Bessie Ray – The Belle of New York – The Bedfordshire Advertiser – 1900

The romantic interest is a fictional character whom I’ve inserted into the real-life evangelist team of the charismatic and much-loved Jock Troup. This man’s contribution to revival in Scotland as well as Yarmouth demands that I get my facts right and do him justice. 

I thought I’d gathered most of the relevant resources and so set myself to re-read my research notes. A chance mention that Troup and his team stopped off briefly in Inverness on Tuesday 3rd January 1921 sent me to the internet for more detail. To my delight, I discovered the Aladdin’s cave that is the online British newspaper archive. It’s cheap and easy to use and I’ve spent a most rewarding afternoon trawling the index for articles about Jock Troup’s mission campaigns in Fraserburgh and Dundee, before he returned to Wick.

Weaving real-life people and happenings into a work of fiction is a delicate matter. You need the freedom to tell your story while simultaneously being true to theirs.

My greatest joy this afternoon was the discovery of wondrously detailed reports in the Dundee Courier of December 1921. The unnamed reporter deserves my deepest thanks. He/she provides almost word-for-word accounts of  Jock Troup’s sermons, fly-on-the wall descriptions of the scenes and the other people there, as well as full records of what they say. This is priceless for what I’m trying to do: I can now ‘see’ where my characters are living out their story. Even better, I’ve a much better idea of what was going on around them. Hopefully this will lend depth and richness to the telling!

At the very least, it gives me more confidence to write the based-on-real-life bits!

It dawned on me that  there is an anniversary this summer that few American probably have ever heard about:  August 15, 2013 marks the 40^th anniversary of  the end of air combat missions during the Vietnam War. 

 While, the January 1973 Paris Peace Accords ostensibly ended  military operations in North and South Vietnam, in Cambodia there was no peace in 1973.  The U.S. Air Force continued to carry out a massive bombing campaign to try to stop movement on the Ho-Chi-Minh trail of supplies to  South Vietnam.  As anti-war pressure grew, in June 1973, the Congress cut off all funds for combat in Cambodia– effective 15 August 1973.  And that is where I found myself at noon – flying the last fighter combat mission of the Vietnam War.  But more on this later.

 War happens on a large scale to nations.  At this level, war is always in the third person, much as it is today in Afghanistan: It is their war.  And yet, war has a way of insinuating itself into many, many lives.  

 Director Michael Cimino in The Deer Hunter uses a wedding sequence to show how this happens.   The wedding scene is elaborate and involves all the protagonists of the movie, it moves along at a leisurely pace and then the young men encounter a soldier in the bar.  It is never explained why he is there.  He intrudes into the festivities of the wedding and abruptly the mood becomes darker.  The wedding may be seen on another level  as America – the soldier as our involvement in Vietnam. 

 War insinuated itself into my life in such a manner.  It was June 1966, senior week at Hobart College and was I about to graduate on June 12.  On June 9, 1966, in the midst of all the partying that always accompanies graduation; we received the news that Major Theodore Shorack, one of our ROTC instructors at Hobart had been killed in Vietnam.  To say that Shorack’s death was a shock, is very much an understatement. With his crew-cut, military bearing, active concern for his students, and gung-ho attitude, he demonstrated the type of leadership that motivated young men.  A Hobart  friend said  Shorack made him realize “ I had to get my grades up and graduate, pass the physical, get my commission as a Second Lieutenant, pass the 13 months of Flight School.”     He was well liked by his students and neighbors in Geneva.   Shorack’s death brought home the realization war could touch ordinary lives.   And, yet it was for me still “their war,” not yet mine.  

 By 1970, I was an Air Force captain in a command post in Washington D.C.  The war was on the nightly news and in the streets of Washington as the anti-war movement protested almost daily.   While I had planned to be a pilot at Hobart, upon completion of graduate school, my vision had deteriorated and I could not pass the physical.  That all changed in 1971. By then,  the Air Force was burning through air crews at an astonishing rate and I was  accepted for navigator training – not a pilot– but at least a flier.  In the Air Force one flew– that was all there was to it, period.  After a year of flight school, I earned my wings, began training in the F-4 Phantom II, a top-line fighter which had seen a great deal of action in Vietnam.  When I picked the F-4 for my aircraft, I knew that I picked Vietnam as well. 

 On August 15, 1973 over Cambodia, I flew on the last fighter combat mission of the Vietnam War.   It had not been planned that way.   As the end of combat approached, a lottery was held among the senior officers in Thailand to see who would fly the official last mission of the war.   Our crew was on alert that morning and after the “official last fight” had taken off, we scrambled at 10:30, so we in effect became the last combat mission of the Vietnam War.   At noon, combat missions ceased and the war ended.  Right at noon, a message was broadcast over Guard, the command radio net, “Little Orphan Annie has crossed the Blue Ridge Bridge, I repeat, Little Orphan Annie has crossed the Blue Ridge Bridge.”  We thought, what does that mean, wondering if it was a coded message announcing the end of the war.  Then we heard the sound of a toilet flushing.   That was how eight years of air combat ended. 

Now we, who flew those missions and fought that war, are older men and perhaps more reflective on life.   A friend from Hobart put it this way when I asked him about Ted Shorack’s death: “Every time I have seen the Vietnam  Wall in Washington, D.C., I re-acquaint my awareness of his [Ted’s] block and line numbers on the Wall, touch his name, choke down a tear or two and wonder why?”  On August 13, 2013 I will sit for a moment and think of Ted Shorack and all those others who gave so much, perhaps too much so long ago – and at noon remember how Little Orphan Annie crossed that “Blue Ridge Bridge” and wonder how many other bridges she will cross in the years to come.

A version of this piece appeared on Memorial Day Weekend in the Geneva, New York Finger Lakes Times.

I love my Tuesdays. Both are gatherings of lovely Christian people and good fellowship is guaranteed!

But first to the keyboard and another session on the novel, racking up a satisfying word-count. Now however, it’s time to plunge back into my research notes and feed my mind with background facts and images. I’m moving into the final furlongs and I want to make sure I get it right!

Last week I took a daring step: I rang the removals firm and said they could come and take away the empty packing boxes. We agreed a date and that gave me a deadline. I need deadlines! I had already unpacked lots of boxes but there were still more. My deadline gave me the impetus I needed – and there were, as you’ll imagine, shrill cries of joy when I unearthed the box with my research notes, timelines and background reading.

This afternoon, on my return from my day’s meetings, I settled down to check what happened to the real-life people in my story in December 1921 and January 1922. How glad I am that my early journalistic training programmes me to take copious notes! I’ve got more material than I had realised so my story will be the richer.

It’s the tiny details that delight me – or annoy me when I can’t find exactly what I need. Today’s niggly annoyance was my spell check’s apparent ambivalence.  It allowed me both seasick and sea sick. I think this is where I go back to my print Oxford English Dictionary. I trust it!

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/united-nations-truce-team-start-operations-in-pale/query/11+of+june : an interesting primary source video in 1946 about the united nations truce team.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/sights-of-london-1/query/11+of+june : an interesting video of london sites in 1951 very good primary source footage.

http://www.britishpathe.com/search/query/11+of+june : and all over types of videos on the british pathe on the 11 of june !

Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape. quoted by george bancroft : another interesting quote that accepting the wrong and making better person of your self in the long run is down to you ads a individual and i total believe this. and it shows the importance of consciousness and the improvement of realisation. to look towards the future of making preservation of your mind body and soul in the sense of academic and ‘wisdom and life soul’ to find the righteous way of your own living in life.

Estuary features the work of 12 artists, photographers and film-makers, who follow in the footsteps of Turner and Constable who themselves drew inspiration from the lowest reaches of the Thames, as did Dickens and Conrad. All the works are beautifully and skillfully done but more importantly – thought-provoking: one supposes that is why they have been chosen. Those that appeal most to me are the ones which succeed in emphasising the vastness – the grandeur in a way – of this part of the world. As you enter,  you get instant succour from the huge canvasses of Jock McFadyen which deliver real breadth and sense of space. They are quite beautiful.

Purfleet from Dracula’s Garden by Jock McFadyen. © Tate Britain.

Two other works succeed in the same respect and they are both film installations which take up a whole wall as you sit in the dark and absorb. Each runs for 15 – 20 minutes. The first is the one that’ll appeal most to historians. Thames Film by William Raban is a  stew of clips and stills judiciously edited together and with the words of Thomas Pennant from 1787 read by John Hurt. It employs the artist’s own clips of his journey down the Thames, following the route described by Pennant himself. These are intercut with historical clips and photographs mainly from the mid-20th Century. The whole work recalls the estuary’s denizens from days gone by. It is evocative, atmospheric, disturbing. One gets a sense of constant danger.

Maunsell Forts, Thames Film by William Raban

The other big-screen number is Horizon by John Smith. It’s simply a series of fixed-camera clips filmed in and around Margate, then spliced together. So we see the open sea in a variety of lights and weather conditions. The water is mill-pond still occasionally, but mostly it is lively, sometimes angry. Humans and vessels occasionally intrude: a red cargo ship, a tanker, an inflatable RIB, a dinghy, a lifeboat, a container vessel. Sometimes the tide is out and we get a view of the beach, sparcely populated by pedestrians. The soundtrack assists to put salt on your tongue: breakers, gulls, muffled voices, a lonely foghorn, that sort of thing. Towards the end we are given a split sequence featuring the sun setting which is cleverly and beautifully done. This is such a good installation, it transports you there. Almost.

Horizon (Five Pounds a Belgian) by John Smith.

Children’s Scooter from The Golden Tide by Gayle Chong Kwan.

The opposite of these panoramic pieces is the micro, and a series of several dozen framed photos does exactly this: The Golden Tide by Gayle Chong Kwan. They are snapshots which the artist uploaded to Instagram over a period of time. They feature people interacting with the estuary landscape through the means of human detritus: toys, plastic bottles, shopping trolleys (of course!), tyres, wheels, wrappers, bits of broken glass, and so on.  It works brilliantly.

This excellent exhibition should take you about 45 minutes to an hour. If, like me, you haven’t been to Museum of London Docklands before, you’ll spend a further several hours enjoying fascinating displays about the history of our great river. I had high expectations of this museum: it effortlessly surpassed them.

Estuary runs until 27 October. It is free, as is entry to the Museum.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/memorable-headlines/query/10+of+june :interesting primary source of video was published 1948 but has many different headlines for the last 30 years.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/pathe-pictorial-cartoon-competition/query/10+of+june : interesting primary source of video in 1921 it is about a cartoon competition with many different drawings.

http://www.britishpathe.com/search/query/10+of+june : many other different types of videos on the date of 10 of june in last 80 years or so.

“To learn to get along without, to realize that what the world is going to demand of us may be a good deal more important than what we are entitled to demand of it – this is a hard lesson.”. a famous quote by Bruce Catton: This quote shows the great importance of life lessons and skills as a human you shouldn’t take advantage of people kindness and eternal love for a certain individual , people as a individual should learn from mistakes and change for the better good. to make self improvements from every corner of your life for your selfs and loved one, by reaching a conscious and unconscious state of mind of “learning, wisdom,passion,creativity and culture of morality” of many different types of aspect of deep thinking. the state of your mind is very important but the state of your soul is so important if your are not at peace with your central of your own being in your soul and mind how are you ment to prevail in life as an individual, “to be your own master and take control of your own life not your mind taking control of your….”.

• There is a program tonight on BBC one about Blacklists in the building trade, getting rid of those who dare to stand up for their rights.
• David Cameron has defended GCHQ, stating they are operation within law.
• Snooper Bill still floating around 

The mind is getting smaller as more and more of society rely on laws and guidance to keep us ‘safe’, not wanting to take responsibility for anything.

Go to your local pc stores and see the screen sizes of laptops and desktops on offer. They are, from brand to brand, similar in screen sizes.

Laptops tend to be 13″ 15″ or 17″ or similar to those dimensions.

Desktops tend to be 17″, 20~21″, 24″ or similar to those dimensions.

Again, this similarity in screen sizes for laptops and desktops is for every brand.  It took the pc makers about 5~10 years to settle down to these familiar screen sizes that have more or less remained for over 15~20 years now.

Keep this in mind, while iPhone has been out since 2007 and Android phones a year later, the wholesale migration to the smartphones, even in the western world, did not take place till about late 2011. So we are talking about only 18 months or no more than 2 years for such trend. The consumers are still sorting out what they like or prefer in screen sizes.

It is likely that 5″ smartphone is a definite market of its own. Hence, Apple, like everyone else, will bring iPhones to such 5″ dimension.

This however would not mean that 4″ smartphones such as iPhone 5 would die. More than likely, that 4″ smartphones will remain popular as the sale figures for iPhone 5 would indicate even under the on-salught of Samsung Galaxy 3~4. I’ve read that even Samsung Galaxy 4 now will have a smaller brother of 4″ in screen size. This will be back to the future for Samsung.

Just in case, for those that have not read my note on the maths of 4×3 vs 16×9 screen perspective (screen shape), I will remind all that, for the same diagonal length, a 4×3 screen has 12.3% larger in AREA than a 16×9 screen. So if Apple brings out a 5″ iPhone, it will be larger than Samsung Galaxy 4 (5″ too) in area. Larger area also means more versatility too. 4×3 shape is also more natural to human experiences- books, A4 paper, magazines, presentation slides, internet pages, pc screen pages all are more like 4×3 than 16×9.

So, those waiting for larger screen iPhone, just be patient. I am sure that 5″ screen for iPhone will come.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-worlds-fastest-human/query/9+of+june : on this day in 1929 the world fastest man in a 100 yard race its a interesting primary source video.

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-royal-tournament-9/query/9+of+june : video in 1923 interesting royal tournament amongst musicians very good primary sources video.

http://www.britishpathe.com/search/query/9+of+june : any many more primary source videos on the date of 9 of june many different sources and times.

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind.” quoted by : james Truslow adams: an interesting quote because there shows of emphatic and self realisations and changer within the human consciousness that would bring more knowledge and culture to ones self and to make its own self preservation , by changing habits or ignorance ways of thinking by making changes and improvements to the human soul and mind for the better good.

“Age acquires no values save through thought and discipline” another quote from james truslow adams: an interesting quote by showing through thought and discipline you can make the baddest habits or bad deeds into good ways of life and you can make a change just with discipline and accepting the bad you did and look for the light of change  , work hard for progress. to make more of a better progressive better nature within one self and people around you.

One of the best things about working in an archive is stumbling across ephemeral items in new donations to our collections, such as 40 Patience Games prefaced by the author as follows:

With its instructions for how to play the Fool’s Delight, Streets and Alleys, the Jazz Band, the Star (illustrated at the foot of this post) and others, flicking through the pages of this book set me thinking about the tremendous changes in leisure practices brought about by technological innovations such as computer games, karaoke machines and the internet. In the twenty-first century, it is practically impossible to be bored, whether alone or in company. To get their social kicks, our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had to be resourceful with bits of paper, sets of dice and ingenious games invented by companies like Universal Publications Limited, more usually known as UPL – the 1935 publishers of 40 Patience Games.

Established in 1932, UPL initially specialised in commissioning books of puzzles, card games and general works of amusement or light comedy such as the Humour of Drinking and Clerical Chuckles. In the post-war period, they began producing increasingly sophisticated games and resources (score-cards, props and so on) for an expanding leisure market. The company overturned the assumption that party games were for the parlour on a winter’s evening, designing a range of action and non-action games that could be played by two people or twenty, in homes, gardens, club houses or school grounds. There were ‘introducing games’, ‘thawing games’ (today we would probably call them ice-breakers)and ‘table games’ with intriguing names such as Appointment with Fear, Bedlam, Railway Riot and Nothing But the Truth. Many of the games reflected contemporary obsessions, such as the 1940s Spot the Car Parts game illustrative of a growing national interest in, and familiarity with, the motor car. Promotional blurb on boxes and accompanying literature placed the accent on social anxieties and correct behaviours; at the same time, much was made of the ‘riotous fun’ to be had in the playing of UPL’s games. 

Two UPL products from the 1950s I particularly like are the ‘Here is Mr Beetle’ score cards for the competitive drawing and dice game of Beetle (the cards’ smart appearance was expected to bring ‘prestige to any BEETLE PARTY’) and the Crazy Post game, which was still popular in a revamped format in the 1960s. Crazy Post included eight cardboard posting boxes, each with four locations on the front. These were placed around the room or garden, if the weather was fine. Players were given a personal number and received a letter to post from the host or master of ceremonies, with their number pencilled on the back. Once they had posted this letter, they were to race back to fetch another to post, then another, until all 380 letters had been posted. Players gained points for correctly-posted correspondence and lost points for incorrectly-posted correspondence. Town names of similar spelling such as Maldon and Malden and Hertford and Hereford were included to add to the competition, confusion and general mayhem. Imagining the crush and hilarity as the 1950s party guests dashed about with flushed faces, scrambling to post their letters in the right letter box at top speed has taken the edge off my enjoyment of Facebook Scrabble tonight.

Big Brother is such a euphemism, fucking bastards is more accurate.

Patrons of the Leamington Theatre Royal have this week been afforded a change of fare in the shape of a pantomime produced by Messrs. H. Dundas’s and J. W. Nightingale’s company under the personal supervision of the former. The pantomime is founded upon the fairy story of “Aladdin and the Magic Lamp,” and was produced in several towns with considerable success before being brought to Leamington. It cannot be said to be one of those fine spectacular shows which are now so popular with the public, partaking, as it does, more of the nature of a burlesque performance in which knockabout business is freely introduced. The book by Mr. Harry F. McClelland, the author of several well known pantomimes, and the greater portion of it is brightly written, but some of the business introduced by the knockabouts is neither new nor very original. At the same time there is much at which one can laugh. There are also one or two pretty songs introduced in the various scenes and some graceful dancing, but the music for the most part is not in any sense as catchy as that associated with some former productions of a similar kind. The pantomime comprises the usual chrematistics in the shape of bright costumes, dances with electrical effects, and interchange of scene and the fairly good house which assembled on Monday night to witness the first performance, appeared to be very well satisfied with all they saw and heard. Some of the songs were encored and at times during the evening applause was liberally bestowed. One of the most pleasing features of the production is a very graceful exhibition of the terpsichorean are by the little Bessie Ray, who is likewise a cleaver vocalist. Of the artistes included in the company some are exceedingly capable. Miss Florence Lynn makes a graceful Aladdin and is also a vocalist of some ability. Miss Lottie Linda sustains the role of the Princess with ease and grace, whilst Miss Winifred Davies makes a smart looking fairy. Mr Fred Dark gives an amusing and diverting performance in the character of Widow Twankey and his burlesque of a prima-donna is exceedingly amusing. Mr. Leonard May as Abanazar, Mr.R. Lewis as the Emperor, and Mr. C. D. Cooper as the Vazier are all good in their respective parts. Bishop and Vale contributed a good deal to the amusement of the evening as knockabout artists, whilst the Zellia quartette and the Sisters Ivey proved clever and graceful dancers. The subject of the transformation scene is “The Haunt of Mermaids in the Realms of Bliss.” It is painted by Mr. W. T. Hemsley and is a very credible achievement of stage art. The last performance of the pantomime will be given this (Saturday) evening, and there will also be a matinee performance this afternoon at two o’clock.