Why nations must remember

"A tombstone is a memory made concrete. Human memory is the ladder on which a country and a people advance. We must remember not only the good things, but also the bad, the bright spots but also the darkness. The authorities in a totalitarian system strive to conceal their faults, and extol their merits, gloss over their errors and forcibly eradicate all memory of man-made calamity, darkness and evil. For that reason, the Chinese are prone to historical amnesia imposed by those in power. I erect this tombstone so that people will remember and henceforth, renounce man-made calamity, darkness and evil."

Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine 1958-1962

I have just started reading this book, the first Chinese account of Mao's Great Leap Forward. As a member of the Communist Party and a long standing journalist with China's Xinhua news agency he has used his position to collect materials from restricted archives detailing the famine.

Banned in China, the book was published in Hong Kong and has gone through eight editions in its original two-volume Chinese version. This translation is an adapted version of the two-volume Chinese original.

I also think there is a message here that all Sri Lankan's need to reflect on. We have been fed a diet of propaganda over the last decade that has seeped into the subconscious. We need stop and reflect, to start thinking again.

The Children's Encylopaedia by Arthur Mee

I started to read rather late as child, having a grandmother who would read stories being the probable cause of the delayed start. When I did start to read it was with Enid Blyton but having developed the habit, I would pick up any book that I came across. Fortunately there were plenty of books around and one particular set, The Children's Encyclopaedia was a favourite.

The Encyclopaedia (in several volumes) occupied a shelf in my grandfather's bookcase. It had been bought in the 1930's for my mother and her siblings. Beautifully written in an elegant, if slightly old fashioned prose, it presented heaps of facts in a uniquely interesting way. I would spend many an afternoon with a volume in my lap, reading it almost like a novel.

I've just discovered that the joy that this brought me was shared by others and someone has even put a part of it on the web. Some copies are even for sale on Amazon! (although this is a 1963 edition it looks almost the same) An infestation of termites destroyed all those lovely books, but I'm toying with the idea of buying the copy on Amazon. Have a look at the bits that are on the web.

For some further info on the books, see here.

I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity

I just came across a review of this book , although I have not read the book the story is too good not to share.

Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish is a Palestinian doctor, a man who dedicated his life to peace and medicine. He lost three daughters in the Israeli attack on Gaza in January 2009. An Israeli tank opened fire on their house, claiming that gun shots came from their building or nearby. A frantic phone call made by the doctor to a friend in Israel, Shlomi Eldar, a journalist who relayed the conversation on live television, took the story to the world. The anchor called on the Israeli Defense Forces to allow ambulances to get to the doctor’s family.

No ambulances ever reached Dr. Abuelaish’s home, which was surrounded by Israeli tanks. He and the surviving members of his family walked a quarter of a mile carrying the dead and wounded through the streets.

Amazingly, though shaken, this did not alter his philosophy. He now lives in Canada and travels widely, speaking to promote his vision.

An interview with Dr Abuelaish is available here, more on the story here.

Omar Musa

I enjoyed Omar Musa's poetry immensely at the Galle Literary Festival, particularly a piece called 'Airforce Ones', which I thought was not in his the book available for sale. Subsequently discovered that it was in his book, The Clocks. I was searching for it on the web, could not find it, but this was enjoyable. Just discovered another very moving one here.

Did finally manage to find the poem, the book is available at Barefoot.

People of Importance; Dignity and Impudence

There was a book of charcoal and pencil drawings which I discovered in my teens and which I loved.

I'm not sure what took my mind back to it, but for some reason this morning it did and after racking my brains for over an hour, the name of the book finally came to me: People of Importance. Happily someone has scanned a few images, you can check them on the link. The comments at the link point to a few other books by the same artist J.H. Dowd, which I shall endevour to track down.

Its not high art, but they are very lovely.

This train of thought brought me to another of the lesser pictures that I like: Dignity and Impudence by Landseer. The sight of the cheeky little terrier besides the bloodhound always brings a smile to my face.

Have a good week everyone.

It was the babblers' nest - Conrad Felsinger

I just finished skimming Juliet Coombe and Daisy Perry’s ‘Around the Fort in 80 Lives’. I saw this book while wandering around Galle during the literary festival. I was tempted to buy it but (luckily as it turns out) I did not. I discovered later that a friend owned it and borrowed it from him.

I was rather disappointed by the book; although it starts off with a good theme and has the potential to become interesting it seemed rather shallow and naive. A coffee table book with insufficient pictures and too much text; rather unsatisfying on the whole.

My mind was then taken back to an altogether different story of Galle, EFC Ludowyk's charming autumnal reflections on growing up in Galle. Deeply felt and beautifully written it is a lovely memoir of a way of life that no longer exists.

This is turn brought me to the other beautiful memoir, from an even earlier era which is the title of this post. I'm not sure how many people have read this splendid work, but if you can get your hands on a copy (I would suggest you try raiding the second hand book shops on D.R.Wijewardene Mawatha, if the last copy on Amazon gets sold) it is something that I think is a must read for anyone interested in this land. It is a highly entertaining account of schoolboy life at the beginning of the twentieth century, when a catapult was a regular part of any boy's armoury and birds the usual victim. It is a book of schoolboy life; of outrageous pranks and elaborately organised trips made in bullock carts. A vivid portrait of life in another era.

I get rather sentimental reading stuff like this and perhaps not just because I am a sentimental fool. I feel very alienated by the politics in Sri Lanka today, but deep down, I think I still retain a love for this land.

Odds and ends

I have been gathering my scattered thoughts and catching up with a little bit of reading over the holidays.

I had begun to regard global warming as a problem - but one that will make its effects felt in the very long term, maybe 30 to 50 years at least. What I did not realise was the extent of the impact of global warming on the sea. This article made me sit up and take notice.

Did you know that a meltwater lake on the Greenland ice sheet covering six square kilometres drained away in 24 hours in 2006? That sound pretty dangerous to me.

The most serious impact, the higher levels of carbon dioxide affect the salinity of the seas surface making life difficult, if not impossible, for marine organisms with calcium-carbonate shells or skeletons. This means that larger fish, which feed on these smaller organisms may in turn cease to exist in a fairly short period, which means no seafood for you and me.

There is a lot more, so read and heed.

Moving onto something else, got a new phone which has a music player installed. Have copied some playlists onto it so hopefully will have something to soothe my nerves in the office. I have not listened to much music over the last three years or so, chiefly because I had no access to it, except on the computer and that too at home because the office ones don't have speakers.

This brings me to the lesser known works of popular composers, Bruch for instance. He has written a rather nice piano trio (op.5) which is (as it so happens) coupled with equally rare and quite delightful trio music by Widor (he of the Organ Symphonies) and Hiller. This is the recording that I pinched, recommended to anyone looking for unfamiliar music in that genre.

Continuing on the subject of Bruch's other works (he is known mainly for the G Minor violin concerto and the Scotch Fantasy), the second and third violin concerti are well worth a hearing, I've heard this recording, which is good.

The real gem in Bruch's oeuvre is the double piano concerto. It is even more immediately attractive than the first violin concerto but is unfortunately a real rarity. It had a strange history, the original score did not come to light until quite recently, which is one reason why it remains largely unknown.

There is a recording by the Labèque sisters, which is not supposed to be very good (I never cared much for their playing anyway) and there are some other unknowns also listed on Amazon. The world premier recording by Martin Berkofsky & David Hagen with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lutz Herbig is the one I've heard and it is quite outstanding (just found it on Amazon look here). It was on recorded in the 1980's on the Turnabout label (the former Vox Turnabout) which I think is now defunct. It was remastered on CD in the 1990's, in a terrible transfer that robbed the sound of its bloom, the CD version sounds thin and narrow, like an old mono recording. If you can find the original recording somewhere, give it a go, otherwise try one of the others. There was a lousy recording on Youtube so leave that well alone.

There is also a fairly nice concerto for Clarinet and Viola by Bruch as well and some interesting prices for basset Horn and Clarinet by Mendelssohn. Have a look here.

As I said before, I have also been trying to catch up on some reading and about 300 ages into the book, Nehru has at last started to say something of interest in his autobiography. It is not that the man cannot write, he has an elegant turn of phrase, but it is that he very little to say. For the most part of the first 300 pages he comes across as idealistic and out of touch. This is a lot better than Gandhi, who looks to me like an out and out nutcase - sleeping naked with teenage girls must count for rather odd behaviour especially by a supposed living saint.

The only reason I got the book (I did not buy it but I did hint to someone that I was interested in it and I received it as a present) was because Lee Kuan Yew mentioned in his autobiography that Nehru was the man they looked to for ideas and intellectual leadership. This was not apparent in the first half of the book and I would have been very disappointed had I actually paid money for it, but it seems to have picked up a bit now. Need to look around for some of his later writing. I was an ardent fan of Lee Kuan Yew, ever since I read his well written Story of Singapore. I noticed when glancing through some of the chapters in volume 2 (From the Third World to the First) that my views on the press differ from his more markedly now. Perhaps it is the experience of living under tight censorship that makes me appreciate the need for a freer press but I think I need to revisit that book again.

In the meantime just started the Undercover Economist by Tim Harford which (halfway through the first chapter) looks very exciting. This shall be my bedtime reading for a while, shall return to the re-reading of Sophie's World when I finish (that, to my small mind is a rather profound book), need to take it in little bits to digest it properly.

Anyway, having fun playing around with odd ideas, mental masturbation if you like, good night out there, whatever you are.

Casserole of Marmot

I'm no chef but this is something I want to share.

John Man has written a highly readable account of the life, death and resurrection of Genghis Khan.

His quest started with an article in the American Journal of Human Genetics. In a DNA study of some 2,000 men across Eurasia, geneticists found that several dozen of them shared a common pattern - a pattern that ran through 16 population groups ranging from the Caspian Sea to the Pacific Ocean. They arrived at the startling hypothesis that it would have been possible for one man, living in the 12th century, to scatter his genetic material across half Eurasia.

Man sets the stage for the search for Genghis Khan by conjuring up a vivid image of the landscape of Central Asia. This recipe is from the introduction, where he describes some of his own travels in the region. Man claims that for the most part the method of cooking would have been familiar to twelfth century families. Bored Domestic Goddesses are hereby invited to try it out.

Casserole of Marmot

(To feed six. Time approx 1 hr)

You will need:
1 marmot
Good quantity of dried dung
Assorted fist-sized stones
1 knife
String
Wire
1 pair pliers
1 blow torch

First, shoot your marmot. Using string, hang dead marmot from a branch. Skin it, peeling skin carefully downwards to keep the skin in one piece. Discard entails. Ignore flies. Remove and dice flesh. At the same time, arrange for the visiting author to collect cow-pats, said author to ensure cow-pats are dried to the texture of polystyrene. Make a pile of dung. Use blow-torch to start slow dung-fire, arranging for smoke to drift over diced marmot flesh to discourage flies. Place stones in fire. Using wire and pliers, sew up limb-holes in marmot skin, binding holes tightly. Do not seal head-hole. Into your marmot-skin bag, insert meat and red-hot stones, using twigs to hold stones. Ignore attached dung, ashes etc. Bind up head-hole with wire, using pliers to secure. Apply blow-torch to skin, scraping off seared fur. Meanwhile hot stones have begun to cook the meat from inside out. Trapped air expands to form taut, round, sausage-like container. As fur is removed, blow-torch cooks meat from outside in. After an hour, cut open and serve meat with fingers. As stones cool, toss them about until you can hold them without too much pain: they are good for health and luck.

Whatever happened to Ladybird books?

Went out to get a cup of yoghurt after lunch and dropped into the bookshop next door. Was browsing aimlessly when I cam upon a rack of Ladybird books. One title (The Little Red Hen) caught my eye and I picked it up. This is a story that I remember from my childhood, glancing through I find that the story is still the same - except for one critical thing: the pictures have changed! I checked another, The Elves and the Shoemaker, and it was just the same. They seem to have revamped the books entirely.

The highlight of the Ladybird books used to be their beautiful illustrations. I think they were either oil paintings or watercolours but done to a very high standard. The pictures were so attractive that one could spend a lot of time just looking at them. They really brought the story to life and it is something I consider very important in encouraging children to pick up a book.

The illustrations in the new editions are fairly all right but nothing compared to the books of old. For examples of the old have a look here I'm not really sure why they changed the books, maybe to make them look more modern I suppose but I think that was a mistake, something that a thriving market in old editions seems to prove.

Anyway for anyone interested in further information on the history of Ladybird books and old titles have a look here and here.

The official site is here.

A good article on another favourite- Tootles the Taxi is here.

James Herriot

Was browsing around in the second hand bookshops on D.R. Wijewardene Mw, just at the corner of Darley road this afternoon. Now these bookshops were famous for their collection of porn and in the dark days of the 1980's and 1990's (and for aeons before that) the only reliable source of supply for the starved male population of the country.

I was there trying to make a quick buck by selling a couple of Playboy magazines (the April 2008 issue plus a Playboy Nudes Special Edition) but apparently things are not going well for the bookshops. Numerous police raids and the advent of the internet have killed their porn magazine business and nobody deals in that anymore. They now retail small quantities porn of DVD's and VCD's but thats about it.

I had gotten the Playboy magazines down after news spread that a girl with some Sri Lankan ancestry named Cristina Caldera appeared in the latest issue of Playboy. Many frantic email and SMS's later I had these two in hand, neither of which had the blasted woman. It was probably in the previous edition but the newsstands don't apparently stock back issues and my friend who brought these down was not able to track the specific issue down.

Disappointed I asked if they had a copy of the Singapore Story but no luck there either. Asked if they had any Kenneth Anderson books (the finest writer on the Indian jungles), but the guy had disposed of four quite recently and had nothing.

Finally asked for James Herriot and picked up two Omnibus editions for Rs.800, about half the price of the new book.

I've been trying to buy his books for some time, they are occasionally available at Vijitha Yapa's but the series is never complete. I read them as a boy and loved them but unfortunately I was introduced to them through the omnibus editions; All Things Wise and Wonderful, All Creatures Great and Small and The Lord God Made Them all. While these have the bulk of his books, some stories are missing.

I read the coffee table book, James Herriot's Yorkshire at the British Council Library, although the book was mangled with several pages torn out.

I did see some of the television series and I came across this wonderful tribute to the man on Youtube, by the actor who played him in the television series : check the links here and here.

To those not familiar with the man - these are books you simply MUST read. They can be enjoyed by both young and old and are an excellent way of reinforcing the reading habit in children (Enid Blyton, in my opinion, being the best way of sparking the interest reading in the first place)

The Wiki entry on the man is here.

Ozymandias

This is something I have been wanting to put up for a while.

I first encountered Ozymandias in the British Museum, standing before the statue of Ramesses II, who is also known by his Greek name Ozymandias.

The poem was a part of the recorded commentary on the statue (which is supposed to have inspired the poet - the wikipedia article linked above carries a picture) but with the hustle and bustle of the museum (it attracts visitor in numbers that are beyond wildest dreams of the Sri Lankan tourist industry) it made only a partial impact.

Some years later there was a reference to it in The Economist and I looked it up - only then did I realise its beauty and here it is, in all its glory:

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley- , 1818