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The Future of Climate Tech
Sruthi Kolukuluri, Suzanne Newman
We caught up with Benjamin Joffe, partner at SOSV & asked him about the new Climate Tech Summit he's organizing to bring world-class investors together with emerging climate tech founders. For FREE.
It's clear that the SOSV Climate Tech Summit is designed to support the emerging climate tech ecosystem in response to accelerating climate-related disasters. What opportunities will attendees of the live virtual event have to connect with investors or other ecosystem players during this event?
As you said, we decided to organize SOSV Climate Tech Summit to connect the emerging ecosystem in climate tech. We invited top speakers and made the event free so that a large number of people could benefit. In particular: early stage founders, people considering creating a climate tech startup, and investors who are new to climate tech. We already have over 2,100 participants registered to the event, including over 600 investors and over 200 corporates. Attendees that take the time to fill in their profile on the platform (we use Hopin) can already reach out to connect to people early, and will have fantastic opportunities to engage with many people interested in climate tech.
Credits: SOSV Climate Tech Summit
Although there's only 50 speakers booked for this event, the caliber is quite impressive. Which speakers are you looking forward to hearing from the most?
We decided to run a main stage of speakers with a mix of iconic startups and investors in order to cover the topics we like the most, ranging from energy to food or manufacturing. Personally, I am looking forward to hearing from:
Bill Gross, who founded over 100 companies and is about to take two companies public: Heliogen (AI-powered thermal solar) and Energy Vault (gravity-based energy storage),
Mateo Jaramillo, CEO of Form Energy whom I will interview, as his company could have enormous importance in the future for low-cost scalable energy storage. It is truly the Achilles heel of renewables and if Form can solve that effectively, this could be a $100B+ company.
Among younger startups, I'm intrigued by Sublime Systems (decarbonizing cement), Air Protein (protein from air?!) and Shiok Meats (cell-based seafood, from Singapore, which was the first country to legalize cell-based food). All three have female CEOs, by the way.
Uma Valeti, founder of Upside Foods, a pioneer in cell-based meat, is rumored to be announcing something at the event...
Tony Fadell, creator of the iPod, the iPhone, Nest and now an investor, surely has interesting things to say.
Late stage investors Prelude, Temasek and Generate are not often heard in startup circles and I'm curious about their perspectives
Last, Stanley Chan (Chen Qiufan) is a sci-fi and climate fiction writer, and I'm sure his views will be mind-opening (I'm currently reading his latest 'AI 2041').
Did I forget to mention Bill Gates? He's certainly someone who can articulate the big picture. His book on climate is a great read.
Speaking of speakers, how inclusive/diverse are the voices addressing climate issues at this event?
We have about 50 speakers, including 21 women. As a global firm we also wanted to include voices from outside North America and managed to get several speakers from Europe and Asia, despite the added complexity of time zones.
What are some important themes that will be addressed at this year's SOSV Climate Tech Summit?
In his book, Bill Gates presented the 5 main sectors that emit greenhouse gases: manufacturing/materials (31%), energy (27%), food & agriculture (19%), transportation, (16%), and heating and cooling buildings (7%). We will cover all of them, but focus some fireside chats and panels on Energy, Food & Ag and manufacturing in this edition. More than anything, we want to highlight the variety of solutions that are being developed- close to 100 startups will be exhibiting in addition to the main stage sessions.
🌍 ICYMI this event is happening October 20-21 + registration is FREE 🌍
#Events #Entrepreneurship #Venture Capital
Events public
Looking for upcoming events in Germany for startups, investors and entrepreneurs? You've come to the right place. See our regularly updated list of top Tech events in Germany here.


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Home » Standard Politics News Channel » Politics Standard News » Asia Bibi Acquittal For Blasphemy Now Backfires
Asia Bibi Acquittal For Blasphemy Now Backfires
Islamist protesters blocked roads in Pakistan's major cities for a second day on Thursday, opposing a Supreme Court decision the previous day to acquit Asia Bibi, a Christian woman on death row for blasphemy allegations, media said.
Knots of protesters from an ultra-Islamist party blocked roughly 10 key roads in the southern city of Karachi and others in eastern Lahore, Geo TV and other channels said. Private schools in both cites were shut, as well as in the capital.
Groups of about 200 protesters from the Tehreek-e-Labaik (TLP) party sat under large tents, listening to speeches on two blocked roads in Karachi, a Reuters witness said.
In one speech, a TLP speaker exhorted supporters to light new fires if the police managed to douse burning tires and other objects they had already set ablaze.
The demonstrators were protesting against the court's decision to free Asia Bibi, a mother of four, who had been living on death row since 2010, as the first woman sentenced to death by hanging under Pakistan's tough blasphemy laws.
Bibi was accused of making derogatory remarks about Islam after neighbors objected to her drinking water from their glass because she was not Muslim.
But a three-judge panel set up to hear the appeal, headed by Chief Justice Saqib Nisar, ruled the evidence was insufficient.
The case has divided Pakistan, where two politicians who sought to help Bibi were assassinated, and outraged Christians worldwide, with Pope Francis saying he personally prayed for Bibi.
Blasphemy: A Memoir: Sentenced to Death Over a Cup of Water By Asia Bibi
Asia Bibi To Die By Execution For Blasphemy In Pakistan
Asia Bibi's Lawyer, Saiful Malook On The Run For His Life
Death For Blasphemy: Pakistan's Chief Justice Nisar Acquits Asia Bibi
Asia Bibi Gains Freedom From Prison
Pakistan's Army Chief Bajwa Visits China After 'Silk Road' Tension
In a televised national broadcast late on Wednesday, Prime Minister Imran Khan warned the protesters the government would act against any prolonged blockade.
"We will not allow any damages. We will not allow traffic to be blocked," Khan said. "I appeal to you, do not push the state to the extent that it is forced to take action."
Khan's broadcast followed comments by a senior leader of the Islamist TLP group, calling for Chief Justice Nisar and the other two judges to be killed.
"They all three deserve to be killed," TLP co-founder Muhammad Afzal Qadri told a protest in Lahore. "Either their security, their driver, or their cook should kill them."
He also called for the ouster of Khan's new government and urged army officers to rise up against powerful military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.
Hafiz Saeed, an influential Islamist whom the U.S. accuses of being the mastermind of attacks in Mumbai in 2008 that killed 166, has called for protests after Friday afternoon prayers.
Another Islamist group, the Milli Yakjehti Council, is also meeting on Thursday to discuss Bibi's case and may launch protests.
The whereabouts of Bibi and her family are unclear, and speculation is growing that she will leave Pakistan with her family, who have been in hiding for much of the past eight years.
Modi's Actions in Kashmir 'Stupid' and 'Cruel' – Imran Khan Declares
By: Politicoscope
On: 1 November, 2018
Tagged: Asia Bibi, Blasphemy, Chief Justice Saqib Nisar, Imran Khan, Pakistan, Saqib Nisar, Tehreek-e-Labaik, TLP
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Paige Thorne
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will use this parenting method with baby Archie
It is inspired by Princess Diana!
As we all know, earlier this month, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle welcomed a baby boy into the world.
Archie Harrison Mountbatten Windsor was born on May 6th, and he's just gorgeous.
Harry and Meghan documentary director claims palace tried to discredit series
Unsurprisingly, Meghan and Harry are going to be a little untraditional in the way they raise their son.
A close friend of Meghan's recently revealed to The Express that the royal parents plan to take a leaf out of Princess Diana's book.
Ingrid Seward, who is the Editor of Majesty Magazine, has said previously that Princess Diana was "very hands-on and nurturing" with Prince Harry.
Which is the same parenting method that he plans to use with his son, Archie.
Today The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are delighted to share their first public moment as a family. They are so incredibly grateful for the warm wishes and support they've received from everyone around the world, since welcoming their son two days ago. Photo cred: Chris Allerton ©SussexRoyal
A post shared by The Duke and Duchess of Sussex (@sussexroyal) on May 8, 2019 at 6:34am PDT
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry respond to Jeremy Clarkson's apology
Speaking on a CBS News Special of Meghan and Harry Plus One, she said: "Harry's mother was very hands-on with him. She was very very nurturing of Prince Harry."
Meghan's close friend and makeup artist, Daniel Martin, went on to say that this was how his friend would be with her child.
He said: "Parenting is difficult, in the beginning, but I have a feeling that they are ready for this, they have got this."
Very sweet of him.
"There is just going to be so much love for that baby."
Daniel also went on to give more insight on how Meghan and Harry will raise their baby.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are pleased to announce they have named their first born child: Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor This afternoon Their Royal Highnesses introduced Her Majesty The Queen to her eighth great-grandchild at Windsor Castle. The Duke of Edinburgh and The Duchess' mother were also present for this special occasion. Photo credit: Chris Allerton ©SussexRoyal
"I feel like Meghan and Harry are really going to keep this kid real."
Something that was very important for Princess Diana, she wanted her sons to have as normal a life as possible.
He also spoke about the lifestyle the baby will live, taking a leaf out of Meghan's book.
"I'm sure the baby is going to be raised clean and green. She loves to cook, eating organic whenever she can."
We're so excited to watch baby Archie grow up!
Princess Diana,
archie harrison mountbatten windsor,
Baby archie.
Prince Harry wants his kids to have a good relationship with the royal family
Prince Harry shares heated text exchange between Meghan and Kate
Kat O'Connor
Prince Harry speaks out against Jeremy Clarkson's Meghan Markle article
Prince Harry claims Prince William knocked him to the ground during row over Meghan
Meghan Markle set to release her own 'bombshell' memoir
Prince Harry says he wants 'father and brother back' in bombshell ITV interview first look
Steve Hopkins


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using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace XenAdmin.Controls.CustomGridView
{
    public class GridHeaderArrayItem : GridHeaderItem
    {
        private readonly GridStringItem[] items;

        // NB Brushes and fonts only apply to the sort indicators: those for the header text are declared within the items
        public GridHeaderArrayItem(GridStringItem[] items, HorizontalAlignment hAlign, VerticalAlignment vAlign,
            Brush backBrush, Font font, SortOrder defaultSortOrder, int width, int minwidth)
            : base(hAlign, vAlign, backBrush, font, "_", defaultSortOrder, width, minwidth, null)
        {
            this.items = items;
        }

        public override GridRow Row
        {
            set
            {
                base.Row = value;
                foreach (GridStringItem item in items)
                    item.Row = value;
            }
        }

        public override bool Hot
        {
            set
            {
                base.Hot = value;
                foreach (GridStringItem item in items)
                    item.Hot = value;
            }
        }

        public override void OnPaint(ItemPaintArgs itemPaintArgs)
        {
            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(sortdata.ToString()))
            {
                PaintManyInternal(itemPaintArgs);
                base.DrawGlyphs(itemPaintArgs);
            }
        }

        private void PaintManyInternal(ItemPaintArgs itemPaintArgs)
        {
            CurrentRectangle = new Rectangle();
            for (int i = 0; i < items.Length; i++)
            {
                GridStringItem item = items[i];
                Point locStr = itemPaintArgs.Rectangle.Location;
                locStr.Y += (itemPaintArgs.Rectangle.Height * i) / items.Length;
                item.OnPaint(
                    new ItemPaintArgs(itemPaintArgs.Graphics,
                        new Rectangle(locStr, new Size(itemPaintArgs.Rectangle.Width,
                        itemPaintArgs.Rectangle.Height / items.Length)), itemPaintArgs.State));

                if (item.DataSize.Width > DataSize.Width)
                {
                    DataSize.Width = item.DataSize.Width;
                }
                DataSize.Height += item.DataSize.Height;

                if (item.CurrentRectangle.Width > CurrentRectangle.Width)
                {
                    CurrentRectangle.Width = item.CurrentRectangle.Width;
                }

                CurrentRectangle.Height += item.CurrentRectangle.Height;
            }
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
By Chris Edwards
Published Monday, November 10, 2014
In biology labs around the world, the graduate student or 'lab rat' has long been a synonym for drudge. But the machines have started taking over. Biologists are now using technology for its mechanical doggedness.
"We are now in the parallel age," says Urban Liebel, a researcher at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and one of the founders of Acquifer, a company set up to make robotic microscopes to improve the throughput of experiments that need to perform imaging. The microscope makes it possible to perform hundreds of drug tests on species such as zebrafish, which are widely used in biological research, and process the results automatically.
Imaging is a particularly useful tool for biology for a number of reasons. One is the way that genetic changes can affect cell and organism growth and development. Some changes may be indistinguishable from the normal or 'wild type' organism. Others can cause dramatic alterations in size or shape, if they do not kill the cell entirely or, if tagging chemicals are used, the image-processing algorithms can quickly see the results in the form of fluorescent blooms when the right protein is present.
The shift to robotic assistance started at the turn of the millennium – the mapping of the first complete human genome coupled with advances in genetic manipulation changed attitudes to biological research. Sequencing itself has become highly automated, using robots to manipulate samples and apply chemicals that aid the laborious process of breaking up the DNA into measurable segments, analysing the results and then feeding them to a computer to try to piece the jigsaw back together.
For many researchers, cell-level biology is changing from being a qualitative science to a quantitative one. But, to get at the data, biologists need to conduct thousands of individual experiments. Doing as many as they can at once is not just a massive time-saver, it's essential.
Professor Ross King of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology says: "There is nothing specific about biology that favours the use of robots except there is often a lot more to do in biology. Living organisms are unbelievably complicated machines. They have thousands of genes and thousands of different molecules, all interacting. The experiments you have to do are not that hard to work out but there are lots of experiments to be done."
Chris Bakal, team leader at the London-based Institute of Cancer Research, adds: "DNA sequencing is allowing us to identify many genes and mutations but we still don't know what many of those genes do. We knock out genes in cells one at a time and see the effect of each change on cell shape, but it means imaging millions of different cells."
ICR uses a pair of automated microscopes to study the cells, sending their data to a supercomputer for feature extraction and analysis, together with robots to process the cells and deliver the chemicals used to selectively turn off a selected gene in each one. The result is a massive database that links genes and their protein products to features found in cancers, potentially extending the number of possible targets for future drugs, and combinations of them.
In many of these experiments, robots pick and place specimens under the lens of a microscope or deposit precisely measured amounts of chemical across an array of well plates or test tubes that may be analysed up to a hundred at a time.
Multi-disciplinary approach
Liebel sees clear clear advantages in repeatability to provide not just more consistent results between labs scattered around the world but to bring the experience of advances in microscopy to a wider audience. The problem is that the microscopes themselves are complex to operate. He says: "Conventional instruments are not designed for reproducibility across different labs. Manufacturers have not focused on creating light sources that are stable over thousands of hours because traditionally we've had experts using them. But in Europe we have 6,000 labs alone and just 100 microscope experts. That blocks our [ability to glean] knowledge.
"We are working on something that works more like an iPhone. It requires both biological understanding and robotics understanding. So, it's a team sport. To build machines like this takes not just one discipline but five," Liebel argues.
As well as automating experiments, robots are being deployed to make the biological parts needed for them and even to provide a different perspective on experiment design and have teased out a number of issues with robotic system design.
At the 2008 International Conference on Systems Biology in Gothenburg, Professor Ehud Shapiro of the Weizmann Institute in Tel-Aviv argued that the combination of robotics and a couple of key reactions that have underpinned the world of genetic engineering could yield what he called a 'DNA word processor'. Many experiments call for libraries of DNA sequences that involve small variations but which are substantially the same.
To a large extent, biologists have been able to rely on splicing existing DNA sequences together using naturally occurring enzymes to make many of them. But for experiments that involve larger changes to DNA, they need artificially synthesised sequences, which are expensive especially if a large number of variants are needed. Editing smaller sequences makes more sense. So, the concept for Shapiro's DNA word processor turned into a European Union research project called Cadmad, which is tuning the system to make a machine able to produce DNA libraries on demand for those situations where synthesis is not economically viable.
Parallel operations
Sequences can be glued together and pieces chopped out, all coordinated by a computer program. Each step takes time but it is possible to have the robots perform many of the operations in parallel so that completed sequences can be produced in less than a day. Systems like these expose issues of repeatability and noise even with machinery that should be able to perform the same procedure the same way day in, day out.
King says: "Mostly the noise is the problem. Biological systems are incredibly noisy to start with. Even with experiments done by a robot, which are very accurate and very uniform, we would find experiments not working for a week or so at a time. It was hard to figure out why."
The source of the noise is not necessarily what the robot is doing but the source of key chemicals: subtle changes in composition can easily throw the results out of line. Mechanical lab assistants can also be brittle and easily confused compared with their biological counterparts. For example Ginkgo Bioworks, a biotech offshoot of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found its chemical-handling robot could be easily fooled by air bubbles when liquid levels ran low. This led to the robot failing to flush pipes correctly, causing errors downstream until new maintenance protocols were introduced.
Tuval Ben Yehezkel, visiting scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, says: "In my experience robots are accurate if you optimise and tune them in advance to the exact application you intend to run on them. If you change something, even seemingly harmless things like small changes to chemicals, it may interfere with robot accuracy. Every robotic script has to be tested before it's run and very little if at all should be changed compared to the test run in order to achieve the best results.
The lack of internal sensors to monitor the transfer of liquids can be an issue with today's robot designs, Ben Yehezkel says, adding that he is surprised by "how little traditional, macro-volume – that is, above 1µl – liquid-handling robot technology in the lab has advanced during the past decade".
The need for repeatability and consistent results drove a number of design decisions in the Acquifer microscope. The most important is the use of internal sensors to monitor its performance: "The machine is self-aware," Liebel says.
The team opted to use a linear motor, which Liebel says is unusual for this type of instrument, because of its consistency under computer control. LEDs change colour subtly with rises and falls in temperature, so the microscope uses a Peltier-effect device in concert with the sensors to maintain a consistent level of heat and light output.
Integrated robotics
Liebel's team found some novel approaches to improving repeatability in experiments involving zebrafish. These are small with a reasonably consistent size and shape, but if they appear in random orientations under the microscope someone either has to indicate that to the computer or hope that the image-processing algorithms can cope.
Three-dimensional printing provided a way of making customised well-plate arrays that let the fish slot into the holes neatly. "You can print these tools for €4 each and create shapes that orient something like a zebrafish. It massively reduces the cost of drug screening," Liebel claims.
Integration is one of the biggest issues in building more sophisticated systems. "There is an increasing amount of robotics but it tends to be isolated to one part, with very little integration between robots," says King. "There is a lack of low-level standards for integration. The manufacturers are shooting themselves in the foot a bit here. With better integration they would have more success."
Ben Yehezkel says the control software needs to improve. At Cadmad they have developed much of their own to take recipes for DNA sequences through to robot-control programs. So far they have focused on using MatLab to build the high-level software and using that to interface to the low-level robot programs. "I would say that user-friendly high-level interfaces for biologists to program robots on a daily basis are the major thing that is lacking," he says. "Typically, nowadays you still need an expert to program an experiment on a liquid-handling robot. This should change. It would make robots much more accessible for biologists."
medical robotics
Power dressing: exoskeletons on the job
Smart sensor fitted into N95 face mask detects wearer's physiological data
Goldfish learns to drive lidar-equipped vehicle
Covid plastic waste could be cut with sterilisation process to reuse N95 respirators
Finger-clip device monitors blood pressure in seconds
Wearable device measures pH of sweat to determine muscle fatigue
Human muscle cells to be launched to ISS for ageing study
Biosensors could help people with complex health conditions


text:
Q: Android paused state clarification The Android developer documentation states: "If an activity has lost focus but is still visible (that is, a new non-full-sized or transparent activity has focus on top of your activity), it is paused. A paused activity is completely alive (it maintains all state and member information and remains attached to the window manager), but can be killed by the system in extreme low memory situations."
Can someone give an example of "a new non-full-sized or transparent activity" that would cause an activity to enter the paused state?
I can't think of an example that would meet this criteria. It has always been my understanding that activities are full screen in nature. They can't be "non-full-sized" and a transparent activity would only have a transparent background, thus causing the an activity to enter the stopped state, not a paused one.

A: an example would be an activity with the theme of a dialog.
android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Dialog"

So the activity is the size of a dialog (not taking up the whole screen) but with all of the functionality of an activity

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Anyone who desires to research easy residing skills—the type hired through our forefathers—and adapt them for a greater existence within the twenty-first century want glance no additional than this eminently necessary, full-color advisor. numerous readers have became to Back to Basics for notion and guide, escaping to an period earlier than energy saws and speedy nutrients eating places and rediscovering the pleasures and demanding situations of a more fit, greener, and extra self-sufficient way of life.
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Scientific texts are usually constructed in a special way in which the main ideas are surrounded by sentences that serve as a kind of introduction and conclusion to a given fragment of the text (Emashova, 2008). Related concepts and genres A number of other related concepts and genres also need to be defined. Many of these definitions can easily be derived from the definition of an abstract or, we could say, naturally. To give a concise overview, nonetheless, requires that we define all possible concepts.
The opening subsections consider the length, function and types of abstracts. We will see that these three issues are so deeply interrelated that the order in which they have been considered is almost irrelevant. After these, we will also discuss an important but somewhat different issue: the objectivity of the abstract. Finally, we address the issues related to the author abstract. It is often the subject of debate. As the knowledge and skills related to it are essential to a wide range of our readers, we give it suitable attention in the concluding subsection of this chapter.
In abstracting journals and databases there is no place for and in principle no possibility for publishing any reaction to criticism. The authors concerned cannot respond to the critical remarks. Researchers thus cannot react to critique expressed in abstracts. The rather obvious conclusion is that 57 Abstracts and Abstracting the only acceptable way to express criticism is not to write an abstract on a given article (Rowley, 1988). As my personal abstracting experience shows, this happens from time to time.


You are visiting the placeholder page for Ava Brown. This page is here because someone used our placeholder utility to look for Ava Brown. We created this page automatically in hopes Ava Brown would find it. If you are not Ava Brown, but are an alumni of Henrico High School Henrico, VA, register on this site for free now.


SimsUshare is proud to welcome the class of Lt. Bill Parker (Glen Lake Fire Department), held on Saturday October 24, 2015 at 8am. Students in his class can use the following license code to get free access/use of SimsUshare Platinum, for Windows or Mac, through November 15, 2015.
It will then give you full create/edit/play capabilities until November 15, 2015. To check out ways to get started, please take a look at our "Getting Started" suggestions, located here. If you have any questions, or we can help you in any way, please contact us.


This site contains everything that many people will need to complete the training; however, everyones' degree of suffering from their symtoms is different and some will need to take themselves through the program more then once, by continuing to review their Fourth Gate, Fifth Gate, and always need to revisit the spiritual principles and reality rules of the Third Gate.
If you're already in moderately good recovery, or if you have manageable, but unwanted anxieties or depression, or an addiction with an existing, satisfactory support system in place, or if your goals are simply to feel and perform better, you can take yourself through the Five Gates Training Program, have an online psychotherapy in the comfort of your own home, or study our training program with the use of one of our power recovery tool.
Your Journey through The Five Gates Program can begin with a single click below.
Train Online with a Certified Five Gates Trainer or with Dr. Kesselman directly.
For your convenience we've also put the entire Five Gates – The Science of Healing The Spirit book online.
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What does "fair trade" really mean? This gripping and beautifully produced documentary answers that question by looking at one man's struggle to get fair compensation for coffee growers in Ethiopia.
The film centers on the efforts of Tadesse Meskela, the general manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union, who travels the world to market the coffee produced by his co-op and to negotiate better prices for the African country's product. He repeats a simple message: Africans are not fairly compensated for their crops, especially when considering the value that people all over the world place on their daily cup of coffee.
The tireless Meskela also spends time educating his growers about what coffee is worth, informing them that people in the West pay $2.90 for a cup of coffee. The growers are accustomed to having a buyer come to them and inform them of the going rate for a kilo (2.2 pounds) of unroasted beans, typically $0.13.
Because prices for coffee are artificially low, Africans are forced to depend on international aid. Meskela says a ten-fold increase in compensation is required to allow Ethiopians to continue to provide the world with some of its finest coffee and to afford to clothe and educate their children, which they cannot do today.
The world may not be ready to pay $29.00 for a cup of coffee, but if the supply chain can be shortened, as Meskela hopes, the growers can still be compensated and consumers can still afford their morning buzz.
I think sadly of the fellow shown hacking down his beautiful, mature coffee plants to clear the field for growing chat (also called qat), a narcotic leaf that local men chew to "feel better" and that brings in a higher income per acre than coffee.
Nor can I shake the image of Meskela going into a London supermarket and searching for his country's coffee, amidst the bewildering array of choices on the shelf. He finds one or two packages that contain Ethiopian coffee, but as each is branded uniquely, it's impossible to tell just what the source is.
You might presume a documentary on this topic would grow dull, but it never does: Directors Marc and Nick Francis have assembled film that tells a fascinating story that keeps you on edge throughout the film. Not only are the production values high, with gorgeous cinematography and a beautifully composed (and judiciously used) score, but the film is also well edited. It's one of the most watchable documentaries I have ever seen.
This film is a must-see for the conscientious omnivore, or anyone at all interested in how their grande latte got to their hand. It is a documentary that should become a classic in the growing field of food journalism.


text:
Posted on August 17, 2017 August 17, 2017 by David Steers
Remonstrant Meeting-House, Ballymena
A visit to Ballymena meant the opportunity to go and have a look at the former Remonstrant meeting-house there. The entry in the Unitarian Heritage book is a bit limited, as the Irish section of that otherwise invaluable book often is. It says simply 'High Street. Antrim. 1845' in the disused churches section and gives no further details and has no illustrations. Although it is situated on the High Street it's actually a bit tucked away and not that easy to find.
But as the photos show it is an interesting and unusual building that was erected by the Non-Subscribers in 1845. The date stone can still be seen, and although the congregation finally departed in 1926 it is not 'disused' having been the home of the Faith Mission church for decades.
Having said that there is precious little information on the ground in Ballymena about this building. I asked in the Faith Mission shop if they had any information on the building and they told me no. In the Council run Braid Centre – a Museum and Arts Centre – although they had an interesting collection of leaflets and other pamphlets, they had nothing on this building.
I was surprised the Council had nothing because their predecessor, the Ballymena Borough Council, had thought it worthy enough to merit a plaque which was put up in 1995, on the 150th anniversary of the building's opening. I knew this because I was there all those years ago and somewhere have a black and white press picture of the occasion.
It is a curious building designed by Thomas Jackson, an architect with a Quaker background, who contributed a great deal to the buildings of Belfast including St Malachy's Roman Catholic Church which, although much grander by far, nevertheless shares some architectural details with the Ballymena Remonstrant church.
The Ballymena congregation was part of the impressive missionary drive inaugurated by the Remonstrant Synod and was opened on Sunday, 9th November by Rev Henry Montgomery. I am indebted to 'Dryasdust' writing in the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian in September 1994 for details concerning the congregation's life. He writes that the original congregation had 57 families in its first year of existence. Given that they had built such a notable edifice they might have been expected to be able to flourish. The first minister was the Rev Francis McCammon who was born in Larne but had been ministering in Diss in Norfolk immediately prior to receiving a call to Ballymena. Unfortunately his ministry ended fairly acrimoniously as did the ministry of his successor James McFerran. However, he was followed by the Rev J.A. Crozier (1855-1865) who seems to have been highly successful in building the church up into a flourishing cause. Unfortunately following his departure to Newry in 1865 numbers never really recovered and the last minister (Rev Halliwell Thomas) left in 1875. The congregation struggled on in some form or other until the First World War but finally closed in the 1920s with the building being sold in 1926.
The Bible Christian reported the opening in the following way:
The meeting-house of the new congregation in Ballymena, in connexion with the Remonstrant Synod of Ulster, was opened for divine worship, on Sunday, Nov. 9, by Dr Montgomery, who preached from Matthew, 10th chapter and 34th verse, an eloquent and powerful discourse. It has been erected from the designs, and under the direction of Mr. Thomas Jackson, architect Belfast. The style of the building is an adaptation of the ecclesiastical style (commonly, but erroneously called Gothic) of about the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The front elevation is in the form of a gable, boldly enriched by projecting buttresses, with cut-stone weatherings, surmounted by pinnacles and leaving embrasures, with cut-stone dressings, extended between them. The entrance door, with the windows in front, and on the flanks of the building, is surrounded by appropriate cut-stone dressings, the sash frames being of cast metal in imitation of cut stone. In the centre of the front, over the door entrance, is a large ornamental wheel window, also formed of cast metal. The meeting-house contains 250 sittings; it is entered through a commodious porch and hall, over which is a school room, which is arranged so as to admit of being added as a gallery to the house, at a future time, should additional accommodation be required. The committee contemplate the erection of a residence for their clergyman, contiguous to the meeting-house. The following gentlemen acted as collectors on the occasion: Thomas Casement, Esq. J.P. Ballee-house; Wm. Coates, Esq. J.P. Glentoran, Belfast; Archibald Barklie, Esq. Inver, Larne; John Dickey, Esq. Leighenmore, Ballymena; Alexander O'Rorke, Esq. Ballymena; William Beggs, Esq. Lisnafillen, Ballymena. The collection, including donations from parties who could not attend, amounted to upwards of £170.
Posted in Architecture, History, Non-Subscribing Presbyterians, PhotographyTagged Ballymena, Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland, NSPCI, photography, Remonstrant Synod of Ulster, Rev Francis McCammon, Rev Henry Montgomery, Rev J.A. Crozier, Thomas Jackson architect
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HIV epidemic in Libya: Identifying gaps.
Hamidi, A., Regmi, P. R. and van Teijlingen, E., 2021. HIV epidemic in Libya: Identifying gaps. Journal of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (JIAPAC), 20, 1-5. (In Press)
23259582211053964.pdf - Published Version
Accepted_HIV in Libya.pdf - Accepted Version
Background HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) and AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) became a public issue in Libya after the infection of 400 children in El-Fatih Hospital in 1988. Due to the civil war, social and religious barriers, HIV prevalence is hard to establish, but it is generally believed to be increasing. Objective This review (a) assesses the size and scope of the available literature on the HIV epidemic in Libya; and, (b) identifies the nature and extent of research conducted to date. Methods A comprehensive search was performed using PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Academic Search Ultimate, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar. Primary research studies and official reports that are exclusively on Libya published during 1988 -2021 were considered. Results In total 25 studies were included: Ten primary research studies, four online news articles, six Government reports, one letter to the editor, one manuscript, three online databases Conclusion Despite the low-quality data, the literature suggests there is an increase in HIV infection rates in Libya. Culturally sensitive research on sexual activities, women, HIV preventative methods and attitudes of the Libyan public will assist in developing an effective National AIDS Programme, reducing stigma, supporting People Living with HIV (PLWHIV) and decreasing infection rates.
HIV; Libya; women; stigma
Faculty of Health & Social Sciences


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Gunman opened fire on 19-year-old rapper 'YK Osiris' tourbus
08/24/2018 crime, local records office, Missouri, news, shotting, st luois, st. louis, yk osiris
ST. LOUIS, MO – Nineteen-year-old rapper Osiris Williams, who goes by the stage name YK Osiris, had just finished opening for Lil Baby at the Pageant when a gunman opened fire on his tour van, injuring four occupants, the Post-Dispatch reports.
Police said the shooting happened on Interstate 64 near Jefferson Avenue just after 11 p.m. Wednesday night. The shooter was in a gray four-door sedan, according to witnesses, but police have not identified any suspects. Police said the rapper's tour van sustained "heavy ballistic damage" on the driver's side.
Four of the six men in the van were injured in the shooting, authorities said. The occupants' ages ranged from 19 to 53 years old. All are reportedly in stable condition after driving themselves to an area hospital.
Osiris, who is from Florida, thanked God for letting him walk away from the shooting unharmed. "God so good, man. My car got shot up 20 times. But God got a plan for you, nobody can take it from you," he said in a video posted to social media Thursday.
In the video, Osiris is wearing a hospital visitor's pass and appears uninjured.
Unverified accounts on social media indicate that Osiris may have been targeted by a rival rapper.
Anyone with information should contact St. Louis Regional CrimeStoppers toll free at 1-866-371-TIPS (8477). All callers can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a reward. Tips can also be submitted through the CrimeStoppers website or free app.
YK Osiris - Timing (Official Video)
The rapper documented the shooting in social media posts. "WHEN U A CHILD OF GOD 🙏 AND PROTECTED BY THE BLOOD OF JESUS 💯 THERE IS NO WAY THE DEVIL CAN KILL YOU ‼‼" he wrote in a since-deleted Twitter post and on Instagram Stories. The shooting took place on Highway 64 following Osiris's show opening for Lil Baby on Wednesday night. Video of the van post-shooting was shared on social media – watch it below.
YK Osiris sprinter van gets shot up after opening for Lil Baby in St. Louis


Some people sustain injuries because they are involved in unfortunate accidents that couldn't be prevented. Unfortunately, many accidents occur as the result of negligence on the part of another person or company. If you were injured due to negligence, don't try to negotiate a settlement on your own. The Dearborn personal injury attorneys at The Law Offices of Lee Steinberg, P.C. have more than 40 years of experience helping people get the financial compensation they need to pay their medical expenses and move on with their lives. We also care about the community and what goes on within it. Read our blog for Dearborn-related stories.
Motor vehicle accidents cause serious injuries that are expensive to treat, but they cost much more than most people realize. In the United States, car crashes cost billions of dollars per year in work costs. These are the costs associated with lost work time and the inability to perform household work due to crash-related injuries. In Dearborn, several intersections are more dangerous than others. The most dangerous intersection is Michigan Ave. at Miller Rd., which is the site of many accidents each year. Ford Rd. at Gulley Rd. and Schaefer Rd. at W. Warren Ave. are also very dangerous. If you are involved in a crash at one of these intersections, call a Dearborn auto accident lawyer immediately.
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Films >> Woodstock (1970) >> FilmographySynopsisSourceScene LogKey PassagesReviewsHistoric ContextFilmic ContextScene AnalysisIssue EssayComparison FilmsSound BitesImage GalleryWorks Cited
Alice's Restaurant (1969)
This film is an adaptation of a song by one of the 60's most prolific and well-known songwriters, Arlo Guthrie. We are taken through Guthrie's song "Alice's Restaurant Massacre" and follow Guthrie himself through the trials and tribulations of the events there within. The movie itself is a social commentary on the state of the United States during the late sixties. This relates well to Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music because it can be used as a voice for a generation. This movie expresses how a number of young American's in the 60's were feeling about the government and society in general -- that they were trapped and falsely lead down a path that didn't suit them or their beliefs. Used as a companion to Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music , the audience can gain a better understanding of how this generation felt, and what they truly believed in.
Easy Rider (1969)
This film goes well with Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music in that it deals with the lifestyles of several of the countercultures within the 60's. From rednecks to hippies, Easy Rider brings the audience along for the ride as Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper meet and greet some of the most unusual and surprisingly usual people on their road trip. The movie has a very Woodstock feel about it. The carefree nature and the laid-back attitude of the cast contribute to the comparisons made between the two films. One can relate the cast in Easy Rider directly to many of the audience members at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. They were out to have fun and live by their own rules, and that's exactly what they did. Arguably, "the" film about the 60's from the counterculture perspective.
Gimme Shelter (1970)
Produced the in the same year as Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music . The Rolling Stones' direct cinema film acts as very much an extension of the themes of peace, love, and community that Woodstock introduces. The film demonstrates the progression of the notion of the free concert by showing the devastating reality that can spawn from such a counterculture. While in Woodstock it can be argued that this culture is either benign or malignant, in Gimme Shelter , the direct focus on the murder at the Altamont Speedway typifies the potential for social disruption that this musically founded culture can generate. Gimme Shelter is also produced directly after Woodstock mainly about the Stones' free concert at the Altamont Speedway and thus serves as a direct corollary to the progression of the counterculture environment and the ensuing unavoidable catastrophes.
Monterey Pop (1968)
Created by D.A. Pennebaker (the same filmmaker famous for the direct cinema film of Bob Dylan's Don't Look Back , Monterey Pop is a documentary that focuses on the power of artistry in the festival-like environments of the 1960's. Rather than focusing on the concert-goers, like Woodstock , Monterey Pop ignores making a statement about the fans and, rather, became popular as the first of its kind. It was so well received, that it actually influenced the funding of the Woodstock documentary, but, in tone and content, was much less socially concerned.
Woodstock '94 (1995)
This film is in direct correlation with the original Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music since it is the documentary of the twenty-fifth anniversary concert. Though this documentary doesn't give the same amount of audience and townsfolk commentary, the audience is still able to view both the musicians and their fans during the film. With these opportunities we are able to see how the lifestyles and philosophies of America's young have changed over the last twenty-five years. We are able to analyze the crowd and compare it directly to Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music , giving us a greater understanding of the motives behind the two concerts.
I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978)
Medium Cool (1969)
Peace, Love & Misunderstanding (2012)
The Rose (1979)
Taking Woodstock (2009)


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Younge Street Built Heritage Loss
Posted on January 3, 2011 By krista
Yesterday, the heritage building once known as William Reynold's Block at Younge and Gould Streets in Toronto burnt to the ground. The building was built in 1888 and last year suffered major damage to its facade. A great concise history of the building was posted on BlogTO in May 2010.
Following the collapse of a portion of the building last year, the building's current owner filed a request for demolition. This request was delayed by the building being designated a heritage property and Heritage Toronto maintaining that efforts would go towards the renovation and restoration of the building.
Considering the ongoing request for demolition various heritage advocates have been crying arson since news of the blaze of the fire. Currently, the cause of the fire is not yet clear, but arson has yet to be ruled out. Regardless, this fire marks a substantial loss to the historic Young street facade.
Photo credit: Postmedia News photo
Posted in UncategorizedTagged built heritage, demolition, fire, heritage designationLeave a comment
Built Heritage in Danger: Sudbury's Flour Mill
The Moulin à Fleur neighbourhood Sudbury located immediately north of the downtown core was one of the first neighbourhoods to develop outside of the original settlement. The most well known landmark in the area is the flour mill which gave the community its name. The mill silos will be 100 this year.
This mill has long closed and the mill's silos were designated a city heritage site in 1973 and recognized under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1989. Additionally, the mill's foreman house was converted into a community museum in 1974.
Despite these positive preservation efforts the flour mill landmark in Sudbury is in a state of disrepair. The silos that the city has previously deemed a heritage property have received no maintenance work in many years, and the entire structure is nearing a state of demolition by neglect.
The neglect of the silos has left the city with a choice to either repair or demolish the silos, as they are becoming a safety hazard. Demolition costs have been estimated at $520,000 to $850,000, and refurbishment at $1.7 million. However, based on the age of the silos there are a number of heritage grants which local organizations are applying to in hopes of helping finance the repair. Many Moulin à Fleur community members see the mill as been a valuable part of their local heritage and are against the demolition of the silos. Hopefully the city can be convinced of the value of this local landmark.
Posted in UncategorizedTagged built heritage, community museums, demolition, heritage designation, local history, preservation, SudburyLeave a comment


The series opens in 1863, and goes on to cover the story of Phillip Maddison and that of his family and friends through the first half of the twentieth century, including two world wars and a great deal of the social history of the period. The series, in fact, roughly follows HW's own life – but with considerable fictional embellishment. Comprising the best part of 3 million words, the work is a tour de force and has to be one of the great achievements of English literature. It was a mammoth and exhausting task, with a volume appearing nearly every year, the author proof-reading one volume while writing, adding, deleting, and honing, the next.
Born in 1895, HW was in his mid-fifties when he finally settled down to write this magnum opus. But it had been in – and on – his mind from the very start of his writing career. There are mentions in his earliest notes and Phillip Maddison, the chief protagonist of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, has, as the London cousin of Willie Maddison, several cameo appearances in the early Flax of Dream series, published between 1921 and 1928.
My intention at this time  was to double my characters of the Flax. Thus Phillip is the London cousin of William, and 'Spica' [Doline Rendle] is a London cousin of Mary Ogilvie. I wanted to show the difference in the psychical make-up of the country-bred person, and the town-sharpened (warped) consciousness. Thus while Mary accepts William naturally and without reserve, Spica has the same feelings for Phillip but cannot let them open naturally, with contentment: her "first seven years" were to her spirit as the acid soil of cities is to grass & trees and air. Polluted.
That comment follows HW's general ideas about the ideal growth (education) of body and mind within a natural environment which were particularly marked when he was a young man. Naturally, that original synopsis became modified by the time HW actually came to write the new series.
Then in various places throughout the intervening years HW notes in his diaries and his letters to various friends, increasingly as time went on, his anguish that he had not started; has not been able to start; is being prevented from starting, this work, which he so obviously considered from the beginning would be a major work.
Damn! I wanted 60,000 words recreating the Etaples mutiny; now I've popped it off in 600 words. I used all the stereotyped details of war books: reserving the fresh ones for my real war book, which has the war as background (often close background) and the human figures always moving just in front of it. 500,000 words – 1894-1924. The Hopeful Life. 3 volumes. I'm flinching from beginning.
For a long time it is noticeable that he is envisaging the proposed work as '3 volumes'. He reiterates this in Goodbye West Country (1937), referring to 'my London trilogy'. And as can be seen in that 1930 letter, his timescale is 1894–1924. But as the years passed and the work was still not begun, it is obvious that his scope was enlarged. And once the Second World War had occurred, reinforcing all the problems engendered by the earlier war, he surely had to include it. The catastrophic flood of Lynmouth in August 1952 gave him the perfect scenario to use as his climactic conclusion. There was/is an inherent momentum which carried/carries the story forward to a certain point, which made/makes a perfect circle. It would seem as if he was not meant to start it earlier. Certainly the delay, however frustrating it must have been to his psyche, allowed him to grow into full maturity as a person and therefore as a writer. It could not have been otherwise.
As the Second World War ended, so HW's twenty-year marriage to Loetitia Hibbert broke under the tremendous strains that it had endured. HW was in a state of mental turmoil and breakdown, in many ways as bad as at the end of the First World War, but for different reasons. His personal papers reveal that in the summer of 1945 he tried to commit suicide on the beach at Putsborough, but was rescued literally and psychologically by two men who were to become great friends. He was mentally and physically exhausted from the work and strain of running his Norfolk Farm and writing to provide the income to keep it going. He was also extremely disturbed by the perfidy of Hitler and the knowledge of the atrocities that the Nazis had perpetrated. The Norfolk Farm was sold, and at the end of October 1945 the family moved to a house in the village of Botesdale, near Diss, on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk. Divorce had been agreed, but HW wanted all to be done as amicably as possible (although that was basically for selfish reasons). To begin with, although often absent, he was ostensibly domiciled at the Botesdale home (where he took over the once servants' quarters for his writing), but on filing the divorce on 2 October 1946 he had to finally vacate the marital home, and he went back to live in Devon in the Writing Hut in his Field at Ox's Cross, above the village of Georgeham. His father died at this point, and although HW felt considerable anguish over this he also felt 'free' at last from his father's dominating critical presence. He actually expresses this feeling of 'freedom' in the climax of the last volume of the series, when the fictional Phillip at last feels he will be able to write the series of books he has been planning since the 1920s, thus forming a perfect circle – symbol of eternity.
HW's main writing occupation at this time was The Phasian Bird (published in November 1948). It has to be significant that at the end of this book he kills off the main character, Wilbo (again based on himself), as well as the almost mythical Chee-kai – the magnificent Reeve's pheasant (which has a near magical persona reminiscent of The Firebird). With Wilbo dead, HW is therefore literally and symbolically 'free' of everything in his past life. He has sloughed a skin and is beginning again. Those 'red ink' notes made in March 1947 in his 'Richard Jefferies Journal' show that he was already actively thinking about beginning, at last, his great work. He was reminding himself of those early scenes, filling his mind with their details, so that he could lose himself and so find that 'lost time' (the Proustian 'à la recherche du temps perdu' – for him, 'Ancient Sunlight').
HW had become friends with Malcolm Elwin, a writer and critic who lived at Northam Burrows on the spit beyond Westward Ho! in north Devon. At Easter 1946 HW met Elwin's sixteen-year-old step-daughter, Susan Conelly, and suddenly and completely (as always) had fallen in love with her. Over the ensuing months this caused him great anguish: it also caused considerable tensions between him and the Elwins. But Malcolm Elwin was a staunch supporter of HW's writing, and did not let this affect his literary judgement. He had just taken on the editorship of the West Country Magazine and published two of HW's stories in the first issue in summer 1946. Ann Thomas, HW's long-term secretary and mistress, came back to work for him in mid-1947, typing The Phasian Bird, and undertaking the work involved when HW now took over from John Middleton Murry, another friend and great supporter, the ownership and editorship of the literary journal The Adelphi.
But in the summer of 1948 HW met a young teacher, Christine Duffield and fell in love again. He abandoned The Adelphi and Ann Thomas, and, not without some interim drama, he and Christine were married in April 1949. HW was being given a new start in every sense of the word.
During the war he had prepared what he considered to be a sequel to his book The Story of A Norfolk Farm, a volume covering the farm during the war years, which he tended to call 'Wit's Misery', and/or 'A Chronicle Writ in Darkness'. He now thought to prepare this for publication, but he had also begun writing what was to be the first volume of the new work.
This double project was obviously causing him problems, and he wrote to Malcolm Elwin with his woes. In Sept 1949 Elwin wrote to him to tell him to leave the book on the Norfolk Farm alone and to get on with the new work.
Your job is the saga of Phillip Maddison . . . [which] would lift you into the top rank of big novelists.
Great news that you are now 24,000 words down the road to the Mecca of your career. Aye, indeed, will I be honoured by the dedication of your first volume.
At this point HW had a large disagreement with his long-term friend and publisher, Richard de la Mare at Faber. Richard did not want to publish the farm sequel, nor was he prepared to give an advance on the unknown new book. It is obvious that both lost their tempers and said unforgivable things. HW was enormously upset by this event. It was of course, a crucial moment for him psychologically, for his extremely fragile, nervous, and sensitive temperament needed extra support to prop him up over the new venture.
In great distress, he rushed straight round to his current agent, Cyrus Brooks (of A.M. Heath & Co.), who recommended that he take the work elsewhere. HW immediately went round to Collins who had been his original publishers, who agreed to take the new work on. A contract was signed, and HW received an advance of £500, with a further £500 to be paid on delivery of the typescript. But in September 1950 he learnt from Cyrus Brooks that Collins did not like the new book (The Dark Lantern) because they found its hero, Richard Maddison, unsympathetic. HW noted that he was meant to be unsympathetic, that it was to show how all future events stemmed from the father/son relationship. (He had read Edmund Gosse's Father and Son, which reinforced his own theories.) But it is evident that he had not explained his overall plan for the new series to Collins, for Richard Maddison was not to be the main character.
HW was at that point about to depart with his new wife Christine to France, to stay with the writer Richard Aldington (whose biography of T. E. Lawrence was to cause such a furore in due course) for a holiday – (a repeat of their honeymoon visit the previous year. Their son, born in May 1950, had been left at Botesdale with his first wife, Loetitia – the last child of their marriage being then five years old.
Distraught, HW then rushed round to Faber with the rejected typescript. Richard de la Mare was somewhat cold (they had not – and never really did – made up their differences from the argument), but he did agree to look at it. However, while HW was in France he wrote to say that he too did not like the main character.
On holiday and now more relaxed at this point, HW decided to rewrite where necessary. On return to England he settled down to his task, objectively making Richard Maddison a more sympathetic character, and what was by now the fifth version was sent to Collins in mid-December. But Collins still stalled, and did not pay over the next amount of advance royalties.
That HW poured out these problems to Malcolm Elwin, now on the editorial staff of Macdonald & Co., becomes obvious, for on 18 February 1951 HW received a letter from Elwin saying that his firm were willing to publish the new series.
The news engendered a flurry of telegrams to Cyrus Brooks to arrange cancellation of the contract with Collins. They very generously only asked for £150 of the original advance to be repaid – although they were of course partly to blame for the situation.
But HW now nervously decided to doubt Elwin's judgement and lost faith in himself and in the new work. He decided to send the typescript to a new acquaintance, who had written saying how much he admired HW's writing. This was George Painter (Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum), who wrote reviews for The Listener and the New Statesman (and went on to write several biographies, notably of Marcel Proust, André Gide, and Chateaubriand, all of which won prestigious literary prizes). Painter passed the work as excellent. So, reaffirmed, HW signed the contract with Macdonald on 15 February 1951, receiving £500 on signature, and a further £500 on delivery of the typescript.
The stage was now set for the publication of what eventually became the very long cycle of novels that comprise A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. Malcolm Elwin was a tower of strength as HW's editor, although HW inevitably became increasingly irritated when Elwin made criticisms with which he did not agree. Over the next nineteen years Macdonald published one volume almost every year. It was a gargantuan task, and was, and remains, an enormous achievement.
All great writers have something in common – a sense of power and vision, a moment of grace and revelation made permanent – which is communicated from them to the reader. . . .
The peculiar quality of Henry Williamson is the piercing directness of his vision, the absolute identity of his own feeling and its communication to the reader, the clothing of a naked and terrible pain or joy in a noble and innocent prose, as keen as sunlight and as transparent as spring-water. He stands at the end of the line of Blake, Shelley and Jefferies: he is the last classic and the last romantic.
Williamson has been compared with Proust [e.g. Malcolm Elwin, 'Henry Williamson: An English Proust', The Aylesford Review, vol. II, no. 2, Winter 1957-8, pp. 42-48] . . . the two writers have a real affinity in their vision of the past as the place in time where the truth of things and people . . . can be seen as pure and undying. The two ideas of Time Lost and Ancient Sunlight, though independently discovered, are intimately related; and Williamson could say of this aspect of his work, as Proust said of his own, 'my instrument is not a microscope, but a telescope pointed at Time'. . . . [Painter's biography of Proust appeared at this time] 'A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory', said Keats; and the corollary follows that a great writer's works are his attempts to detect and tell the allegory of his own life.
Phillip Maddison is a divided man, sometimes cruel, cowardly and sinful, sometimes possessed of courage, kindness and insight, moving towards a still unknown salvation, and seen with complete clarity and charity by a man who has become whole [i.e. HW as the writer].
But this vast novel-cycle, the summer-harvest of Henry Williamson's life as a writer, is not only the study of an individual character. In art the universal is sometimes, perhaps best, revealed by a profound and minute examination of the particular. Here is an unrolling map of the labyrinth of three generations, our fathers, ourselves, and our children, and the thread leading to the mystery – monster of divinity? – at the centre. . . . The whole cycle will ultimately be recognised as the great historical novel of our time, its subject as the total experience of twentieth century man.
Murry's essay was called 'The Novels of Henry Williamson' and contains major insights.
Here and there a man of more than ordinary sensibility arises for whom to forget [the horrors of war] is an impossibility. The experience of war becomes a festering wound in his psyche for which the rest of his life is a quest for healing. . . . Such a one is Henry Williamson. And my purpose is to draw, if I can, the attention of a reluctant world to the rare quality of the series of novels he is now writing . . . this will be in its entirety one of the most remarkable English novels of our time. . . . It is amazingly rich in all the living detail of a swiftly changing society; the characters are drawn with such loving sympathy and such firmness of imaginative outline that we are entirely absorbed by their vicissitudes. We are apprehensive for them, we are relieved; we rejoice and are sorrowful; we are angry and we understand and we laugh and laugh again. To be able to do this with us is the noveliest's supreme gift. . . .
I believe it is high time we awoke to the splendour and scope of his effort and achievement in A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. Begin with The Dark Lantern and read on: you will be the richer for it.
This essay was printed in an expanded form in J. Middleton Murry, Katherine Mansfield and Other Literary Studies (Constable 1959), with a foreword by T. S. Eliot, which appeared after Murry's death in 1957 and was compiled by his wife. Apart from the important Mansfield essay and the one on HW, the only other essay is on George Gissing, erudite Victorian writer.
The series of novels by Henry Williamson were very highly thought of by John Middleton Murry. He considered it of real importance that Henry Williamson should be fully recognised as one of the great novelists of the generation and therefore was most anxious that this essay should be published.
The essay was reprinted by the Henry Williamson Society in 1986, and though long out of print The Novels of Henry Williamson has now been made available again by the Society as an e-book.
One must state here that, at the point both Painter and Murry wrote those critiques, only the first seven/eight volumes had appeared. But both knew HW well and were privy to his plans and ideas for the rest of the series, which makes their comments valid for the series as a whole.
They [the 'Chronicle' novels] are the products of a creative transmutation of fact into truth, like Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit [Fiction and Truth, or, The Novel and Truth]. It is the work of a truly gifted artist, come at last, after much inward travail, to a mastery of his own self-disturbing powers, and working on the grand scale. . . . He was waiting to see the past with the vision of the timeless truth of art wherein it should become truly universal; to see it with clarity and charity, with a mind purged of resentment and the urge for self-justification . . . seeing the past, in the clarity of Ancient sunlight, which is Truth.
Still far the best illustration of history as fiction that I have ever encountered.
Most of the series was reprinted in paperback by Panther in the 1960s (while original volumes were still appearing) – though they stopped at A Solitary War. The entire series was reprinted in hardback by Macdonald in 1984/5, while there was a full paperback edition published by Alan Sutton Publishing in their Pocket Classics series in 1994–99. Some individual titles (mainly the First World War volumes) have had multiple reprints. The series is currently available from Faber through their print-on-demand series Faber Finds, and from the same source, as e-books.
Today we know a great deal more about HW and his writing life, and A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight in particular is viewed from a very different perspective to that of the early 1950s. We know the series as a whole unit, and have an understanding of HW's purpose and vision.
When HW settled to writing the series the situation was very different. The country itself was still recovering from the Second World War: austerity was very evident and people were still gripped by shock and grief. The revelations of the atrocities of the Nazi regime under their leader were a raw wound on the psyche of the nation. A pivotal turning point in attitude was probably the 1951 Festival of Britain. Although this had a serious purpose, for most people it was a chance – the first chance for a very long time – to be frivolous. The mood changed: people needed and wanted to be cheered up.
HW's readers would have known that he had farmed during the Second World War, and many would have been aware of his numerous articles and broadcasts about farming, but he was still most known as a nature writer. Immediately post-war there was a large number of reprints of earlier titles. In 1945/6 Putnam re-issued a new uniform edition of his five nature books – Tarka the Otter and Salar the Salmon heading the list as always. His early 'Village Books' were re-hashed and re-published under new titles. New editions of The Gold Falcon and The Star-born were also published.
His most recent new works were The Phasian Bird (1948), at heart another nature book, but with powerful allegorical content, and the somewhat quirky Scribbling Lark (1949), again with hidden (but totally different) allegorical content.
It can be seen, therefore, that there had been no actual hiatus in his production of books. Equally, one can see why publishers would have been wary of his new proposal. The world had changed radically from its pre-war attitudes. Publishers could no longer afford to indulge an author's idiosyncrasy because he was a good writer: the financial side was now of prime importance (and was to become increasingly so). It was all to do over again for someone as morbidly and mordantly sensitive as HW.
A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight is written as one long story with deliberate minimum apparent internal structure between individual volumes. This method is known as a roman fleuve: a story which flows like a river from one volume to another. As the Chronicle also expresses philosophical ideas, it can also be termed a 'thesis' novel. But such technicalities belong to theoretical criticism. They do not affect the reader of the work itself.
One of the main aspects of the Chronicle, apart from its being an extraordinary and absorbing novel, is that it gives a detailed picture of the life of an ordinary family over the first half of the twentieth century. It is a picture of the social history of that time: one in which, due to the power of its author, we live as intensely as if it were happening to ourselves. One of the main themes is the plight of agriculture, another is suffrage: the politics of the late 1930s are interwoven into the later volumes. Transport looms large – especially Phillip's obsession with fast cars (echoing HW's own predilection!). The whole is bound together not just by Phillip's life story, but by HW's power of description of the natural world and its many facets – large sweeps of the brush setting scenes as if backcloths of allegorical plays, but filled also with the myriad minutiae of the tiniest detail of plants and insects and birds and animals. The work is indeed a masterpiece.
Opening in a London suburb still fairly rural in nature, these scenes are expanded in the first three volumes (known as 'The London Trilogy'), while the content of the next five is devoted to the First World War (these volumes are considered by many to be among the very best writing on that war). We are taken through Phillip's difficulties in love and writing: his first idyllic marriage ending in the tragic death of his beloved Barley in childbirth (an entirely fictional event); his struggle to become a writer; a second marriage and family; his first farming venture on the family estate which ends in failure – and then his second attempt in Norfolk during the Second World War and his involvement in the politics of Hereward Birkin (Oswald Mosley); and the amazing climax of the final volume culminating in the catastrophic flood that devastates Lynmouth on the North Devon coast, which finally releasing Phillip from his demons, so that at last he can begin his long-planned great series of novels. Thus HW brings us full circle.
Between 2000 and 2002 Peter Lewis, a longstanding and dedicated member of The Henry Williamson Society, researched and prepared indices of the individual books in the series (the first three volumes being indexed together). Originally typed by hand, copies were given only to a select few. They are reproduced here as non-searchable PDFs, with his kind permission. Where chronologies were compiled, these are also given when useful. The sometimes lengthy synopses (with Peter Lewis's delightfully idiosyncratic asides) are not included, as essentially they repeat information already given in Anne Williamson's considerations. The indices form a valuable and, indeed, unique resource.
The striking covers of the fifteen volumes comprising A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight were designed by James Broom-Lynne, an illustrator of note. He had attended St Martin's School of Art in London, and after service with the Civil Defence during the Second World War was engaged in illustrating and advertising work.
Broom-Lynne specialised in book jacket design and the list of his work in this field is impressive, including covers for the novels of H. E. Bates, Anthony Powell, Paul Gallico, Geoffrey Household and Edith Pargeter among others. He also wrote several novels and a handful of plays.
There is some evidence that HW suggested ideas and provided sketches for at least some of his titles, but unfortunately there is nothing in HW's archive to give any clue about the background of this important connection. It was evidently instigated by his publisher Macdonald – and indeed Broom-Lynne was their art director from 1966-69; although by then HW's Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight was in its last phase.
Broom-Lynne also designed the cover and provided charming vignettes (which are very reminiscent of Charles Tunnicliffe) for HW's Tales of Moorland and Estuary (Macdonald, 1953).
The striking covers of the Panther paperback editions of the war volumes of the Chronicle published in the early 1960s are reproductions of the work of the Italian artist Fortunino Matania. Talented from a very young age, Matania was invited to England in 1902 to do a painting of the coronation of King Edward VII (and subsequently covered most royal occasions from that time up to our present Queen's coronation). He took a job on The Sphere, where his illustrative work included the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. He became a war artist in the First World War, acclaimed for his realistic paintings and drawings of trench warfare. His work adorning the covers of these Panther paperbacks raises the books to collector item status.


There's a stillness in the halls of the US government this spring - a leaden quiet that reflects the number of unfilled administration offices.
At least, that's the way it seems to many low-level workers. Three months into the second Clinton administration so many top-level jobs remain unfilled that the White House is threatening to break its own modern record for slowness in appointments.
Sluggish decisionmaking on the part of the White House may be a factor here. Revelations of Democratic fund-raising irregularities haven't helped, either - and may be particularly affecting top ambassadorial appointments.
But intense partisan scrutiny of even low-level job nominations has helped slow down the appointment process, say experts. There is more scrutiny by more scrutinizers.
"Twenty years ago if you smoked marijuana or had an affair, it wouldn't necessarily come to the public's attention," observes Stephen Wayne, presidential expert and professor of government studies at Georgetown University.
The appointment slowdown has created a leadership void and frustration in some departments. Consider some of the open jobs: The Labor Department has no official leader. The deputy attorney general slot is vacant. No one is at the helm at the Food and Drug Administration or at the Social Security Administration.
The White House says that of the 430 positions within agencies and Cabinet departments it is supposed to fill, roughly one-third are vacant.
In addition, 15 major US embassies around the world, including Paris and Tokyo, are ambassador-less. The White House has picked people for some of these choice posts - investment banker Felix Rohatyn for France, for instance - but has yet to shepherd their nominations through the Senate.
Those who have watched the evolution of the nomination process acknowledge President Clinton is slow, but add that the environment has changed.
There are more political appointee jobs to fill, for one thing. And checks a candidate must endure have become ever more stringent. The process includes lengthy disclosure statements and FBI background checks. Some positions require that assets be put in a blind trust.
"It has gotten out of hand. The bar has been raised to such a degree that any self-respecting individual who is asked to consider government service has to have their head examined," says Jim Cicconi, deputy chief of staff for former President George Bush.
Partisan pressures are adding to the slowdown. Clinton's nominee to head the CIA, Anthony Lake, was self-scuttled, citing the brutish partisan process.
Sometimes, nominees can simply become caught in the middle of a White House-Congress struggle. Currently, the vote on Alexis Herman's nomination to head the Department of Labor has been delayed as the Senate wrangles with the administration on a labor-related federal contracts issue that is unrelated to Ms. Herman's qualifications.
The cumulative effect of these modern confirmation problems has clearly become worse over time. On average, 2.4 months elapsed between the time John F. Kennedy designated nominees for a post and the time they got the green light to move into their office.
It took Richard Nixon an average 3.4 months to achieve the same staffing goals, according to data from Colby College Prof. Calvin MacKenzie. It took Jimmy Carter 4.6 months. In Ronald Reagan's first term, appointees waited 5.3 months for confirmation. Bush took 8.1 months. Clinton, now known for his insistence on reviewing the fine print of his nominees, averaged 8.5 months in his first term.