Since we don’t live by politics alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Just came inside after a short stint spreading iron compounds on my arch-enemy: cape weed.
Spent most of the day doing research on Virginia 1775-6.
Also reading Emma Christopher’s A Merciless Place. Its about British convicts in West Africa in the mid to late 18C. very good.
In West Africa, too?!?
How many damn convicts did they have, already?!
j-p-z @ 3,
I dunno. I lost count years ago. But here’s a good place to start.
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/History.jsp
Suddenly last night…
http://twitpic.com/2ev8ub
That’s early, isn’t it Helen?
Almonds always blossomed in September when I was a lad.
Just preparing dinner.
Bream steamed with garlic and shallots.
Caught the fish last night!
Almonds blossomed here (southern Vic) a week ago. Always the first blossoms for us.
I spent the day visiting the broken-legged in various hospitals. First a friend who has some mysterious problem with her feet not bending, that has to be operated on, then my little Kitten, who rebroke his leg trying to jump (idiot!) and had to have more surgery, then got a fever. All these broken legs going around, must be the year of the snake.
My experiment with linux crashed and burned last night and so I’ve officially decided I am a linux hater, with appropriate vituperation on my blog.
All that remains is to make kimchi-tofu noodles and play computer games till dawn.
I gardened, and rewrote / am rewriting, a lecture on Machiavelli. Machiavelli of The Discourses rather than Machiavelli of The Prince. I’m hoping that if I get seedlings in now, they might be growing well, and flowering, by the time we have our house on the market towards the end of September. Ordinarily I would have waited for just a couple more weeks before putting them in.
Going to see The Dingoes
Final touches to a (joint-authored) presentation that my mentor and colleague is to deliver tomorrow.
Commented on a 4th year student’s draft.
Contemplated cleaning the bathrooms …
… then thought, dash it all, and started re-reading Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows.
An easy start and then a concert by SydU Symphony (student players in which my daughter is a flautist) conducted by George Ellis whose CV includes conducting the SSO at the Olympic opening ceremony. Extraordinary talent the place has these days. Final piece on the program was ‘Rome and Juliet’ Suite by Prokofiev and they did that brilliantly well. First piece (Beethoven) sounded a bit like the French horns had got to the piss before the performance!
Now settled in for slow cooking a marinara sauce.
I’ve avoided media and the election all weekend.
A slow day due to a sudden onset of irritable lumbar spine – moving gingerly has been the order of the day. Spending nearly 3 hours in the cinema with family to watch Inception almost certainly didn’t help, but we had promised the sprogs, so what do you do? At least it was an interesting, though convolutedly confusing, film.
About to have sushi for dinner (pasta for the sprogs) – hooray for easy food!
Finally got around to installing a Glockemann pump (water ram pump) by the creek today.
Locally (Australia) produced even.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDfG6nhfdkA
A bit of digging, moving rocks, mud and water. Not exactly a lazy sunday but very satisying to see it pumping away for free at the end of the day, goes 24/7, as long as the flow is enough.
Just have to connect it to the tanks now. Then the end of fossil fueled pumping hopefully.
It’s a bit frustrating when the closest parking one can find to South Brisbane on a Sunday is in the middle of the Brisbane CBD.
Mum got discharged from hospital today.
DI (nr) — I reckon the Willunga Almond Blossom Festival was in the last week of July this year. I think it depends on the tree — we’ve got three in my street that I know of, and one’s in full bloom but another a few hundred metres away isn’t even close yet.
Paul B, what a great link — thank you! It took me about ten seconds to find the original transcript of the trial of my five-greats grandma Jane Langley, transported in the First Fleet for felonioufly ftealing five guineas.
Study, study, study of medieval and renaissance sermons. I did just take a break to watch Latham on the telly. And inbetween other things I’ve been trying to get people to sign up to get rid of their paper phone books, in order that Kim can get a puppy (daughter of friends, who has been promised said puppy if she can get 1000 people to sign up to get rid of their paper phone books – facebook group and instructions on cancelling phone book delivery here).
Declaration of interest: I wish to play with the puppy. Also, it saves trees.
But if I get rid of my paper phone book, that will get rid of the annual late-August tradition of spraypainting the cover of said phone book so I don’t see the advertisements for lawyers that first festooned the spine, then the back cover, and now are spreading to the front cover of the Brisbane White Pages (last year’s phone book required no less than three coats of paint to completely obscure the advertisements)
In an unusually optimistic mood I walked down to local primary school to see what new “farmers’ market” is like. Pleasantly surprised, even zillions of children seemed almost tolerable – who knew there were so many young families living around here? The only time I see my neighbours is at this school, on election day, but this was a much happier event. Perhaps I live in a nicer place than I thought.
Problem is lugging home stuff you are used to just tossing into the car – should have not bought pumpkin and kg of honey.
Gardened for hours – weeded and fertilised strawberries which have hundreds of flowers already, hopefully planted tomatoes, capiscums, carrots and lettuce.
Spent the end of the afternoon lying in the sun listening to radio – the excellent Lucy Kallaway (Financial Times journalist) recommended this video
Michael Ignatieff dismissed calls that Canada should have followed Australia’s policy on refugees and turned the Tamil refugee boat away.
“This is Canada, not Australia,” Ignatieff said.
“That means Canada has principles, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, our international obligations.”
_________________________________________________________
Michael Ignatieff (Official Opposition Leader, Parliament of Canada)
The elitist Mr. Ignatieff (aka Iggy) says Australians have no principles. Is Iggy stereo typing Australians as convicts? Whatever the reasons for badmouthing Australians, Iggy should have kept his mouth shut…
Bullpup, can you explain why he should have kept his mouth shut? Seems like when he opened it, mostly good sense came out.
Personally I don’t think Canadian politicians (Official Opposition Leader)should publicly insult the Australian people by saying they have no principles. Michael Ignatieff wants to be Prime Minister of Canada and I don’t think insulting a friend is good for relations.
Bullpup, Ignatieff is undeniably part of a number of elites (note the 11 honorary doctorates), but that’s not the same thing as being an elitist.
I’ve heard him speak, on international peacekeeping and the evolution of the role of the military in the 21st century, and he’s brilliant but in an accessible way. I wish Australia had more people like him in politics. I wish Australia had more people like him, full stop.
And he was perfectly within his rights to make the comparison, nor can I see how it’s ‘badmouthing’ Australia when he was responding to a suggestion that Canada should follow Australia’s deplorable lead on asylum seekers.
Word has it that (via Annabel Crabb on Twitter) that Mr Rabbit is talking of having a special phone for Stopping the Boats. No word yet on whether it will be in his shoe.
More on the boatphone from Kim.
Cold Adelaide Hills view, 5?
delicious.
I second PC’s comments @24
I had seen a couple of Michael Ignatieff’s books, and a few articles in newspapers; suddenly he pops up as Leader of the Opposition in a Parliament. “Stuck in an ivory tower”? Not he.
PC @ 17,
Try this one as well.
http://www.londonlives.org/
Its new, has just been put up a month ago by the same people that put the Old Bailey on line. You might find out more about Jane Langley before she was arrested.
I haven’t tried it yet, so I’m not exactly sure what its like, but I’ve no doubt its high quality.
btw, Thomas Chipp will be one of the blokes I’m writing about in my book, but not until I get to 1780. (Have to check out where the Warwick was from 1780 to 1783. Still researching 1775-6 at the moment, so it will be a while till I get to him. I presume he was your great great etc grandad?) Any help when I get to that point will be appreciated.
PC @ 17,
The Warwick was involved in the 1780 Siege of Charleston.
Paul Burns – thanks very much for London Lives (I’m getting out of touch with genealogy sites since leaving the State Library). I’ll have to dig out my paternal grandmother’s line (Revell) and see how all these new crims might fit in.
Mind you, I always preferred her version of her family hitsory: aristocratic French family who had to flee to England at the time of the Revolution. Obviously they fell on hard times very quickly as she spent a few of her childhood years in an orphanage/workhouse.
Russell,
I’ve just checked the site out. Its quite good.) The chap I’m researching at the moment only has Old Bailey Court records, unfortunately, which I’ve already taken notes from. (Not surprising, since he was an ex-slave who didn’t arrive in England till 1783.)
Glad you enjoyed it.
PC @ 17,
I’ve managed to unearth some inferential information about Thomas Chipp.
The Warwick was a 50 gun man of war. Its captain was George Keith Elphinstone. The Warwick was involved in the capture of a Dutch ship off South Carolina in January 1780. Keith led a detachment of naval personnel ashore on Simmons Island as part of an overall plan to cut Charleston Harbor off from the southern side. Presumably these were not marines. However, two parties of 300 marines each seized Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island on the night of the 4 May, 1780 and private Chipp would almost certainly have been involved in this closing action of the siege of Charleston.
The Warwick was not one of the ships that initially saiked into Charleston Harbor to bomb Charleston, possibly because it was too heavy to get over the sandbar blocking the harbour. I have to check that.
In I think late 1780/early 1781 (I cant find an exact date) the Warwick was apparently involved in an action against the French Ship, Alert. This probably means the Warwick was transferred to the Jamaica Squadron from the North American Squadron some time after the British occupation of Charleston. (Have to chack that too.)
The best secondary source I’ve come across for the naval side of the 1780 siege of Charleston is Syrett’s The Royal Navy in American Waters 1775-1783, Aldershot, 1989.
Presumably there is a primary account of the siege of Charleston from the naval/marine side in one of the later volumes of Naval Documents of the Revolution, including details of the Warwick’s actions. (I’m only familiar, so far with NDAR up to Vol. 5.) The other presumably very good naval source for the Siege of Charleston, and the Warwick in particular is Navy Records Society, The Keith Papers, Vol. I. London, 1927.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
PB.
The major naval primary
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/aug/16/grinderman-super-heathen-child
phew…found it, then lost it again. well worth the effort, if y’ like that kinda thing.
Just can across this site on the web as doing research on my family history re Thomas Chipp and Jane Langley First Fleet.
Jane Langley is my 5th great grandmother.
A few queries. Jane was tried & convicted at Old Bailey on 14 Sep 1785 & voyage date Feb 1787.
She had ? relationship with a seaman Phillip SCRIVEN ( or Thomas GILBERT Master of the Lady Penryth”) and had child on board Henrietta (Scriven) Langley Cape of Goodhope on 23 Oct 1787.
If she did not sail on the voyage until Feb 1787, she would have got pregnant abt Dec 1786.
Where was she after her trial between Sep 1785 until Feb 1787 (voyage date)? Where did she meet Phillip Scriven?
What was her life before her trial?
Does anyone have any more information?
Paul Burns I see you are researching Thomas Chipp.
Regards
Diane