On Anzac Day I am sad

On Anzac Day I remember the people who lost their lives in war.

On Anzac Day I remember the people who survived with injuries or scars, physical and emotional.

On Anzac Day I remember and wonder: what would their lives have been like had they not been affected by the war; what contributions might they have made to their families, communities and society had they survived?

On Anzac Day I remember, I am sad and I am grateful.

On Anzac Day I remember

On Anzac Day I remember my grandfather who was one of the men who sailed to Egypt with the New Zealand Army during World War I. There, one of his tasks was caring for the horses.

On Anzac Day I remember my uncle who served in the Royal Navy during World War II.

On Anzac Day I remember my father who served with the NZ Army’s 20th Battalion. He was burned in a tank and survived, was taken prisoner and escaped and was one of only 5 of a company of 120 men who survived the Battle of Ruweisat Ridge.

On Anzac Day I remember my father in law who also served in the 20th Battalion.

On Anzac Day I remember my mother who served as a nurse aid in the New Zealand Army during World War II.

On Anzac Day I remember and I am grateful.

April 25 in history

On April 25:

1214  King Louis IX of France was born (d. 1270).

1228 Conrad IV of Germany was born (d. 1254).

 

1284 King Edward II of England was born (d. 1327).

1599 Oliver Cromwell, English statesman, was born (d. 1658).

 

1607 Eighty Years’ War: The Dutch fleet destroyed the anchored Spanish fleet at Gibraltar.

1707 The Habsburg army was defeated by Bourbon army at Almansa in the War of the Spanish Succession.

1775 Charlotte of Spain, Spanish Infanta and queen of Portugal, was born (d. 1830).

1792  Highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier became the first person executed by guillotine.

1792 – La Marseillaise was composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.

1829 Charles Fremantle arrived in the HMS Challenger off the coast of modern-day Western Australia prior to declaring the Swan River Colony for the United Kingdom.

 

1846 Thornton Affair: Open conflict began over the disputed border of Texas, triggering the Mexican-American War.

1847 The last survivors of the Donner Party were out of the wilderness.

 

1849 The Governor General of Canada, Lord Elgin, sigeds the Rebellion Losses Bill, outraging Montreal’s English population and triggering the Montreal Riots.

1859 British and French engineers broke ground for the Suez Canal.

 

1861nAmerican Civil War: The Union Army arrived in Washington, D.C.

1862  American Civil War: Forces under Union Admiral David Farragut captured the Confederate city of New Orleans, Louisiana.

1864 American Civil War: The Battle of Marks’ Mills.

1873 Walter de la Mare, English poet, was born (d. 1956).

 

1898 Spanish-American War: The United States declared war on Spain.

1901 New York became the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates.

1905 George Nepia, New Zealand rugby player was born (d. 1986).

1915 New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli.

The start of the Battle of Gallipoli – trrops from Australia, Britain and France were also part of the landings at  Anzac Cove and Cape Helles..

  

1916 Easter Rebellion: The United Kingdom declared martial law in Ireland.

 

1916 – Anzac Day was commemorated for the first time, on the first anniversary of the landing at Anzac Cove.

1917 Ella Fitzgerald, American singer, was born (d. 1996).

1927 Albert Uderzo, French cartoonist, was born.

1929  Yvette Williams First New Zealander woman to win an Olympic gold medal, was born.

1932 Foundation of the Korean People’s Army of North Korea. “4.25″ appeared on the flags of the KPA Ground Force and the KPA Naval Force.

1932 William Roache, British television actor (Coronation Street), was born.

1938 U.S. Supreme Court delivereds opinion in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins and overturned a century of federal common law.

1939  DC Comics published its second major superhero in Detective Comics #27; - Batman.

 

1940  Al Pacino, American actor, was born.

1943 The Demyansk Shield for German troops in commemoration of Demyansk Pocket was instituted.

1944 The United Negro College Fund was incorporated.

1945 Elbe Day: United States and Soviet troops met in Torgau along the River Elbe, cutting the Wehrmacht in two, a milestone in the approaching end of World War II in Europe.

 

1945 – The Nazi occupation army surrendered and left Northern Italy after a general partisan insurrection by the Italian resistance movement; the puppet fascist regime dissolved and Mussolini tried to escape. This day is taken as symbolic of the Liberation of Italy.

 

1945 – Fifty nations gathered in San Francisco to begin the United Nations Conference on International Organisations.

1945 Last German troops retreated from Finland’s soil in Lapland, ending the Lapland War.

 

1948 Yu Shyi-kun, former Premier of Taiwan, was born.

1953 Francis Crick and James D. Watson published Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid describing the double helix structure of DNA.

1959  The St. Lawrence Seaway, linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, officially opened to shipping.

1961 Robert Noyce was granted a patent for an integrated circuit.

 

1966 The city of Tashkent was destroyed by a huge earthquake.

Memorial to victims of the earthquake

1972  Vietnam War: Nguyen Hue Offensive – The North Vietnamese 320th Division forced 5,000 South Vietnamese troops to retreat and traps about 2,500 others northwest of Kontum.

1974 Carnation Revolution: A leftist military coup in Portugal restored democracy after more than forty years as a corporate authoritarian state.

 Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano, overthrown in the Carnation Revolution (Revolução dos Cravos).

1975 As North Vietnamese forces closed in on the South Vietnamese capital Saigon, the Australian Embassy was closed and evacuated, almost ten years to the day since the first Australian troop commitment to South Vietnam.

1976 Chicago Cubs’ outfielder, Rick Monday, rescued the American flag from two protestors who had run on to the field at Dodger Stadium. The two people covered the flag In lighter fluid but before the match was put to the flag, Monday, sprinted in and grabbed it away from them.

 

1981  More than 100 workers were exposed to radiation during repairs of a nuclear power plant in Tsuruga.

1982 Israel completed its withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula per the Camp David Accords.

1983 American schoolgirl Samantha Smith was invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war.

1983 – Pioneer 10 traveled beyond Pluto’s orbit.

1986  Mswati III was crowned King of Swaziland, succeeding his father Sobhuza II.

1988 In Israel, John Demjanuk was sentenced to death for war crimes committed in World War II.

1990  The Hubble Telescope was deployed into orbit from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

2003 The Human Genome Project came to an end 2.5 years before first anticipated.

 

2005 The final piece of the Obelisk of Axum was returned to Ethiopia after being stolen by the invading Italian army in 1937.

 

2005 Bulgaria and Romania signed accession treaties to join the European Union.

2005 – 107 died in Amagasaki rail crash in Japan.

2007  Boris Yeltsin‘s funeral – the first to be sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church for a head of state since the funeral of Emperor Alexander III in 1894.

 

Sourced from NZ History Online & WIkipedia

Another lovely day

When weather presenters say “another lovely day” they are usually referring to clear skies and sunshine.

When you’re as much in need of rain as many of us are now, this is what a really lovely day looks like:

Anzac Day’s about peace too

If there were any white poppies on sale in Wanaka, I didn’t see them and they didn’t impact on sales of the RSA’s red ones.

When I went to buy one late yesterday afternoon they’d sold out and I had to try a couple of other sales spots before I found some.

The people selling the white poppies got the publicity they were seeking. The red ones are such an established symbol of Anzac Day I doubt that many, if any, would have bought a white one by mistake.

But the whole campaign was misguided.

Anzac Day doesn’t glorify war.

 It commemorates the sacrifice of people in active service.

It’s also reminds us of the sacrifices of those who served in other ways.

It reminds us to be grateful to them and for what we have because of them. That includes the freedom to indulge in misguided PR stunts.

It also includes peace and ANzac day celebrates that too.

Just wondering . . .

. . .  why the people who make washing machines don’t label the water inlets hot and cold and/or include information on which is which in the instructions.

It’s not hard to change the hoses to the opposite connection if you get it wrong but it would be easier if you didn’t have to.

April 24 in history

On April 24:

1479 BC – Thutmose III ascended to the throne of Egypt, although power effectively shifted to Hatshepsut.

1184 BC – The Greeks entered Troy using the Trojan Horse (traditional date).

 

1533 William I of Orange (d. 1584), was born.

1558 Mary, Queen of Scots, married the Dauphin of France, François, at Notre Dame de Paris.

 

1581 Vincent de Paul, French saint (d. 1660), was born.

1620  John Graunt, English statistician and founder of the science of demography (d. 1674), was born.

1704 The first regular newspaper in the United States, the News-Letter, was published.

 

1800 The United States Library of Congress was established when President John Adams signed legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress”.

1815 Anthony Trollope, English novelist (d. 1882), was born.

1862 American Civil War: A flotilla commanded by Union Admiral David Farragut passed two Confederate forts on the Mississippi River on its way to capture New Orleans.

 

1877  Russo-Turkish War: Russia declared war on Ottoman Empire.

1898 The Spanish-American War: The United States declared war on Spain.

1904 The Lithuanian press ban was lifted after almost 40 years.

1907 Hersheypark, founded by Milton S. Hershey for the exclusive use of his employees, was opened.

1913 The Woolworth Building skyscraper in New York was opened.

1915  The Armenian Genocide began when Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople.:

 

1916 Easter Rising: The Irish Republican Brotherhood led by nationalists Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, and Joseph Plunkett started a rebellion.

1916 Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launched a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island to organise a rescue for the ice-trapped ship Endurance.

 

1918 First tank-to-tank combat, at Villers-Bretonneux, when three British Mark IVs met three German A7Vs.

 

1922 New Zealand’s first Poppy Day.

1926 The Treaty of Berlin was signed. Germany and the Soviet Union each pledged neutrality in the event of an attack on the other by a third party for the next five years.

1932 Benny Rothman led the Mass trespass of Kinder Scout, leading to substantial legal reforms in the United Kingdom.

 

1953 Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

 

1955 – The Bandung Conference ended Twenty-nine non-aligned nations of Asia and Africa finished a meeting that condemned colonialism, racism, and the Cold War.

 

1957 Suez Crisis: The Suez Canal was reopened following the introduction of UNEF peacekeepers to the region.

1960 A severe earthquake shook Lar in Fars province, Iran, killing more than 200 people.

1961 The 17th century Swedish ship Vasa was salvaged.

1963 Marriage of Princess Alexandra of Kent to Angus Ogilvy at Westminster Abbey.

1965 Civil war broke out in the Dominican Republic when Colonel Francisco Caamaño, overthrew the triumvirate that had been in power.

1967 Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died in Soyuz 1 when its parachute failed to open. He was the first human to die during a space mission.

 

1967 – Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland said in a news conference that the enemy had “gained support in the United States that gave him hope that he could win politically that which he cannot win militarily.”

1970 The first Chinese satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, was launched.

1970 – The Gambia became a republic with Dawda Jawara as the first President.

1971 Soyuz 10 docked with Salyut 1.

1980 Eight U.S. servicemen died in Operation Eagle Claw as they attempted to end the Iran hostage crisis.

1990 STS-31: The Hubble Space Telescope was launched by the Space Shuttle Discovery.

 

1990 – Gruinard Island, Scotland, was officially declared free of the anthrax disease after 48 years of quarantine.

 

1993 – An IRA bomb devastated the Bishopsgate area of London.

1996  In the United States, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 was introduced.

2004 The United States lifted economic sanctions imposed on Libya 18 years previously, as a reward for its cooperation in eliminating weapons of mass destruction.

200 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was inaugurated as the 265th Pope taking the name Pope Benedict XVI.

2005  Snuppy, the world’s first cloned dog was born in South Korea.

2006  King Gyanendra of Nepal gave into the demands of protesters and restored the parliament that he dissolved in 2002.

2007 Iceland announced that Norway would shoulder the defense of Iceland during peacetime.

2007 – Gliese 581 d discovered by a Chilean observatory and believed to be a planet capable of holding extraterresial life.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Dark Side of the Moon

Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon left the charts for the first time on this day in 1988 after spending a record of 741 consecutive weeks (over 14 years) on the Billboard 200.

Enterprising Rural Women Awards announced

The South Island Rural Women’s Enterprising Rural Women Award  winner is  Tracey Robinson of Cosy Toes Limited and the North Island award went to Tineke Verkade of Homeopathic Farm Support Limited.

 Cosey Toes, based in Rotherham, North Canterbury, is an online and mail order retail business, specialising in 100 % New Zealand made merino wool socks, merino clothing and other New Zealand wool products for babies and children.

Homeopathic Farm Support, in Waikato,  supplies high quality homeopathic products and information support to farmers and rural livestock holders throughout New Zealand and overseas.

Both are contenders for the supreme award which will be announced at Rural Women’s national conference in Oamaru in May. 

The Awards were judged by Margaret Chapman, Rural Women New Zealand’s national president, Theresa Gattung of Wool Partners International and Doug Langford, past chairman of Access Limited.

The judges were impressed by the innovation and adaptability of all the entrants in this year’s Enterprising Rural Women Award, many of whom have had to overcome extra obstacles to run a business from a rural location.

Tineke Verkade started her business following a career in nursing, a background in science and an interest in complimentary medicine.  She studied naturopathy and medical herbalism as well as homeopathy and has been in private practice since 1991.  Her aim is to provide easily available, affordable and effective complimentary animal health remedies.

Margaret Chapman says “Tineke Verkade has built up an impressive business from early days of skepticism and little belief in alternative methods of healing from the farming community.”

Nowadays more than a quarter of Fonterra dairy farmers and many sheep and beef producers use homeopathy.

South Island winner Tracey Robinson set up her Cosy Toes business after experiencing frustration that wool socks were not available for her two pre-schoolers.  Researching the market, she discovered that inexpensive imports of synthetic socks had led to New Zealand businesses closing down and selling their machines. 

She decided to reverse that trend, setting up a business in a rural township with a population of just 300, using the internet to supply a niche, high quality product using innovative marketing, including social networking sites.

Judge Doug Langford says Tracey Robinson is resourceful, passionate and determined to succeed in the face of obstacles.  Theresa Gattung adds “Cosy Toes is courageous in its inception and spot on in its execution.  Cosy Toes is a great example of new ways to reinvent the existing.”

 Cosy Toes products are now posted all over the world, and Tracey has gone on to support those less fortunate, including organising the Cosy Toes Sock Drive for orphans in Uganda.

You can read more about Cosy Toes  here and Homeopathic Farm Support here.

The awards are a wonderful initiative by Rural Women to celebrate rural women in business and their achievements. 

The South Island Award is sponsored by Ballance Agri-Nutrients and the North Island prize by Access.

I can see clearly now – and then

Learning to read is a vague and very distant memory.

I have a faint recollection of sitting on the wood box at the back door reading to my father, reader full or pride and read-to full of praise. But any of the frustrations I might have encountered in making sense of the squiggles on the page have been buried under years of happy memories of reading pleasure.

The only time I am aware of just how difficult life must be if you can’t read is when I am overseas and confronted with a foreign language.

Or it was, until my eyes started letting me down.

Gradually the print in the phone book got smaller, then restaurant menus became less distinct. When I began to struggle with the newspaper I went to an optometrist who told me I was on the edge of needing glasses. He could sell me some but said I’d spend more time losing them than using them and it would be better to just ensure the light was good when I was reading.

Time passed and good light or not I was having trouble reading more often. I went back to the optometrist who prescribed glasses with the advice to use them only when I really needed to because the more I used them the more I’d need them.

I’d been particularly busy at that time, but life calmed down soon afterwards. When I caught up on sleep my sight improved and I rarely needed the glasses.

But that was eight years ago and in the last few months the occasions when I can’t see clearly enough to read properly have increased.

The list of things I struggle to decipher has grown from phone numbers and menus to include ingredients on products at the supermarket, all manner of instructions, magazines with light print on glossy paper at night, recipes, newspapers, books and smaller fonts on the computer. I also have difficulty threading needles.

My glasses help me with all of those close up things but make anything even a little further away blurry.

If my reading problems were constant I’d go back to the optometrist and invest in some glasses which gave me the magnification I need when I needed it without blurring the rest of the world so I could wear them all the time.

But my failing vision is still intermittent – bad enough to need glasses sometimes but not yet enough to require them most of the time.

The problem with that is having the specs close at hand when they’re needed.

The solution has been to supplement the glasses the optometrist prescribed with several cheap pairs – one by the phone book, another by the computer,  a third by the bed, a fourth in the car and a pocket peeper – a credit card sized magnifying glass – in my handbag.

In spite of that I still find that my brain hasn’t quite caught up with fact that it’s my eyes letting me down.

That means I waste time peering at squiggles until the light dawns and I remember it’s not that I can’t read, it’s just that I can only see clearly now and then without assistance.

Bill 2 – Labour 0

Finance Minister Bill English has had a very good week.

First there was his answer to a question from Labour MP David Cunliffe (Hat Tip: Keeping Stock):

8. Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all his recent statements?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) : That was such a good question that it should have been higher up the list. The answer is yes. In particular I stand by my statements about the mismanagement of the previous Government, which saw our tradable industries stagnate for a decade, Government spending soar, per capita GDP decline, and New Zealand go into recession a year before the rest of the world did.

Then yesterday he announced that another $1.8 billion of low quality spending is being redirected to high priority areas.

“That’s a significant sum of money we’re making available for priority areas such as better healthcare services, better education and keeping New Zealanders safe.

“The Government will continue to weed out low quality spending. We will live within the $1.1 billion annual operating allowance for new spending we have set ourselves, and restrict annual increases in this figure to 2 per cent from 2011/12.”

 Labour spent the lot when there was plenty to spare. Let’s not endanger our blood pressure by imagining what damage they’d be doing if they were in control now we’re so badly in debt.

And in case Labour suggested the savings meant Bill could loosen the grip he has on government spending he explained the necessity for continuing frugality:

“I want to get the Government back into budget surplus as quickly as possible, because surpluses give us choices.

“For example, surpluses give us choices to invest more in public services; to pay down public debt; to resume contributions to the New Zealand Super Fund – or to do any number of other things.

“As long as we run deficits, we don’t have those choices,” Mr English said.

In this way, it’s running the country isn’t unlike running a household. If you’re in debt you don’t have choices. You have to give up luxuries and reassess necessities and the sooner you’re back in the black, the sooner you have some choices.

April 23 in history

On April 23:

215 BC A temple was built on the Capitoline Hill dedicated to Venus Erycina to commemorate the Roman defeat at Lake Trasimene.

1014 Battle of Clontarf: Brian Boru defeated Viking invaders, but was killed in battle.

1229 Ferdinand III of Castile conquered Cáceres.

1343 St. George’s Night Uprising.

1348 Edward III announced the founding of the Order of the Garter.

1521 Battle of Villalar: King Charles I of Spain defeated the Comuneros.

1564 – William Shakespeare, English writer and actor was born. (Traditional approximate birth date (in the Julian calendar) based on April 25th baptism).

1597  William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor was first performed, with Queen Elizabeth I in attendance.

 

1621 William Penn, English admiral was born (d. 1670).

 

1635 The first public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, was founded.

 

1660 Treaty of Oliwa was established between Sweden and Poland.

 

1661King Charles II  of England, Scotland and Ireland was crowned in Westminster Abbey.

 

1815 The Second Serbian Uprising – a second phase of the national revolution of the Serbs against the Ottoman Empire, erupted shortly after the annexation of the country to the Ottoman Empire.

 

1867 William Lincoln patented the zoetrope, a machine that showed animated pictures by mounting a strip of drawings in a wheel.

1895 Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand writer, was born.

1910 Theodore Roosevelt made his The Man in the Arena speech.

1920 The national council in Turkey denounced the government of Sultan Mehmed VI and announced a temporary constitution.

1920 The Grand National Assembly of Turkey was founded in Ankara.

1923 1st official celebration of Children’s day, world’s only Children’s day that is offically being celebrated since 1923 and with international participation since 1979.

1932  The 153-year old De Adriaan Windmill in Haarlem bureds down.

 

1935  The Polish Constitution of 1935  was adopted.

1935 The first official Children’s day was celebrated in Turkey.

1940  The Rhythm Night Club fire at a dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi, killed 198 people.

1941 World War II: The Greek government and King George II evacuated Athens before the invading Wehrmacht.

1942  World War II: Baedeker Blitz – German bombers hit Exeter, Bath and York in retaliation for the British raid on Lübeck.

1948 1948 Arab-Israeli War: Haifa was captured from Arab forces.

1949 Chinese Civil War: Establishment of the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

1955 The Canadian Labour Congress was formed by the merger of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada and the Canadian Congress of Labour.

1961  Algiers putsch by French generals.

 1967 Soviet space programme: Soyuz 1 (Russian: Союз 1, Union 1) was a manned spaceflight, Launched into orbit carrying cosmonaut Colonel Vladimir Komarov.

1967 A group of young radicals was expelled from the Nicaraguan Socialist Party. This group went on to found the Socialist Workers Party.

 

1968  Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University took over administration buildings and shut down the university.

1979 Fighting in London between the Anti-Nazi League and the Metropolitan Police’s Special Patrol Group resulted in the death of protester Blair Peach, a New Zealander.

1982  The Conch Republic was established.

1983 Prince William met Buzzy Bee.

 1985 Coca-Cola changed its formula and released New Coke. The response was overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula was back on the market in less than 3 months.

1987 28 construction workers died when the L’Ambiance Plaza apartment building collapsed while under construction.

1988 Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon left the charts for the first time after spending a record of 741 consecutive weeks (over 14 years) on the Billboard 200.

1990  Namibia became the 160th member of the United Nations and the 50th member of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Flag	Coat of arms

1993 Eritreans vote overwhelmingly for independence from Ethiopia in a United Nations-monitored referendum.

1997  Omaria massacre in Algeria: 42 villagers were killed.

2003 Beijing closed all schools for two weeks because of the SARS virus.

2009 The gamma ray burst GRB 090423 was observed for 10 seconds as the most distant object of any kind and also the oldest known object in the universe.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Minder

Happy birthday George Cole – 85 today.

Good call on ECan commissioners

Environment and Local Body Ministers Nick Smith and Rodney Hide have named the six commissioners tasked with overseeing Environment Canterbury and fixing the region’s pressing water issues.

Deputy to chair Dame Margaret Bazley is David Caygill, who has experience in local and central government, the legal profession and chairs several organisations including the Electricity Commission.

Biographies of the remaining commissioners, David Bedford, Donald Couch, Tom Lambie Professor Peter Skelton and Rex Williams are at the link above.

I am delighted that Tom Lambie is one of the commissioners. He is Lincoln University chancellor and an organic farmer who gained a lot of respect when he chaired Federated Farmers. He has personal experience of the importance of careful water management through his involvement with the Opuha Dam.

Replacing elected councillors isn’t ideal. But these appointees have a much better mix of skills and experience to deal with the crisis facing ECan and the region’s water than an election could have delivered.

Yehudi Munuhi – Paganini Concerto for Violin #1 in D Major

Yehudi Menuhin would have been 94 today.

It’s not just human waste

Apropos of yesterday’s post about the litter and worse left by freedom campers, I had a reminder this morning that it’s not just human waste which causes problems.

Most dog owners are responsible and it’s not unusual to see plastic bag dispensers at the start of popular walking trails for people who’ve forgotten to bring something to pick up pooch pooh.

The idea is that you not only pick up the pooh in the bag, you take it away and dispose of it carefully.

Not everyone gets the idea:

More cream on the milk payout?

A review of the season’s milk price and distributable profit will be on the agenda of next week’s meeting of the Fonterra board.

In a newsletter to shareholders chair, Sir Henry Van der Heyden says he’ll let us know right away of any changes.

Is that a hint the forecast payout may go up? The dairy grapevine (or should that be milk line?) suggests another 20 cents could be possible.

That would provide a welcome boost for individual farmers and the wider economy.

The drought has forced more than a quarter of Fonterra suppliers to dry off early. Even a little more added to the current forecast payout will be some compensation for more than a month’s less production.

Two years . . .

. . . 4,710 posts, 7,734 comments and 62,067 spam messages (why do they bother?) since I started blogging.

The most popular posts have been:

Home page	190,402
About Homepaddock	2,485
Double-Decker bus for sale	2,300
Public porn makes boobs of all	1,702
PETA boobs with breast milk campaign	1,641
Where do you come from	850
Photo finish for Melbourne Cup	742
Pregorexia dangerous for mothers and bab	685
Dr Pat Farry	614
If you need a haircut in Singapore . . .	593

The most used search terms which directed visitors here were:

homepaddock	834
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public boobs	144
susan boyle	134
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Thank you to the other bloggers whose writing I’ve come to enjoy (one blog can very easily lead to another, and sometimes another . . . ) with special mention to these one who send traffic this way.

And an electronic bottle of whatever they fancy to the blokes at No Minister for topping the list by a very large margin:

nominister.blogspot.com	27,668
kiwiblog.co.nz/blogroll	8,800
keepingstock.blogspot.com	6,282
asianinvasion2006.blogspot.com	4,925
wellingtonhive.blogspot.com	4,889
roarprawn.blogspot.com	2,715
nzconservative.blogspot.com	2,698
poneke.wordpress.com	2,525
kiwiblog.co.nz	1,796
pmofnz.blogspot.com	1,697
google.com/reader/view	1,591
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kismetfarm.blogspot.com	1,148
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macdoctor.co.nz	872
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tumeke.blogspot.com	512
thehandmirror.blogspot.com	437
wordpress.com	427
tvhe.co.nz/blog-roll	416
nzblogosphere.blogspot.com	402
thestandard.org.nz	371
bowalleyroad.blogspot.com	369
fairfactsmedia.blogspot.com	340
stephenfranks.co.nz	339
bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=780…	337
truthseekernz.blogspot.com	321
adamsmith.wordpress.com	305
whaleoil.co.nz	286
quoteunquotenz.blogspot.com	278
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farmgirllive.blogspot.com	259
blogger.com/profile/08596903968235369…	254
davegeeblog.com	247
alfgrumblemp.wordpress.com	237
pc.blogspot.com	232
bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=692…	223
netvibes.com	215

Blogging has been an interesting and fun. It’s the feedback, even (and sometimes especially ), from people whose views contradict mine – which makes it so.

 Thank you all for popping in, linking, and leaving comments.

April 22 in history

On April 22:

1451 Isabella I of Castile was born.

1500  Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral became the first European to sight Brazil.

 

1529  Treaty of Saragossa divided the eastern hemisphere between Spain and Portugal along a line 297.5 leagues or 17° east of the Moluccas.

 

1692 James Stirling, Scottish mathematician, was born.

1707 Henry Fielding, English author, was born.

1724 Immanuel Kant, German philosopher, was born.

1809  Battle of Eckmühl: Austrian army defeated by the First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France and driven over the Danube at Regensburg.

1832 Julius Sterling Morton, Arbor Day founder, was born.

1836 Texas Revolution: A day after the Battle of San Jacinto, forces under Texas General Sam Houston captured Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna.

1863 American Civil War: Grierson’s Raid began when troops under Union Army Colonel Benjamin Grierson attacked central Mississippi.

1870 Vladimir Lenin, Russian revolutionary, was born.

 

1889 At high noon, thousands rushed to claim land in the Land Run of 1889. Within hours the cities of Oklahoma City and Guthrie were formed with populations of at least 10,000.

 

1898 Spanish-American War: The United States Navy began a blockade of Cuban ports and the USS Nashville captured a Spanish merchant ship.

1912 Pravda, the “voice” of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, began publication in Saint Petersburg.

1914 Jan de Hartog, Dutch writer, was born.

1915  The use of poison gas in World War I escalated when chlorine gas was released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres.

 

1916 Yehudi Menuhin, American-born violinist, was born.

 

1923 Aaron Spelling, American television producer, was born.

1925 George Cole, English actor, was born.

1930 The United Kingdom, Japan and the United States signed the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting shipbuilding.

 

1936 The alliance between the Ratana Church and the Labour Party was cemented at a meeting between Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana and Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage

1937 Jack Nicholson, American actor, was born.

 

1944  World War II: Operation Persecution was initiated – Allied forces landed in the Hollandia area of New Guinea.

1944 Steve Fossett, American adventurer, was born.

1945  World War II: Prisoners at the Jasenovac concentration camp revolted. 520 were killed and 80 escaped.

1945 World War II: Fuehrerbunker: After learning that Soviet forces have taken Eberswalde without a fight, Adolf Hitler admited defeat in his underground bunker and stated that suicide was his only recourse.

  

1940 Peter Frampton, English musician, was born.

1954 Red Scare: The Army-McCarthy Hearings began.

 

1964  The 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair opened for its first season.

 

1969 British yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston completed the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world.

 

1970 The first Earth Day was celebrated.

 

1979 The Albert Einstein Memorial was unveiled at The National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC.

 

1992 Explosion in Guadalajara, Mexico – 206 people were killed, nearly 500 injured and 15,000 left homeless.

1993 The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. was dedicated.

1993 – Version 1.0 of the Mosaic web browser was released.

 

1997 Haouch Khemisti massacre in Algeria – 93 villagers killed.

1997 – The Japanese embassy hostage crisis ended in Lima, Peru.

1998 Disney’s Animal Kingdom opened at Walt Disney World.

2000 – The Big Number Change took place in the United Kingdom.

2000 Second Battle of Elephant Pass, Tamil Tigers captures a strategic Sri Lankan Army base and held it for 8 years.

2004 Two fuel trains collided in Ryongchon, North Korea, killing up to 150 people.

2006 243 people were injured in pro-democracy protest in Nepal after Nepali security forces open fire on protesters against King Gyanendra.

2008 The United States Air Force retired the remaining F-117 Nighthawk aircraft in service.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Pictures of You

Happy birthday Robert Smith – 51 today.