21st April – On This Day in History
Born:
1619 Jan van Riebeek (founder / Governor of the Cape Colony)
Died:
1910 Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) American author
On This Day:
1982 £1 coin introduced in the UK
Have a good Tuesday, April 21st!
Exposure of Child Predators
Thank you for your article. It is important that we educate our children – constantly – to the dangers out there, and how to keep themselves as safe as possible. But my point is that once off courses etc are not enough. Kids need be constantly reminded by all adults who care for them – teachers, parents etc. about internet safety. And I agree with your point of a “Catfish” style sting. There was a show a while back where child groomers were lured to a meet, and then interviewed, outed and arrested. Maybe something like that?
I don’t know about any of you but I cannot imagine having a child exposed to adult sites which involve a webcam. Yes, you can argue there are other important things to worry about right now in the world but this really is an issue that needs to be addressed!
There are dirty, old, perverted men out there, ‘Skyping’ your children, your nieces and nephews, and your siblings! I think it’s an absolute outrage and more should be done to protect children from such exposure and prying eyes!
My boyfriend sent me a link to a video of a young lad exposing these men for the vermin’s they are! He claims to be a “13 year old girl”, suggesting they show themselves first and then he’ll show himself. This is exactly the procedure he follows. Unbelievably these men feel it is ok to look at children and to show them…
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Making Peace
A voice from the dark called out,
“The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.”
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
– Denise Levertov
http://www.aromaticcoffees.co.uk
Peace – My Beloved Country
In response to the terrible xenophobic violence in South Africa, and as a way of expressing my despair at an article that I have just read where the author is clearly trying to escalate this hatred by inciting South Africans against each other along race lines (cleverly playing the “blame game”), I have found this poem and published it below…
Somewhere an eagle flies
soaring o’er the dappled skies of Africa
Somewhere a tortoise cries
ploughing through the vast disguise of Africa.
A springbok dies and a day is born
The sun comes up to greet the dawn;
A child is sighing like a bird
And a nation is sounding a very new word.
Somewhere an apple train
waddles through the winding plains of Africa.
Somewhere a sparrow feigns
acting out the birthing pains of Africa.
A lizard leaps to his mother’s scorn:
‘Farwell, ‘ she says to her first born
A breeze is lifting a newly-fledged bird
And a nation is sounding a very new word.
Somewhere a new sunrise
burgeoning before our eyes in Africa
Has seen our children’s weary sighs
bursting into happy smiles in Africa.
An aardvark snuffles through the corn
And winks an eye at a golden fawn
A sunbird is singing like you’ve never heard
And a nation is sounding a very new word.
– Margaret Kollmer
20th April – On This Day in History
Born:
1442 King Edward IV (King of England 1461 – 1483)
Died:
1992 Benny Hill (comedian)
On This Day:
1999 Columbine High School Shooting (13 killed, 23 wounded)
Have a good Monday, 20th April.
Pinteresting Things: Day 1
Thank you – definitely something to put up in the classroom. Being able to use correct grammar is hugely important. Not just in English lessons! It’s all part of teaching pupils to express themselves with confidence and accuracy in their writing.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
– Wendell Berry
19th April – Today in History
Born:
1933 Harold “Dickie” Bird (world famous cricket umpire)
Died:
1980 Alfred Hitchcock (author and filmmaker)
On This Day:
1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, kills 168, injures over 500
Have a good Sunday, 19th April
What Else?
What a great article. Thank you so much. In the interests of my health, I’m off to French Press a nice coffee…
Elevensees ~ A distillation of English inclinations, teas from Africa.
Thank you. I am always interested in the origins of things that play such a big part in our lives. But of a fan of Rooibos (Red Bush) tea myself – a South African tradition!
A discerning minutiae of taste, navigating modern life. Tea Producing Regions of the World –
Africa – Teas grown in East Africa are a vital ingredient of typical English Breakfast type blends. Their character is generally strong & punchy, delivers good colour. The 1st East African country to grow tea commercially was Malawi, where British planters started to cultivate the plant in the 1880s.
Production started in Kenya in 1903, in Tanzania in 1926, in Rwanda during the 1950s and in Burundi in the 1970s. Zimbabwe’s tea cultivation began in the 1960s but suffered enormous damage during the Mugabe years. The industry is now steadily recovering and is once again producing some good quality teas.
South Africa produced quite a lot of tea until the 1970s when labour costs made the industry unviable and only KwaZulu Natal now manufactures small quantities of black tea. The industry in these countries developed…
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aromaticcoffees 