Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

The BWIR, Mutiny and the Men of Taranto: No Parades

Update: 15 October 2020 I’ve heard from Lyn who is the Project Lead for ‘Away from the Western Front’. ‘No Parades’ was commissioned by them as part of their First World War centenary project. The project was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund in the UK and accordingly, they were able to commission Chris Hoban to compose this song for…

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Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Pentrich Martyrs and Peterloo

I was intrigued when I discovered that I am distantly related to the last person beheaded in England. The year is 1817 and the place Derbyshire. Isaac Ludlam was one of three men executed at Derby gaol. His head was cut from his corpse and shown to the thousands in the crowd. This was not a story handed down in…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

This is the Nazi Library

I think it must have been Ann Klotz’s quite lovely post that did it. It’s about her office and her work as a head of schooI and I read it yesterday.  “Mine is a wonderful, complicated, fascinating job,” she writes in her reflections on her days and on the fourteen years of a headship. You can read My Office, Myself…

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Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

For The Sake Of Example: The story of Pvt. Herbert Morris of the BWIR

 They had all watched him die, in a foreign landA warning to others from the High Command. Forfeits medals (sentenced to death).  Sentence Duly carried out. This grim notation is in the UK, WWI Service Medal and Award Rolls, 1914-1920 entry for Private 7429 Herbert Morris of the 6th Battalion of the British West Indies Regiment.  Amid all the cruelty,…

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Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

#SherlockPoems and Nostalgia: Claude McKay and D.H. Lawrence

I’ve been looking for a particular poem for a while now. When someone used the hashtag #SherlockPoems in a Twitter conversation I posted my inquiry. The poem I remember – but can’t find – is about a market stall heaped with glowing and colorful tropical fruits. It was used in a GSE exam paper sometime in the 1970’s. I didn’t…

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Art, Film, Photography, Books, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW2

Falling Wall

I began this post in 2017. The original focus was Louis MacNeice’s’s poem “Brother Fire”. MacNeice was a fire-watcher during the London Blitz which meant that he spent nights on rooftops watching for, and reporting, fires caused by incendiary bombs. The poem expresses a human kinship with the destructive power of fire:  O delicate walker, babbler, dialectician Fire, O enemy…

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Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Diversity is Our Strength, Unity is Our Power

One Plays Chess, the Other Checkers Nancy Pelosi does serious politics and toddler management 101. Trump watches Fox.  As everyone knows – the lying bully-in-chief who – wanting to erect a pointless, ineffective and vastly expensive monument to himself on the southern border – was thoroughly defeated and out-maneuvered by Nancy Pelosi. She demonstrated the political will. Transportation workers delivered the coup…

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Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

W. H. Auden and New York

Eighty years ago today – on January 26th, 1939 – the poet W.H.Auden – accompanied by his friend and sometime lover Christopher Isherwood – stepped off the boat and arrived in New York City. It wasn’t their first visit. They had spent two happy weeks in the city in 1938, arriving by train from Vancouver on their way back from…

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Education, Food, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Sticky Learning and the Dumbing Down of Exams

Do you remember what you were doing on the 22nd of June at 9.00am? I do – at least for the year 1964 because that was the date of the University of London GCE “O” level exam in Biology.  I am seated in a single desk in one of many rows in a packed but silent school assembly hall. I…

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Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

David Lammy and the Fraud that is Brexit

David Lammy is the Labour MP for Tottenham. He made the speech and took the stand that many of us hoped that Jeremy Corbyn would lead the party with. Didn’t happen. If you follow British politics in any degree beyond zero then you may well have seen this video of David Lammy addressing the House of Commons on the shame…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

What is the purpose of high school?

Lots of chatter about the fresh faces, diversity and new perspectives of the incoming class in the House of Representatives. Here’s a heartwarming story of the new everyday congress folk via Time magazine. It captures snippets of their hopes, dreams and earnest aspirations. Watch it below.  My new congressman Antonio Delgado is in the group and also Max Rose from…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

What is the Case for Grades?

The case against grades and grading has been so clearly made that it is time to turn the tables. Why – in 2019 – with all the evidence available – Why are institutions and individuals still clinging to this pernicious practice? Why do educators persist in wasting time discussing such irrelevancies as grading standards, grading formulas, grade inflation and what…

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Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

For When It Snows Part Two

Rain is no respecter of persons the snow doesn’t give a soft white damn Whom it touches -e.e. cummings, Viva, 27 51 Kinds of Snow 1. Zen-blissed Buddha snow silent, soft, fat flakes. 2. Born-again snow that melts into the baltering mountain torrent to baptize the redeemed of the river plains. 3.Episcopal surplice snow, of choirs and choristers. 4. Modest Methodist…

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Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Old Year

The Old Year The Old Year’s gone away To nothingness and night: We cannot find him all the day Nor hear him in the night: He left no footstep, mark or place In either shade or sun: The last year he’d a neighbour’s face, In this he’s known by none. All nothing everywhere: Mists we on mornings see Have more…

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