Shared Heritage……In The Garden…..‘Under Milk Wood’…..
by Bernie Bell - 09:03 on 21 August 2023
Shared Heritage…
Mike and I support ‘Amnesty International’… https://www.amnesty.org/en/home-news/ and so receive their magazine ‘Amnesty’. The most recent edition had a very interesting article by Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty UK’s chief executive. Sacha points out the many similarities in back-ground between himself and Suella (aka Cruella) Braverman.
They share an Indian heritage – Sacha mentions that some of their antecedents even hail from the same south-western coast of Goa - and a north-west London upbringing as both families arrived in Britain in the 1960’s and lived in the Wembley and Harrow area.
I’ll quote Sacha…
“There the similarities end – categorically so. I lead Amnesty International’s campaign to champion the rights of refugees and migrants in this country, while Braverman and her government are busy trashing these very same rights. “
And…
“Let’s be clear, Suella Braverman’s Migration Act flagrantly denies refugees fleeing persecution and war-torn countries their fundamental right to seek asylum. If the policy and ambition underlying this law had held sway in the sixties, that would have excluded our families from this country. Braverman wouldn’t now be the home secretary – I wouldn’t be Amnesty International UK’s chief executive.”
And that’s something I’ve wondered about since that woman came to power – how can she do – what she does?
Previous views on Cruella – as posted in m’blog…
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=15952
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=15982
But she’s still there - still in power – with a lot of power over people’s lives.
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In The Garden…..
(With apologies to Stevie Wonder’s ‘Higher Ground’)
Swallows
Keep on swoopin’
Sparrers
Keep on ravenin’
Hedgehog
Keeps on munchin’
Frogs
Keep on hoppin’
Voles
Keep on burrowin’
Flowers
Keep on seedin’
They’re all
Just preparin’
For Autumn.
BB August ‘23
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‘Under Milk Wood’…..
Following on from recent exchanges about Eddie Cummins and his poetry, someone we know emailed to say…
“I introduced him to Under Milk Wood, which strangely he had never heard of before. I leant him my tape recording of this and Dylan Thomas’ Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. This got him fired up and I remember sitting listening to a tape on which he had attempted something similar but based on characters he knew in Stromness! And in the Orkney dialect! “
I replied…
“I’d love to hear that tape of Eddie doing an ‘Under Milk Wood’ pastiche – very tempting considering the cast of characters to be found in Stromness! I wonder if it still exists?
I presume the recording of ‘Under Milk Wood‘ will have been the one led by Richard Burton – which got it just right.
I’m now playing with ideas about how Eddie might have approached the folk who are ‘big’ in Stromness today…..”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZXhPYTX1BY
Listening to the C.D that accompanied ‘I Flame at Words’ – listening to Eddie’s voice, I can just imagine his version - words rolling off his tongue – mellifluously…
And I was prompted to read Under Milk Wood again after a gap of about 50 years.
Maybe you could read it and play with how it could be re-worked to fit your own local ‘characters’?
Couldn’t this illustration by Paul Cox, be the view down Stromness Street?
In ‘Under Milk Wood’ the undertaker is called Evans the Death. When I lived in Aberystwyth there was an undertaker called Dai the Death. Honest – there was.
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Here’s one I made earlier…. https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/08/18/to-feed-or-not-to-feed/
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