Donkeyshott & Xuitlacoche

Mac Wiseman and the Osborne Brothers: I am a Stranger here Mac Wiseman: The house of the rising sun Ralph Stanley: I'll remember you love in my prayers Allman Brother's Band: Ramblin' Man The Band: The Night they Drove old Dixie Down The Del McCoury Band: Smokin' gun Ralf Stanley and the Clinch: I am the Man Ralf Stanley: Calling you James Carter and the Prisoners: Po' Lazarus The Dubliners: Dirty Old Town Sweeney's Men: Sally Brown Mark O' Connor: Appalachia Waltz Abigail Washburn: Old Timey Dance party Edgar Meyer: Please don't feed the Bear

Magritte: Le Blanc Seing In the Spirit of "Nous" The character of the Gods of the old days were based on the assumption that the natural world possessed intelligences. But it was only when pre-Socratics like Pherecydes abstracted these intelligences somewhat into powers or forces in the Heptamychos that other philosophers later came to see these powers as intelligible. Pherecydes, said to be Pythagorus' tutor, wrote of a more abstract creative principle, Zas , rather than the human-like, Zeus . Zas existed in "time" ( Chronos ) on earth and Pherecydes was probably influenced not only by the Theogony of Hesiod and Homer's epic, but by Phoenician cosmology too. Having assumed that, not only was nature possessed of intelligences, but that these intelligences themselves were potentially intelligible, Thales, Anaximander, Pythagorus and later Anaximenes were now in a position to try and understand the natural world: to become ...

Auntie Connie was the first female lawyer in South Africa, and my Grandfather's older sister. She wrote about her experiences as a child with her father, mother and brothers in South Africa as they trekked across the highveld and lowveld. Auntie Connie was married to Uncle Jack and I remember them well. They were two very cheerful, intelligent and positive people, with a large Pretoria family. Here she is recounting his memories to "Loco Voco" published in 1986 and edited by C. C. Callaghan. * * * Why on Earth did they do it? What on Earth induced my young parents, who were both members of large, suburban, university-oriented English families, to leave England only two years after my father was appointed science Master at the Dulwich school in London ? What induced the two to set out, toddler in tow, to make a new life three weeks away on a Union Castle liner? Was it the spirit of adventure? Was it a geologist's desire to see what things looked like in situ? Or wa...

  Heini Göbel (on the left) in Die Zwölf Geschworenen   "Look Phil", said Chris, and he showed me a DVD with Heini on the cover. Chris loaded it up while Lothar, who had just successfully come out of a week long artificially induced coma, talked to me about the best way to kill a wild boar. "They are clever animals, he said, very clever, and when the full moon is out there is no point in trying to hunt them, they'll see you." He was showing me pictures of an animal, with long, rough, hazelnut hair, laid out on a forest floor in autumn. The boar was more bear than pig. This is what the big horned old boars looked like in ancient times. Lothar squatted behind the animal, his complexion was rosy then, his body still bulky. He pointed to the boars testis in the picture; they were swollen up into twin balloons, and said: - "You can't eat this kind, the flavour is too strong, although some of the local Romanians do. It's an a...

Darling Mom, In a few days, I'll be going out to Ghana . I couldn't phone you today (Sunday) because our phone is out of order. Perhaps Tony managed to make a quick call to you from work - yes, he was in the office all day again today, preparing for the arrival of some journalists who have been invited to Addis to write about the new developments in the ECA [Dad was in charge of restructuring the communications side of the ECA.] - that's the UN's Economic Commission for Africa. I'll try to phone you from my office tomorrow. I've been working all day to, but at home, all kinds of last minute things to do before I leave on Thursday morning. To had a good birthday - cards and letters from all the family, and two birthday "parties": an impromptu celebration at the office, organised by his cabinet office colleagues, with a cake and presents. And on Thursday night we invited a group of people (mainly To's work colleagues) for dinner at Castelli's ...

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . Take the case of Tarantino . Tarantino started out as a film buff immersed in film. He obsessed, and the films he directs are not simply "homages", they don't merely make references to the films he likes, his films are authored by the films that formed him. It is not particularly original to say this, but it is interesting to reflect on the idea. In fact the central plot line of "Kill Bill" is almost completely plagiarised from an earlier film, right down to the scene where the heroine escapes from a wooden casket. Of course Tarantino has his heroine escape using Kung Fu. Take another example, that of Bob Dylan. He was a Tarantino of sorts. Robert Zimmerman was a music buff, an obsessive and a fan of Woody Guthrie. In fact he was also a rather sinister mythomane . He went to Woody Guthrie, immobilised and dying, in order to help himself get anointed as a folk singer. Imagine Mark Chapman singing John Lennon his songs as ...