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

I've just had a long meeting with a professor of German at the University and in a short space of time he explained many things to me in addition to translating several letters from the period of the war and the period just prior to the war. I didn't know that both families were in touch with each other. I didn't know that Heini was such an important go between in the whole affair. I didn't know that the Prague ghetto was even worse in some cases than the Warsaw ghetto and that Regine was living with all her important possessions taken away from her in a ghetto with very little food and certainly no protein. Regine confided to Heini, forbidding him to tell Else or Lisa that she was in such a desperate situation. She was considering suicide because it was so bad. Pathetically, she offers to help Heini. "Some things are available here which you might need." she says, and sends Heini and Caroline her bedding and a few other things. Carolin is 67. She berates God

 3 avenue de Joinville, 94130 Nogent-sur-Marne

Cuts are New Labour's death warrent... ...so why don't the British Trade Unions help to start a new political party? When Brown announced that his government intended to introduce cuts today he was aligning himself with the Tories and effectively signing New Labour's death warrent. Using the gloss of identity politics and invoking Labour's old traditions will not fool the electorate for much longer. New Labour and the Conservatives work for the same people. Polly Toynbee is wrong. There is no any time left to make a clear distinction between the Tories and Labour. They are both clearly following the same agenda. After Gordon Brown's speech to the unions, to highlight the differences between the parties mere pedantry. There is no way anyone who is even vaguely socialist can vote for Labour now unless Labour has a leadership election and gets rid of Brown and sidelines all the New Labourites. If Labour is willing to go down the road of cuts to public services this bas

Photo by Susmita Chatterji We arrived in New Delhi in January when the weather was still mild, and the three of us had to adapt to a new school: The British School. Mom and dad quickly became friends with the ANC representatives in New Delhi: Aggie, Mosie and Zubie. We got to know the Msimang kids and my brothers became firm friends with Fabian. When you teased Fabian he didn't laugh, he just smiled, stood up straight, feet planted slightly apart, and looked right back at you with a fist under each bicep. The twins were 13 and more adventurous than I. With our parents' approval, they travelled with Fabian all over town. Fabian knew the ropes and they tried all the different kinds of street food together without falling ill. But the twins were a bit girlish; their voices hadn't broken and their long hair was turning from light brown to straw blond in the sun, so Fabian found himself protecting them from the seedy, bottom pinching men that there always are on

Mom is just 22 and just married and just two months pregnant, (but she doesn't know it). This is the first time she has really been apart from her mother and father and she sounds so enthusiastic about being on her own with dad, but neither of them really know how to work it. She writes long letter after long letter to Lisa and Richard while she and dad are in Cape Town. This is one letter of many. Dad is 23 and taking a course in journalism. Mom mentions Marius Skoon . Mom's old letters are so newsy and fresh and upbeat a wonderful tonic for anyone who reads them. 19, Trianon, Ave. Marseilles, Sea Point, Cape Town. 22/4/59 Darling Mom and Dad, I've just got your letter telling me about Frame , and it's very exciting. I hope something came out of it. And I can tell you one thing, that if you live in Paarl , as soon as possible, To and I are going to live in Cape Town too. We were just saying yesterday, that it would be marvellous if we could make our per

Have they changed? Not really!

Inscription on the back in English: To the dearest and prettiest girl Fondly Richard

Picture taken by Mary Turok.

Grandpa is the swarthy young man in the foreground on the left. When Granny Lisa was particularly annoyed by the memory of Richard's old fashioned domineering behaviour towards her she would say, rather spitefully: "Richard's family were only peasants really." And then later on, once she was more secure in that particular fiction, she would say: "They were really only Gypsies. Of course they were they must have been. They came from a little village in Slovakia called Zemoun." . . . . . . . . . Richard Steinhardt is centre front

When Mom went to school she saw her friends take Holy Communion and she longed to do so herself. But Granny was Lutheran and Grandpa was Jewish and so she couldn't. But, at six, she learned about Joan of Arc and hated the English for killing her and dreamed of becoming a nun; or so she told me.

Isidore Steinhardt , the foreign editor of the Neue Freie Presse , is the man in the picture with his head circled in black.

Heini on stage in Hamburg