Fallujah - a Lost Generation?

In one of the many alternative mini-cinemas that have sprung up in Bristol City, we enjoyed a one-off showing of this vital documentary set in Fallujah, by Feurat Alani. Fallujah was chosen over Baghdad as it was the city, it's explained, that put up the strongest resistance to the invasion.


The results of the US/ UK invasion are, of course, well-known: the enforced dismantling of the army and the civil service which left the whole country open to the most negative of anarchies, for instance - and more of that side is revealed in the film. But the immediate effects of the attack have been treated as less newsworthy and also have been subjected to stringent censorship wherever possible. Inevitably rumours and facts have leaked out, but this film looks like the most substantive indictment to date. The use of white phosphorous, a close relation to napalm, has led to accusations of war crime, but the depleted uranium, used in shells, bullets and armour plating for its extreme hardness (and probably because it spontaneously combusts under heat), goes beyond that in many ways. Years after it was used, it continues to cause cancers  locally and doubtless has contributed to the World's general atmospheric pollution, while leading to the regular birth of children with seriously disabling defects. This is all revealed in the film, whose makers, we can't forget, were braving considerable danger in making it. They, at least, were able to work without the threat of American sniping, unlike the concerned doctors and scientists who tried to determine the source of the increasing cancers and birth defects in the early days.
Inevitably, the director's  concern for his subject didn't stop with the camera's rolling. He's not the only one: our hostess for the evening revealed that she had found that children, made homeless by the bombing, were playing in an abandoned army vehicle heavy with the above DU (- let's call it by what it is, really: nuclear waste-)  and tried to get the truck removed, but she couldn't get America, Iraq or Britain to accept responsibility. Eventually, she told us, it was moved from the centre of the square to the side - creating two contaminated areas out of one.
Well, that's it. A documentary that works like a home movie for the Humans. I hope.

Acker Bilk

JazzServices.org.uk

The clarinettist and band leader who came close as anyone could to making Trad Jazz look cool, Acker Bilk has died at the age of 85. He will always be associated with 'Stranger on the Shore', the major hit in both the UK and US, ahead of the British pop-rock invasion. After he gave up touring, and a good while after the height of the Trad boom, he returned to one of his other careers and enjoyed some success as a painter, concentrating on small landscapes. More:

So long, Jack

goingthruvinyl.com

Jack Bruce, from Bishopbriggs Glasgow, has died at 71. He studied composition at the  Royal Scottish Academy of Music and left the academy and Scotland at the age of 16, making his way to London where he became a member of the seminal Alexis Korner's Blues Inc, where Charlie Watts was on drums. Watts left to join the Rolling Stones and Ginger Baker took over, beginning the long love/hate relationship - or hate/hate relationship, that found its expression in Cream's roaring, racing backdrop to Eric Clapton's extended solos. Immediately after the breakup of Cream he got back into jazz, with the release of the album 'Things we like', and went on to work with such luminaries as John McLaughlin and Frank Zappa, playing a central role in arguably jazz's first supergroup, Lifetime. He left a legacy of songs and compositions as well as just enough recordings to establish his great width of abilities.

Susan Greenfield

Mind Change

Random House

In her new book, neurologist Susan Greenfield asks this question: We know that the human brain adapts to its environment so, in the new unprecedented cyber environment of the 21st Century could our brains be changing in unprecedented ways? And if so, what implications might such changes have for the generation of ‘digital natives’ whose brains will be influenced at a crucial time in their development?

Drawing on over 500 ‘peer-reviewed studies’ Greenfield explores (for the first time, it says here), what those changes could be. She examines three different aspects of the digital landscape: social networking, and its impact upon interpersonal skills and identity; computer gaming and its impact upon attention, as well as links with addiction, aggression and risk-taking; and the use of search engines and their effects upon thinking, learning and memory.

Greenfield’s interest is in finding how we can create a world where our technology does not frustrate, but actively fosters, some of the key features that make us human: deep understanding, creativity, sense of identity, and real fulfilment. These last three she listed in her introduction as part of Bristol Festival of Ideas as her ‘must-have’ items. Although she touched on the possibility of there being a whole generation of kids with underdeveloped pre-frontal cortexes as connecting with others via the Net instead of talking face-to face with the attendant body language and mutual consideration results in pretty raw, ill-considered talking, (True- see the comments column on any site, especially if it’s linked to the news media), Baroness Greenfield was able to remain optimistic about the cognitive near future. In her short talk in Bristol  she was able to touch on other related things, like the difference between facts and knowledge, and the chicken-egg relationship between low seratonin and clinical depression. Maybe that problem could be compared to an endless game of tennis, cause and effect constantly changing sides.

As for fulfilment, she allowed that we could get that out of a witty verbal exchange as easily as from creating something bigger, a symphony for instance.

And there we’re talking psychology as much as neurology.The important thing is to keep the game going.

Another thing that occurred to me was: we each can alter our mind’s environment to an extent. Noel Coward’s recipe for a Good Life was to ‘enjoy yourself as much as possible. It passes the time pleasantly, and gives you some memories to enjoy in your old age.’

And for Mr Coward, enjoyment was work. Perhaps I’d sum up the whole thing by admitting that nothing succeeds like success, especially in the cerebral cortex.

Scotland: reasons to be yessing

A major reason to vote 'Yes' in the Scottish referendum must be the promise of disassociation from Britain's infamous role as warmonger through hosting nuclear submarines, allowing US bombers to use the UK as 'airstrip one' and otherwise backing the US wars of self-interest -particularly as a manufacturing base, from napalm for Vietnam to fighter planes for Gaza, but there is more, well summed-up by John McGrath's great play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb3qbFcLYZc  The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil.

The Hundred Foot Journey

Richard C Morais


Alma Books
ISBN:978-1-84688-133-6


Simon Callow described this as being for anyone who loves food, and cares for character. He’s right on both counts. Morais’ stories tend to be heavily populated but he manages to give each face in the crowd depth of character and degrees of back-story, without dragging down the pace of his narrative.

His delving into food is also deeply believable, and so enjoyable that often I felt that I had in fact been eating quite a lot. While giving us these gorgeous word pictures he manages to colour-in the cultures they come out of. And he is convincing at giving himself the voice of his protagonist, which immediately strips away a layer of distance from the action.
He has done his research, but doesn’t wear it on his sleeve. Instead we can feel we are reading between the lines when we pick on several tricks of advanced cookery. This is no doubt the time history will remember for popular obsession with food and cookery, both on the airwaves and on paper, but this book rises above the genre.


Coinciding with the paperback publication of this, the film (starring Helen Mirren and Om Puri, director Lasse Hallstrom) is due for release. To see the trailer, click here: http://collider.com/the-one-hundred-foot-journey-trailer/

Felix Dennis

The youngest of the three infamous Oz Editors, Felix Dennis was a rare creature, being born with the kind of wisdom most of us have to get through hindsight, and enjoyed, inevitably, a successful life of creativity and good living. His poem, Never go back, kindly passed on some of his wisdom. And his predilection for cigars which gave him such a fine reading voice may also have had something to do with the cancer that has killed him in his own memorable sixties.

100 years in Variety

Stage Door, The Bristol Hippodrome, 100 Years
Gerry Parker and John Hudson
Published by Redcliffe Press

Bristol Hippodrome - from the stage C G Hanley

This well-illustrated soft-cover book is a pleasure to handle. Good to give as a present to anyone with an interest in the theatre or show-biz; even to yourself. The history of the Hippodrome takes in its early years as a twice-nightly variety theatre to being the venue of choice for ballet, major theatrical tours and visiting stars including Laurel and Hardy, Morecambe and Wise, Frank Sinatra, Paul McCartney and regular visitors The Hollies. It was famously Eddie Cochran’s last gig. The tale also covers the early career of Oswald Stoll, who teamed up with Mr Moss to build an Empire.
And of the nuts and bolts: “Frank Matcham was one of the great British Architects, and I have, over the years, performed in many of his theatres, The Bristol Hippodrome being my favourite. Modern architects don’t go to the theatre, which explains why the theatres they design resemble television sets. Matcham’s work was created with love. The Hippodrome was in construction at the same time as the Titanic was in Belfast. But the old Hippo, magnificently and lovingly restored by the people of Bristol, is still afloat.” Barry Humphries, February 2014

GSA on fire

GSA_fire Sauchiehall St Scott Grierson

Glasgow School of Art has been seriously damaged by fire. According to a BBC report on the afternoon of 23rd May, although the fire began in the basement, the historic library has seen most of the damage, with its windows destroyed - but flames have been seen coming from the top floor. The picture here shows the blaze up in the "chicken run". The School is just across Scott Street from the site of the Maryland Club, destroyed by fire in 1971.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-27541883
Update: If you wish to make any offers of help, financial or otherwise, please visit  http://www.gsa.ac.uk/

GSA has a sister

copyright: GSA

Glasgow School of Art, which has always been rebuilding itself before, during and after the growth of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's world-famous main building, has at last got something which is both functional and complementary to the old alma mater. While the School has been colonising other parts of its hill (including the old army building in Hill Street, St Aloysius' School and of course the Cottage, half-way along to Charing Cross), this was something needed, and the new building appears to give that stretch of Renfrew Street more of a 'campus' feel than it ever had with the piece-meal collection left over from the 'sixties and before that, the mix of old, almost  vernacular -shaped stone buildings with a couple of modern add-ons. In reproduction and video, the new block looks a little too clean and as if "faced" rather than solidly built - although if the facing is something like stone, a little ageing could only improve this. For the moment, the space created between the two parts is definitely pleasing.
http://www.gsa.ac.uk/about-gsa/history-and-future/our-future/campus-redevelopment/

Margo MacDonald

flkr 5221114034

Margo MacDonald, having struggled with Parkinson's Disease, died today. She became the Face of Scottish Nationalism when she won the Govan by-election for the SNP in 1973, but always being very much a woman of her own priciples, fell out with the party leadership and left politics for journalism, returning to play a role in the SNP - short-lived, as she was not with the party's drift towards a more 'liberal' stance. Despite this she remains, in the public eye, that Face.

To quote BBC News:

Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont, said: "Margo's passing sees a bright light, and one of the biggest personalities and characters of Scottish modern political life, go out.
"Her sense of humour, passion, integrity and unflinching desire to speak truth to power, meant she came as close to a political treasure in Scotland as I think it is possible to be."
'Force of nature'
Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, added: "Margo was a force of nature in Scottish life."

Tony Benn

This blogger was becoming aware of the political world at the very time                           Anthony Wedgewood-Benn

photo from news@respectparty.org

 was struggling to change it enough to allow him to remain 'at the coal-face', by relinquishing his hereditary peerage. As he himself said, although he had hoped to change the system, he had to settle for making the system work better. And ultimately when he stood down as MP and put the quotidian affairs of parliament, local and national behind him,  he was able to devote more of his time to the issues of concern. He certainly had more reserves of energy than lesser men, and his kind of timetable remains an inspiration.

London. Just one of those things...

Being without any one corner of the Globe I can truly call home, I've felt as much like an ex-pat Londoner as anything for a good while; but I agree with other ex-pats that there can be no going back. And almost every day there is more news confirming this in reality;  now the shops and pubs of Soho are following the dusty bookshops, for generations the major attraction of Charing Cross Road, into oblivion.

Mulligans (oxyman)

And nearby, the internationally acknowledged wellspring of new art, Cork Street, has also fallen to the demands of commerce in a city that is a victim of its own success. It was a good party. Even if you couldn't get in. (There may well be other parties; I remember grumbles that Portobello Road wasn't what it used to be - the grumbles in 1968 -) Those tiny but densely packed streets north of Shaftsbury Avenue and Piccadilly that bred Trad Jazz/ the Blues Boom, TW3, Private Eye, a particular fame for Francis Bacon, the Two Roberts and other artists (and writers), are unfortunately bang in the middle of some of the most highly-rated estate in the world. So despite petitions and letters, and submissions from experts and interested parties, planning permission has been given to replace several key gallery-style spaces in Cork Street with shops which will be ideal for displaying designer handbags and whose inhabitants might be able to afford the new rents; but being purveyors of expensive tat, the new faces are hardly likely to  keep that indefinable sum-of-the-parts alive. The picture here is not of any of the galleries, which with the bookshops were the tourist money-spinner and a regular joy for natives, but Mulligans, the Cork Street pub - which is no longer in business - in case you were wondering.

Pong of the day

 "petrichor': the smell accompanying the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather. 

tiny jungle (Mabozza)

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor

and 

http://www.wordsmith.org/words/petrichor.html

My regular correspondent, a fellow Glaswegian ex-pat, known professionally as Mabozza, found the name for my remembered experience of being small and close to the ground in the days when roadside dust would have contained very little in the way of car exhaust waste, diesel or petrol.
As I remember: "When we grow up, way from the ground, we don't get the smells so much if ever. My favourite was the first summer shower releasing molecules of olfactory stuff from the pavement dust, mostly powdered leaf and earth with a hint of flowers, brambles and dead insects."

pete Seeger

It's barely credible that just one man could have written - or co-written - so many songs that have been embedded in our culture for so long that they seem more like traditional airs with no known parentage. Including: If I Had a Hammer, Turn, Turn, Turn, Kisses Sweeter Than Wine, and Where Have All The Flowers Gone, which  may have sparked Bob Dylan into writing Blowing In The Wind. But the father of them all - Pete Seeger - musician and political activist, has died at age 94, in hospital in New York.
Seeger gained fame as a member of The Weavers, the quartet formed in 1948, and had hits including Goodnight Irene. Never one to sell out, he left the group when they agreed to appear in a tobacco advert.
He continued performing and recording for six decades afterwards and was still an activist as recently as October 2011, when he marched in New York City as part of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Seeger was a major figure in 'folk' music, and played a leading role in getting the world to take the banjo seriously as a virtuoso instrument. But it is as a songwriter that he is immortalised.

Why does 'referendum' smell funny?

The universal fuss our news media are making about the forthcoming Scottish Independence referendum is bemusing; even baffling. So many scribes and hacks revealing the gaps in their long-term memories, and never one mention of the last referendum, which was fiddled by Jim Gallaghan's Labour government, losing Labour that weight-shifting traditional Scottish vote in the subsequent election and ushering in the Thatcher years. Ultimately an own-goal for Labour.
We who do remember find the current air of excitement irritating, as if it hadn't already been that way back in the 'seventies. But Labour insisted that the yes vote must be, not a majority of the actual voters, but (just to complicate it) rather 40% out of the total number of those entitled to vote. And even before we got that far, the ballot paper question was not the expected, "Do you want independence?" but "Do you want devolution?"
"Do we want whaat?"

Devolution had not been debated or even publically mooted, and for too many of us it was a blank neologism. I guessed (correctly) that it could mean anything and nothing. To make matters worse, American avant-garde pop group Devo was currently riding high in the charts with a single and album ironically celebrating 'devolution' by which they meant the dumbing-down of western culture. Having supported nationalism (and nothing but) ever since I came to voting age, I voted no.

Buddhaland Brooklyn

Richard C Morais
Alma Books Ltd
ISBN: 978-1-84688-241
ebook ISBN: 978-1-84688-273-9
 
First of all, this is  an intimate examination of the ‘culture clash’ experience. You may find as I did, that reading it will have you re-visiting your own past encounters both as the  “I” and the “us”, with a new clarity. Morais has an uncanny ability to inhabit the voice of his protagonist, who suddenly develops  a colloquial streak, almost exposing a latent sense of irony, on arriving in hyper-active Manhattan - after speaking in nothing but literal terms of his simple upbringing in the cool, clear mountains and temples of Japan.
The language does a lot for the unspoken scenario - it’s the HD effect added to the already colourful descriptions as the Reverend Oda strives to turn adversity towards enlightenment. Morais' last novel, The Hundred-Foot Journey, made it on to the silver screen; I'd like to see this one get the same treatment.