The Parent Trap

It’s still Hayley Mills’ birthday and I also loved this film.

Fox On The Run

Happy birthday Mike Vickers, 60 today.

The Truth About Spring

Happy birthday Hayley Mills, 64 today.

I loved this film when I was a kid and wanted to be Spring and/or saila round the world. Sigh.

The dangers of jam

How many people have contracted any sort of illness from eating jam cooked in a home kitchen?

The question first came up several years ago when a woman approached then-MP Katherine Rich at the Upper Clutha A&P Show.

The woman had been making jam for a Save The Children charity shop in Canterbury  for years, raising thousands of dollars for a very good cause in the process. But she’d been told it would no longer be acceptable unless she upgraded her kitchen to commercial standard or shifted her jam making to a commercial kitchen.

A media fuss followed and the local body involved backed down. But now another one is waving the big stick at charity cooks.

If I eat at a restaurant or buy food from a supermarket I expect high standards and have no problem with the authorities getting involved to monitor them. But if I buy jam or baking form a charity stall I know it’s come from a home kitchen and accept the tiny risk which comes with that.

Will they follow us home to make sure we store and use the jam the correct way next?

Jam is made from boiling fruit and sugar. I’d think the danger of conrating anything untoward from it would be considerably less than the risk to your helath from batting your head against bureaucracy.

Hat Tip: goNZo Freakpower.

High tea and literary conversation

The invitation was to A Proper High Tea at Burnside  with the added attraction of a conversation in which Fiona Kidman and Owen Marshall would share their thoughts on The Spirit of Place in Writing.

Burnside is one of North Otago’s original homesteads which specialises in Victorian fare. The proper high tea included pease pudding, devilled chicken, cold sliced venison, jellied beetroot, green salad and rooled bread and butter.

Dainty cinnamon oysters, chocolate cream cakes and a selection of fruit tarts followed.

In between courses the two writers took us around New Zealand and the world with poetry and prose.

The evening was a fundraiser for the Janet Frame Eden Street Trust.

Earlier in the day Fiona had led a workshop on writing memoirs in the Janet Frame room at Waitaki Girls’ High School followed by lunch and writing time at Janet’s childhood home at 56 Eden Street.

April 18 in history

On April 18:

1025 Bolesław Chrobry was crowned in Gniezno, becoming the first King of Poland.

1480 Lucrezia Borgia, Florentine ruler and daughter of Pope Alexander VI, was born.

1506 The cornerstone of the current St. Peter’s Basilica was laid.

  

1518  Bona Sforza was crowned as queen consort of Poland.

1738 Real Academia de la Historia (“Royal Academy of History”) founded in Madrid.

1775  American Revolution: The British advancement by sea began; Paul Revere and other riders warned the countryside of the troop movements.

 

1783 Fighting ceased in the American Revolution, eight years to the day since it began.

1797 The Battle of Neuwied – French victory against the Austrians.

1831 The University of Alabama was founded.

1847 A Maori raid on the Gilfillan farm at Matarawa, near Wanganui, left four family members dead.

 

1848 American victory at the battle of Cerro Gordo opened the way for invasion of Mexico.

 

1880 An F4 tornado struck Marshfield, Missouri, killing 99 people and injuring 100.

1881  Billy the Kid escaped from the Lincoln County jail.

1889 Jessie Street, Australian suffragette, feminist, and human rights activist, was born.

 

1899 The St. Andrew’s Ambulance Association was granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria.

1902  Quetzaltenango, second largest city of Guatemala, was destroyed by Earthquake.

1906 The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed much of San Francisco.

1906 – The Los Angeles Times story on the Azusa Street Revival launched Pentecostalism as a worldwide movement.

 

1909 Joan of Arc was beatified in Rome.

1912  The Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brought 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City.

 

1915 Joy Gresham Lewis, American writer, wife of C. S. Lewis, was born.

1915 French pilot Roland Garros was shot down and glided to a landing on the German side of the lines.

1923 Yankee Stadium, “The House that Ruth Built,” opened.

 

1924 Simon & Schuster published the first Crossword puzzle book.

1930 BBC Radio infamously announced that there was no news on that day.

1930 Clive Revill, New Zealand born actor, was born.

1940 Mike Vickers, British guitarist and saxophonist (Manfred Mann)British guitarist and saxophonist (Manfred Mann).

1942 World War II: The Doolittle Raid - Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya bombed.

1942 – Pierre Laval became Prime Minister of Vichy France.

1943 World War II: Operation Vengeance, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was killed when his aircraft was shot down by U.S. fighters over Bougainville Island.

1945 More than 1,000 bombers attackedthe small island of Heligoland, Germany.

1946 Hayley Mills, English actress, was born.

1946 The League of Nations was dissolved.

1949  The Republic of Ireland Act came into force.

1954 Gamal Abdal Nasser seizes power in Egypt.

1955 Twenty-nine nations met at Bandung, Indonesia, for the first Asian-African Conference.

1958 A United States federal court ruled that poet Ezra Pound was to be released from an insane asylum.

1961 CONCP was founded in Casablanca as a united front of African movements opposing Portuguese colonial rule.

1971 David Tennant, Scottish actor, was born

1974 The prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto inaugurated Lahore Dry port.

1980 – The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) came into being, with Canaan Banana as the country’s first President.

1983 – A suicide bomber destroyed the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people.

1988 The United States launched Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval forces in the largest naval battle since World War II.

1992 General Abdul Rashid Dostum revolted against President Mohammad Najibullah of Afghanistan and allied with Ahmed Shah Massoud to capture Kabul.

 

1993President of Pakistan, Ghulam Ishaq Khan dissolved the National Assembly and dismissed the Cabinet.

1996 In Lebanon, at least 106 civilians are killed when the Israel Defense Forces shelled the UN compound at Quana where more than 800 civilians had taken refuge.

2007  The Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in a 5-4 decision.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Did you see the one about . . .

Tuesday’s poem - a new (to me) blog which features a new poem once a week and links to other blogs who post a poem on Tuesdays (Hat Tip Beatties Book Blog – and also over there is erotic vegan poetry - not the average gift for a politician and 10 rules for writing fiction..

Licensed to kill - Macdoctor thinks the driving age is still too low.

Anzac Day an alternative to wreaths - The Veteran at No Minister asks if we should follow the Australian example of one official wreath and others leaving books to be donated to schools.

That went well/badly - Dim Post’s plot to prove TV news is useless went awry.

PPTA declares war on ministers - John Ansell shows on what teacher unions really want.

Ian Sharp on James K Baxter - Quote Unquote with another 10th annivesary reprint from Quote Unquote.

When freedom isn’t free - the difference between classical and modern liberals at Skeptical Doctor.

Lonely Shepherd

Happy birthday James Last – 81 today.

Saturday’s smiles

Mrs. Donovan was walking down O’Connell Street in Dublin when she met up with Father Flaherty.

The Father said, ‘Top o’ the mornin’ to ye! Aren’t ye Mrs. Donovan and didn’t I marry ye and yer hoosband two years ago?’

She replied, ‘Aye, that ye did, Father.’

The Father asked, ‘And be there any wee little ones yet?’

She replied, ‘No, not yet, Father.’

The Father said, ‘Well now, I’m going to Rome next week and I’ll light a candle for ye

and yer hoosband.’

She replied, ‘Oh, thank ye, Father.’

They then parted ways.

Some years later they met again. The Father asked, ‘Well now, Mrs. Donovan, how are ye these days?’

She replied, ‘Oh, very well, Father!’

The Father asked, ‘And tell me , have ye any wee ones yet?’

She replied, ‘Oh yes, Father! Two sets of twins and six singles, ten in all!’

 The Father said, ‘That’s wonderful! How is yer loving hoosband doing?’

She replied, ‘E’s gone to Rome to blow out yer blasted candle.’

Volcano vs planes

The grounding of flights because of the danger from the ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull has taken travellers back to the olden days when travel by plane was the stuff of science fiction.

Will it also have an impact on the weather or climate?

The eruption of Pinatubo in 1991was blamed for at least one cold summer here.

An email from a friend in Britain asks, if planes can’t fly above 20,000 feet, why can’t at least some fly safely below that height?

Laughy Kate has another question: how do you pronounce Eyjafjallajokull?

The d word

The Oamaru Mail has headlined the d word: Drought declaration looms for Otago region.

We had a short, sharp downpour on Thursday which has taken the pressure off us but we’ve got irrigation, scale and diversity.

It was a very localised rain and even those who got as much as we did will still be facing some tought decisions if they’re dryland farming.

North Otago has been dogged by droughts since farming started here – and no doubt before.

This dry is unusual because it’s taken so long for public acknowledgement.

When there wasn’t much irrigation, all farmers stopped spending when the weather got dry and it didn’t take long for the town to fell the impact.

I think now there’s now enough irrigation to keep the money flowing into Oamaru so the town hasn’t been affected the way it was in the past.

We look across green pasture to dry paddocks in the distant and are grateful we’ve got irrigation. It must be hard for those on the dryland looking back the other way as they run short of feed and have to face up to quitting stock.

There was a dusting of snow on the Kakanui mountains yesterday morning. It was gone by lunchtime but it’s a sign that temperatures are dropping so even if the region gets more rain soon, it will be too late for pre-winter growth.

One good thing about the decrease in the sheep population is that there is plenty of space at the freezing works so farmers needing to reduce stock will have somewhere to send them.

Lambs are selling for about $75 dollars and ewes for around $55. Two year old beef cattle are fetching about $950.

It may not be a fortune but it has been much worse.

When the ag-sag of the 80s coincided with a drought some farmers got bills when they sent stock to the works because transport and killing charges exceeded the value of the animals.

PS Contact details for the Rural Support Trust which helps rural families facing an adverse event – climatic, financial or personal – are on this website.

Quote of the week – 7/7 at WTO

It’s best to forgive them, for they know not what they do – the assortment of anarchists, communists, warmists, “truthers”, drug dealers, arms peddlers, “peace activists” and other freaks who travel about the world beating their bongo-drums, performing second-rate capoerira, smashing up McDonalds, burning police cars and terrorising the locals while protesting against globalisation and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

So stuck in a zero-sum mentality are they that they can’t grasp basic concepts of gains from trade.

Nor can they grasp that the WTO is the most democratic multilateral institution in history – far more than the corrupt and dysfunctional UN, so beloved by the left. Everything must be agreed by every member – from China and the US to Lesotho and the Solomon Islands – before anything is agreed.

It’s beyond the radicals’ understanding too, that for the last few thousand years, up until living memory, trade disputes between tribes and states were settled with war.

Now for the first time in history, they’re settled in what amount to international courts in Geneva, with both sides agreeing to be bound.

Today the product with the least adequate coverage under WTO rules is petroleum.

The rioters should ask themselves if that might be one of the reasons that product continues to be a major cause of international instability…

That’s a very long quote but it comes from Matthew Hooton in the print edition of the NBR which isn’t available online.

The remaining two thirds of the column is worth reading too.

In it he reminds us that MFAT has a perfect record at the WTO – seven wins from seven cases. He also gives other examples of small countries which have taken on big powers and won.

The column leads me to one question, however: why, when our trade negotiators have been so successful did the people who negoitated New Zealand”s obligations under the Kyoto Protocol serve us so poorly?

April 17 in history

On April 17:

 1397  Geoffrey Chaucer told the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II.

 

1492 Spain and Christopher Columbus signed the Capitulations of Santa Fe for his voyage to Asia to acquire spices.

 

1521 Martin Luther spoke to the assembly at the Diet of Worms, refusing to recant his teachings.

1524 Giovanni da Verrazzano reached New York harbour.

 

1555 After 18 months of siege, Siena surrendered to the Florentine-Imperial army. The Republic of Siena was incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

1620 Marguerite Bourgeoys, founder of the Congregation of Notre Dame, was born.

1797  Sir Ralph Abercromby attacked San Juan, Puerto Rico in what became one of the largest invasions of the Spanish territories in America.

1820 Alexander Joy Cartwright, Inventor of the Modern Game of Baseball, was born.

 

1837  J. P. Morgan, American financier, was born.

1861 American Civil War: Virginia seceded from the United States.

1864 American Civil War: The Battle of Plymouth began.

1865 Mary Surratt was arrested as a conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

1880 New Zealand’s first inter-city brass band contest was hled.

1885 Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), Danish author, was born.

 

1895 The Treaty of Shimonoseki between China and Japan was signed. This marked the end of the First Sino-Japanese War, the defeated Qing Empire was forced to renounce its claims on Korea and to concede the southern portion of the Fengtien province, Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands to Japan.

 

1905 The Supreme Court of the United States decided Lochner v. New York which held that the “right to free contract” was implicit in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

1907 The Ellis Island immigration centre processed 11,747 people, more than on any other day.

1918 William Holden, American actor, was born.

1924 – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios was formed by the merger of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and the Louis B. Mayer Company.

1929 James Last, German band leader, was born.

 

1941 World War II: The Kingdom of Yugoslavia surrendered to Germany.

1942 French prisoner of war General Henri Giraud escaped from his castle prison in Festung Königstein.

194 Brazilian forces liberate the town of Montese, Italy, from German forces.

1949 At midnight 26 Irish counties officially left the British Commonwealth. A 21-gun salute on O’Connell Bridge, Dublin, ushered in the Republic of Ireland.

1957  Nick Hornby, English author, was born.

1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion: A group of CIA financed and trained Cuban refugees landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro.

 

1964 The Ford Motor Company unveiled the Ford Mustang at the New York World’s Fair.

 

1964  Jerrie Mock became the first woman to circumnavigate the world by air.

 

1969 Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy.

1969 Czechoslovakian Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubček was deposed.

1970 Apollo 13 returned to Earth safely.

1971 The People’s Republic of Bangladesh formed, under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

1971  Sierra Leone became a republic.

1973 German counter-terrorist unit GSG 9 founded.

1974 Victoria Beckham, English singer (Spice Girls), was born.

1975  The Cambodian Civil War ended. The Khmer Rouge captureed the capital Phnom Penh and Cambodian government forces surrendered.

1982 Patriation of the Canadian constitution in Ottawa.

1984  Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher was killed by gunfire from the Libyan People’s Bureau in London during a small demonstration outside the embassy. Ten others were wounded.

 

1986 The Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years’ War between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly ended.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Rock Around The Clock

Rudy Pompilli, was born on this day in 1924 or 1926 (Wikipedia says sources agree on the date but not the year).

Pink Panther

Henry Mancini would have been 86 today.

I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself

Dusty Springfield would have been 71 today.

Peter Ustinov on Queen Mary

Peter Ustinov would have been 89 today.

Spike Milligan – English language inflation

Spike Milligan would have been 92 today.

It rained

We got 15 mls of very welcome rain last night.

The near-empty irrigation dam shows how much it was needed.

Now the pressure is off the irrigation and we might be able to stop watering for the season.

Last night’s fall brings us to a total of 27 mls – just over an inch in old money – for the month and about 50 mls this year, though still only 336 mls in the last 12 months which is well under the annual average of around 500 mls.

While the rain made a big difference to us because we’re irrigated, it wouldn’t have done much more than lay the dust on dryland farms and it was localised.

Totara, about 10 kilometres as the crow flies from us, received only 9 mls and our hill block at Waianakarua about 20 kms away got only 4 mls.

The downpour came with a thunderstorm which brought a lot of water in a very short time. We don’t complain about rain here so this is an obesrevation not a moan – it also brought a flood inside the conservatory which took three buckets and seven towels to mop up.

Memo to self: clean the spouting before it rains again.

Two tonne of urea could help save a life

An email from a friend asked me to spread the word about a TradeMe auction to help fund potentially life-saving cancer treatment.

The email said:

Hello friends

 

I know you are all busy people.    If you could take a few minutes to search the website mentioned below and to place a bid you would be really helping our friend Jane who is a real kiwi battler.  

 

Jane is fundraising for her own cancer treatment.  Its not some obscure drug treatment, its a drug that she would be getting on national health if she lived in Australia or the UK.  This drug has worked wonders and is giving Jane a good quality of life.   If you are not in a position to bid on any of these great offers from Jane’s friends and family, then please forward to any of your friends or work mates who might like a South Island holiday, golfing packages or some collectible art.   Any donation no matter the size will help.

 

 

. . .  The auction will close on Trade Me on Saturday 17th April – this Saturday – so you will have to be quick.

She attached this message from Jane:

It gives me much pleasure to make the fundraising auction live! Many thanks to friends and family who have helped me and to businesses who have donated – enjoy!

Go to: http://www.janewebdesign.co.nz and don’t forget to forward on to your own contacts.

Background
In December 2003 I lost my kidney to cancer. Exactly five years later, I was told that the cancer had spread to several locations throughout my body.

Kidney cancer of this type does not respond well to traditional treatments such as chemotherapy or radiation. My only viable option is a very expensive targetted drug therapy, which is not subsidised by government or covered by my health insurance. So far I have responded very well to this drug but because of the huge cost I am obliged to fund raise.

I have every reason to live and this drug gives me the quality of life to enjoy my two beautiful daughters and many wonderful friends. It was friends and family who provided the inspiration for this ‘on line auction’ web site which gives you the opportunity to place a bid for an incredible range of New Zealand art and fashion, specialist services and leisure time in some of the loveliest parts of the South Island.

I would like to thank all the many businesses and individuals who have supported me through their generous donations to this auction.

Jane Egerton

Items up for auction on TradeMe include art work, accommodation vouchers, a round of golf at Michael Hill’s course and a day with Burton Silver.

Jane’s cause has also been taken up by Jamie Mackay on the Farming Show where two tonne of Urea is being auctioned with the proceeds going to fund Jane’s treatment.