constantine the Great became Emperor and the position of Christianity was transformed when it became the state religion of the empire. It is possible the tale of St. George was played up to cast Diocletian in an evil light and draw a contrast between his vigorous persecutions of Christians and Constantine’s endorsement of Christianity.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/fall-of-byzantium.html

What is clear is that Richard the Lionheart, a French Plantagenet, who actually spoke English badly and spent less than six months in England as King endorsed St. George as Patron Saint because the Crusaders identified with his being martyred in land which they held as part of The Kingdom of Jerusalem and then of Acre in the 13th Century. George's reputation grew with the returning crusaders. A miracle appearance, when it was claimed that he appeared to lead crusaders into battle, is recorded in stone over the south door of a church at Fordington in Dorset. This still exists and is the earliest known church in England to be dedicated to Saint George. The Council of Oxford in 1222 named 23rd April as Saint George's Day.


Of course I'm a Dragon!

The story of Saint George and the Dragon only achieved mass circulation when it was printed in 1483 by Caxton in a book called The Golden Legend. This was a translation of a book by Jacques de Voragine, a French bishop, which incorporated fantastic details of Saints' lives.





Part of the efforts to promote St. George’s Day is to promote a concept of Englishness and the difficulty and confusion can be seen in the statement from Gordon Brown’s office announcing that Downing Street would be flying the flag of St. George on the day; "The Prime Minister's view is that of course we should celebrate our Britishness, but celebrating our Britishness does not mean we cannot also celebrate our Englishness, Scottishness, Welshness or Northern Irishness." Well leaving aside the last one there are more Ness’s there than in the highlands of Scotland!

It is time to face up to two important facts: St George has nothing to do with England and there are and never were creatures called Dragons. Oh, and while I’m at it there are probably no fairies at the end of the garden.

Having said that, have a happy St. Georges Day!


St. George's Day in Ye Olde Luton Towne

For St. George and England?




Engerland - where that?



The 23rd of April is St. Georges’s Day and a campaign is afoot to have it celebrated as a National Holiday in England in the words of the Stgeorgesday.com “A site for England":

“As you may know, other countries all over the world celebrate their patron saint or have other days, the closest to us and probably the most well known is Saint Patrick's Day for Ireland! This day is celebrated all over the UK and also widely in the USA, what about Burns night for Scotland, for a well celebrated Scottish poet where the toasting of his words culminates in the eating of haggis, why then can we not have our own patron saint's day?”

In tandem with this the Government quango, English Heritage has launched a campaign to dispel the apathy surrounding St George's Day and encourage more people to celebrate the country's patron saint. A survey by the government agency revealed that fewer than one in five people mark St George's Day on April 23rd, suggesting that the English feel less national pride than the Welsh, Irish and Scottish. In an attempt to rectify the situation, English Heritage has produced a St George's Day Guide, which suggests recipes and traditional games with a St George and the Dragon theme. For those of you unfamiliar with English Heritage it is the Quango which took over historic public properties and sites from the Board of Works and by pretending to be separate from Government now charges to go into these sites which we already paid for and own as taxpayers. Nice work if you can get it!



Lady Godiva didn't need all this gear!

Now, those of you who have read The Paddy’s Day Blog

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/03/st-paddys-day-blog.html

will know that I compare unfavourably the very real connection St. Patrick has with Ireland with the situation of George of Cappadocia who may or may not be the St. George of England, who didn’t even know England existed and who was foisted on England by Richard the Lionheart, a French Plantagenet who spent less than six months in England during his reign. Or St. Andrew, crucified on a saltire in Patras and whose bones are now in Patras and the Duomo in Amalfi who had absolutely no connection with Scotland, unless you believe a cock and bull storey about his bones (he must have had a lot of bones as they also claim to have his arm in Kephalonia!) being brought under “divine guidance” to St. Andrews in Scotland!





What can be said with certainty about George is that he is a very busy saint. St. George's Day is celebrated by several nations of which Saint George is the patron saint, including Catalonia (Spain), England, Portugal, Georgia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of Macedonia. For England, St. George's Day also marks its National Day. Most countries who observe St. George's Day celebrate it on 23rd. April, the traditionally accepted date of Saint George's death in 303 AD. St. George's Day is a provincial government holiday in Newfoundland, Canada. All very well and all very busy but none of this answers the question of what does he mean to England and how can you identify with a saint who didn’t really care about you because he never knew you even existed? St. George's Day is not celebrated as much in England as other National Days are around the world. The celebration of St. George's Day was once a major feast in England on a par with Christmas from the early 15th century. However, this tradition had waned by the end of the 18th century. On the other hand, there have also been calls to replace St. George as patron saint of England, on the grounds that he was an obscure figure who had no direct connection with the country. However there is no obvious consensus as to whom to replace him with, though names suggested include St. Edmund, St. Cuthbert, or St. Alban, with the latter having topped a BBC Radio 4 poll on the subject.


St. George attacking Ali Baba?

There is very little known in reality about Saint George. He's popularly identified with England and English ideals of honour, bravery and gallantry - but actually he wasn't English at all. Pope Gelasius said that George is one of the saints "whose names are rightly reverenced among us, but whose actions are known only to God." The little we do know is from accounts written well after the fact. What we believe to be the truth is that George was born in the Cappadocia region of central Turkey in the 3rd century; that his parents were Christians; and that when his father died, George's mother returned to her native Palestine, taking George with her. George became a soldier in the Roman army and rose to the rank of Tribune. The Emperor of the day, Diocletian (245-313 AD), began a campaign against Christians at the very beginning of the 4th century. In about 303 AD George is said to have objected to this persecution and resigned his military post in protest. George tore up the Emperor's order against Christians. This infuriated Diocletian, and George was imprisoned and tortured - but he refused to deny his faith. Eventually he was dragged through the streets of Diospolis (now Lydda) in Palestine and beheaded.



As was common there were many fanciful accounts of Saints and their wonderful deeds and a whole cult of veneration of their relics. After (with a gap) the Emperor Diocletian, Constantine the Great became Emperor and the position of Christianity was transformed when it became the state religion of the empire. It is possible the tale of St. George was played up to cast Diocletian in an evil light and draw a contrast between his vigorous persecutions of Christians and Constantine’s endorsement of Christianity.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/fall-of-byzantium.html

What is clear is that Richard the Lionheart, a French Plantagenet, who actually spoke English badly and spent less than six months in England as King endorsed St. George as Patron Saint because the Crusaders identified with his being martyred in land which they held as part of The Kingdom of Jerusalem and then of Acre in the 13th Century. George's reputation grew with the returning crusaders. A miracle appearance, when it was claimed that he appeared to lead crusaders into battle, is recorded in stone over the south door of a church at Fordington in Dorset. This still exists and is the earliest known church in England to be dedicated to Saint George. The Council of Oxford in 1222 named 23rd April as Saint George's Day.


Of course I'm a Dragon!

The story of Saint George and the Dragon only achieved mass circulation when it was printed in 1483 by Caxton in a book called The Golden Legend. This was a translation of a book by Jacques de Voragine, a French bishop, which incorporated fantastic details of Saints' lives.





Part of the efforts to promote St. George’s Day is to promote a concept of Englishness and the difficulty and confusion can be seen in the statement from Gordon Brown’s office announcing that Downing Street would be flying the flag of St. George on the day; "The Prime Minister's view is that of course we should celebrate our Britishness, but celebrating our Britishness does not mean we cannot also celebrate our Englishness, Scottishness, Welshness or Northern Irishness." Well leaving aside the last one there are more Ness’s there than in the highlands of Scotland!

It is time to face up to two important facts: St George has nothing to do with England and there are and never were creatures called Dragons. Oh, and while I’m at it there are probably no fairies at the end of the garden.

Having said that, have a happy St. Georges Day!


St. George's Day in Ye Olde Luton Towne

RIF and US Airways Partner in Reading Challenge

Reading Challenge to Award Winners with a Disney Vacation

For a second year, Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) and US Airways are working together to help children nationwide discover the joy of reading.
Starting April 1, adults are invited to join the 2009 Read with Kids Challenge and help collectively log 5 million minutes spent reading with kids. You’ll have the chance of winning a family vacation to the Walt Disney World Resort® and more great prizes.
Get on board! Visit the Read with Kids Challenge website today.
Learn more about RIF at www.rif.org.


Legislation Proposal May Protect Children's Books

ALA Supports Amendment to Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act

Concern continues to mount regarding the 2008 Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act's (CPSIA) potential to remove books from children's hands.

To prevent such a drastic result, Nebraska Congressman Jeff Fortenberry recently introduced a bill that would amend the CPSIA by exempting books from the lead regulation. Fortenberry’s bill, H.R. 1692, officially states that CPSIA was not intended to apply to ordinary books – those books that are published on paper or cardboard, printed by conventional publishing methods, intended to be read, and lacking inherent play value. H.R. 1692 also states that testing has shown that finished books and their component materials contain total lead content at levels considered non-detectable, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has determined that there is little risk to children from lead in ordinary books.

The American Library Association (ALA) issued a press release supporting the legislation. ALA President Jim Rettig stated about the bill, “We are grateful for this bill since it supports what the ALA, libraries, teachers and parents know to be true – books are safe and should not be regulated by this law.”

You can read more information on the ALA's website.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

The Naked Taoiseach




The real Brian Cowen?


Since he took over as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland in May 2008 Brian Cowen has looked even more hapless than, well, his hapless predecessor, Bertie Ahern.
( http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/12/bertie-ahern-and-poverty-in-ireland.html ) This is in itself quiet a considerable achievement for the politician from Clara, Co. Offaly (where my mother’s family hail from) but the Celtic Tiger is now looking like a very sick Celtic Pussycat as the economy spirals downwards, tax receipts go though the floor, public spending is out of control and unemployment heads inexorably towards 15%. On top of that Ireland has shot itself in the foot by nationalising Anglo-Irish Bank with its toxic debt mainly on overvalued (or in some cases non-existent) property assets abroad owned in many instances by speculators linked to Brian Cowen’s Fianna Fail political party. As stories of waste, extravagance and corruption abound the public perception of Irish Politicians has hit an all time low and none has looked more impotent and naked in the face of the economic maelstrom than Brian Cowen.

Well one talented artist has taken this perception further and hung (sic) two naked portraits of the Naked Taoiseach unnoticed in empty spaces in art galleries. Two unorthodox portraits — one in the National Gallery showing the Taoiseach on the toilet, and another in the Royal Hibernian Gallery showing him holding his Y-fronts — appeared mysteriously in Dublin among paintings of the country’s other famous citizens in more decorous poses. So just who did hang the unflattering paintings of a naked Brian Cowen, the Irish Prime Minister, in the country’s most prestigious art galleries?



The Irish media speculated that the prankster had created the artworks in an attempt to lift the nation’s spirits at a time of deep economic gloom. Judging by the chuckles of visitors and comments inundating the blogosphere, the stunt worked.

“Biffo on the bog”, was one gleeful response, referring to the Taoiseach by his nickname, which stands for “Big Ignorant F***er from Offaly”. The artist reportedly walked calmly into the National Gallery carrying a shoulder bag. He then affixed a prepared caption for the picture to a free space among portraits of Michael Collins, William Butler Yeats and Bono, before hanging his canvas, undisturbed by security.

The caption read: “Brian Cowen, Politician 1960-2008. This portrait, acquired uncommissioned by the National Gallery, celebrates one of the finest politicians produced by Ireland since the foundation of the state. Following a spell at the helm of the Department of Finance during a period of unprecedented prosperity, Brian Cowen inherited the office of Taoiseach in 2008. Balancing a public image that ranges from fantastically intelligent analytical thinker to Big Ignorant F***er from Offaly, the Taoiseach proves to be a challenging subject to represent.”



One woman who saw the National Gallery portrait of the Taoiseach, pictured gripping a toilet roll in one hand, commented: “Well at least that is one mess he has been able to clear up.” The Sunday Tribune reported that the portrait of Mr Cowen wearing nothing but his glasses hung for more than an hour, with hundreds of patrons believing it to be a genuine part of the collection. After security guards removed it, police were called to examine the portrait and CCTV evidence.

The guerrilla artist, emboldened by his success, went on to hang a second portrait of the Taoiseach in the Royal Hibernian Gallery. The second naked portrait depicted a portly Mr Cowen, still in his glasses, holding a pair of blue and white pants in his left hand. One woman who saw the work was impressed enough to make an offer.

Dublin is rife with rumour about the identity of the artist. Ian Whyte, of Whyte’s Gallery, said: “It was certainly a professional job; the two paintings were both very well executed. They are actually better than the work of a few artists I thought it might be. Everyone will be talking about it until the identity is revealed.




National Gallery of Ireland

“No crime was committed; whoever it was didn’t take anything. In fact, he donated something.”

The real news however is not that this picture was hung, but the censorship afterwards. After a story was ran about it on RTE, the Irish state broadcaster, Prime Minister Cowen and his political party rang the TV Station and demanded the story be removed from the RTE website, and it was, demanded the clip of the news item be removed, and demanded an apology, which they got on air! This is a display of blatant censorship, the Irish government putting political pressure on a television station to avoid embarrassment.


A happy Irish Voter

Consider the weasel words of this verbatim report from today’s Irish Independent;

Last night, it broadcast an apology for its story about the illegal (sic)hanging of hoax nude portraits of Mr Cowen in the National Gallery and the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin.

"RTE News would like to apologise for any personal offence caused to Mr Cowen or his family for any disrespect shown to the office of the Taoiseach," it said. A spokesman for Mr Cowen confirmed that he had made a complaint about the story, which he said "went beyond the news values of RTE". The report described how Police were investigating who was responsible for leaving the nude paintings of Mr Cowen in the two galleries. Last night, Fianna Fail Dublin-North TD Michael Kennedy called on RTE director general Cathal Goan to "consider his position".


What a wonderful description which confirms that Ireland is still a Nation of Master Debaters; “"went beyond the news values of RTE" and showed “disrespect for the Office of Taoiseach”. This is of course the Office which Brian Cowen’s predecessor resigned from after revelations of receiving “brown envelopes” of money in pubs because his friends felt “sorry for him”, where another Fianna Fail Taoiseach Charles Haughey received £8.5 m in untaxed “gifts” which we know about. This is a country which has had 21 “tax amnesties” in 30 years and where the planning system has been shown to be systemically corrupt with back handers the order of the day. Where there are open gang shootouts most weeks with the hapless Police force reduced to bystanders and which maintains 832 free spending Quangos which squander public funds without accountability for a country with the population of say, Greater Manchester.

Never have a Taoiseach and a discredited political party looked more hapless than when engaging in this sad attempt to control the state owned News Media in a way which is more redolent of Ceausescu’s Romania towards the end. All praise indeed to the Hero Artist who has wonderfully exposed not just this blundering Taoiseach but that the entire self serving Irish Political and Economic elite are former emperors who have been exposed as wearing no clothes!


The happy Irish electorate

The Naked Taoiseach




The real Brian Cowen?


Since he took over as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland in May 2008 Brian Cowen has looked even more hapless than, well, his hapless predecessor, Bertie Ahern.
( http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/12/bertie-ahern-and-poverty-in-ireland.html ) This is in itself quiet a considerable achievement for the politician from Clara, Co. Offaly (where my mother’s family hail from) but the Celtic Tiger is now looking like a very sick Celtic Pussycat as the economy spirals downwards, tax receipts go though the floor, public spending is out of control and unemployment heads inexorably towards 15%. On top of that Ireland has shot itself in the foot by nationalising Anglo-Irish Bank with its toxic debt mainly on overvalued (or in some cases non-existent) property assets abroad owned in many instances by speculators linked to Brian Cowen’s Fianna Fail political party. As stories of waste, extravagance and corruption abound the public perception of Irish Politicians has hit an all time low and none has looked more impotent and naked in the face of the economic maelstrom than Brian Cowen.

Well one talented artist has taken this perception further and hung (sic) two naked portraits of the Naked Taoiseach unnoticed in empty spaces in art galleries. Two unorthodox portraits — one in the National Gallery showing the Taoiseach on the toilet, and another in the Royal Hibernian Gallery showing him holding his Y-fronts — appeared mysteriously in Dublin among paintings of the country’s other famous citizens in more decorous poses. So just who did hang the unflattering paintings of a naked Brian Cowen, the Irish Prime Minister, in the country’s most prestigious art galleries?



The Irish media speculated that the prankster had created the artworks in an attempt to lift the nation’s spirits at a time of deep economic gloom. Judging by the chuckles of visitors and comments inundating the blogosphere, the stunt worked.

“Biffo on the bog”, was one gleeful response, referring to the Taoiseach by his nickname, which stands for “Big Ignorant F***er from Offaly”. The artist reportedly walked calmly into the National Gallery carrying a shoulder bag. He then affixed a prepared caption for the picture to a free space among portraits of Michael Collins, William Butler Yeats and Bono, before hanging his canvas, undisturbed by security.

The caption read: “Brian Cowen, Politician 1960-2008. This portrait, acquired uncommissioned by the National Gallery, celebrates one of the finest politicians produced by Ireland since the foundation of the state. Following a spell at the helm of the Department of Finance during a period of unprecedented prosperity, Brian Cowen inherited the office of Taoiseach in 2008. Balancing a public image that ranges from fantastically intelligent analytical thinker to Big Ignorant F***er from Offaly, the Taoiseach proves to be a challenging subject to represent.”



One woman who saw the National Gallery portrait of the Taoiseach, pictured gripping a toilet roll in one hand, commented: “Well at least that is one mess he has been able to clear up.” The Sunday Tribune reported that the portrait of Mr Cowen wearing nothing but his glasses hung for more than an hour, with hundreds of patrons believing it to be a genuine part of the collection. After security guards removed it, police were called to examine the portrait and CCTV evidence.

The guerrilla artist, emboldened by his success, went on to hang a second portrait of the Taoiseach in the Royal Hibernian Gallery. The second naked portrait depicted a portly Mr Cowen, still in his glasses, holding a pair of blue and white pants in his left hand. One woman who saw the work was impressed enough to make an offer.

Dublin is rife with rumour about the identity of the artist. Ian Whyte, of Whyte’s Gallery, said: “It was certainly a professional job; the two paintings were both very well executed. They are actually better than the work of a few artists I thought it might be. Everyone will be talking about it until the identity is revealed.




National Gallery of Ireland

“No crime was committed; whoever it was didn’t take anything. In fact, he donated something.”

The real news however is not that this picture was hung, but the censorship afterwards. After a story was ran about it on RTE, the Irish state broadcaster, Prime Minister Cowen and his political party rang the TV Station and demanded the story be removed from the RTE website, and it was, demanded the clip of the news item be removed, and demanded an apology, which they got on air! This is a display of blatant censorship, the Irish government putting political pressure on a television station to avoid embarrassment.


A happy Irish Voter

Consider the weasel words of this verbatim report from today’s Irish Independent;

Last night, it broadcast an apology for its story about the illegal (sic)hanging of hoax nude portraits of Mr Cowen in the National Gallery and the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin.

"RTE News would like to apologise for any personal offence caused to Mr Cowen or his family for any disrespect shown to the office of the Taoiseach," it said. A spokesman for Mr Cowen confirmed that he had made a complaint about the story, which he said "went beyond the news values of RTE". The report described how Police were investigating who was responsible for leaving the nude paintings of Mr Cowen in the two galleries. Last night, Fianna Fail Dublin-North TD Michael Kennedy called on RTE director general Cathal Goan to "consider his position".


What a wonderful description which confirms that Ireland is still a Nation of Master Debaters; “"went beyond the news values of RTE" and showed “disrespect for the Office of Taoiseach”. This is of course the Office which Brian Cowen’s predecessor resigned from after revelations of receiving “brown envelopes” of money in pubs because his friends felt “sorry for him”, where another Fianna Fail Taoiseach Charles Haughey received £8.5 m in untaxed “gifts” which we know about. This is a country which has had 21 “tax amnesties” in 30 years and where the planning system has been shown to be systemically corrupt with back handers the order of the day. Where there are open gang shootouts most weeks with the hapless Police force reduced to bystanders and which maintains 832 free spending Quangos which squander public funds without accountability for a country with the population of say, Greater Manchester.

Never have a Taoiseach and a discredited political party looked more hapless than when engaging in this sad attempt to control the state owned News Media in a way which is more redolent of Ceausescu’s Romania towards the end. All praise indeed to the Hero Artist who has wonderfully exposed not just this blundering Taoiseach but that the entire self serving Irish Political and Economic elite are former emperors who have been exposed as wearing no clothes!


The happy Irish electorate