Notting Hill Carnival

Summer Bank Holiday Weekend
August 28-29, 2011

The word “carnival” comes from the Latin carne vale meaning “farewell to the flesh”. It originally referred to festivals that fell just before Lent, when eating meat was forbidden. Famous pre-lenten carnivals include Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans, Nice, and Trinidad.

Inspired by the world-famous Trinidad Carnival, Notting Hill takes place in August, because you’d have to be nuts to wear a thong in England in February.

The ‘Mother of Notting Hill Carnival’ is Claudia Jones, a native of Trinidad who spent almost her entire life on three vastly different islands: Trinidad, Manhattan, and England.

Born in Trinidad in 1915, Jones immigrated to Harlem, New York with her family at age 7. As a teen, she took part in a protest against the trial and prosecution of the Scottsboro Nine, and she spent much of the next 20 years fighting the inequalities of the U.S. justice system. She became a vocal supporter of the Communist League and a prominent writer for the Daily Worker.

Claudia Jones

As a reward for her outspokenness, Jones was arrested in 1948 on immigration charges and nearly deported, despite having lived in the U.S. for 26 years. She was arrested a few years later, along with other Communist Party leaders, for supposedly violating of the Smith Act during the height of the McCarthy era frenzy. While in prison the 40 year-old Jones suffered a heart attack. This and a bout of tuberculosis she contracted in her youth would plague her health for her remaining years.

In October 1955 she was deported from the U.S., and was granted asylum in what would be her final island: England.

As temperatures rose in Notting Hill in August 1958, the city erupted in race riots, in which hundreds of whites attacked the neighborhood’s West Indian residents. In addition to speaking out against the riots, Jones decided to create an event that would promote racial harmony while celebrating the music and talent of England’s West Indian heritage. This forerunner of the Carnival was held indoors in its first years, starting in 1959.

Unfortunately Jones wouldn’t live to see the first official Notting Hill Carnival and street festival in 1965. She died on Christmas Eve, 1964.

Today the Notting Hill Carnival is London’s largest annual public event, and at over a million people, it’s one of the largest street festivals in the world.

Jones would probably be delighted to know that an estimated 1.5 million people of all faiths and races attended the 2000 Notting Hill Carnival—more than the entire population of her homeland of Trinidad.

Caludia Jones: A Life of Struggle

Notting Hill Diary

Notting Hill Carnival

Liberation of Paris

August 25, 1944

Is Paris Burning?

The above line was supposedly uttered by Adolf Hitler to his chief of staff Alfred Jodl, referring to his order to General Dietrich von Choltitz, military governor of Paris during the German occupation, not to let majestic city of Paris fall back into Allied hands, except as complete rubble.

In August 1944, General Eisenhower originally refused to divert troops to help the liberate Paris on the Allies’ way to Berlin; however, Charles de Gaulle threatened to take his own Free French forces anyway, alone if need be.

As Free French forces neared, the Parisians launched a massive strike and mobilized for an all-out war with the German occupying forces. The French Resistance and Free French battled the German occupying force for nearly a week in late August 1944, until Choltitz surrendered on August 25, 1944.

August 20, 1944
August 20, 1944

Choltitz is one of the most controversial figures of the Vichy France. He is seen as a hero to some for refusing to obey HItler’s orders to destroy one of the greatest cities in the world. However, in addition to having served Hitler and the Nazis faithfully during the war, he ordered the executions of numerous French Resistance fighters and destroyed Paris’s Grand Palais in the final days before the Liberation. His motivations may never be fully known, but fortunately for us, centuries-old Parisian landmarks survived the war and the battle for liberation with minimal physical damage.

Free French forces on the Champs Elysees, August 25

On this day in 1944, Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, addressed his newly liberated countrymen from the Hotel de Ville:

We will not hide this deep and sacred emotion. These are minutes which go beyond each of our poor lives. Paris! Outraged Paris! Broken Paris! Martyred Paris! But liberated Paris! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the French armies, with the support and the help of the whole France, of the fighting France, of the only France, of the real France, of the eternal France…

We, who have lived the greatest hours of our History, we have nothing else to wish than to show ourselves, up to the end, worthy of France.

Vive la France!

Liberation Day is not a national holiday in France. Rather, the French celebrate Victory Day 1945 on May 8, the anniversary of the official end of hostilities in Europe the day after the surrender of German forces in Rheims, France.

Xicolatada – France

August 16

flag_france

Today (August 16) the town of Palau de Cedagne in Southwestern France celebrates Xicolatada. At 11 am on this date, residents indulge in a delicious cup of piping hot chocolate.

This 300+ year-old tradition grew out of another festival. According to legend (i.e., Wikipedia):

15 August was once a festival day, and the locals would drink quite a bit, to the point that they felt a bit ill the following morning. To feel better, the village chocolatier would offer them a hot chocolate, which he claimed was an excellent remedy. Over the years, this habit grew into a custom, and eventually a municipal association was formed to remember the tradition and to organise the distribution of hot chocolate every year on 16 August, at precisely 11 in the morning.

At the time, chocolate was imported through Spain from the Latin American colonies. Located on the border of Spain and France in the Pyrenees, Palau de Cedagne was perfectly situated along popular trade routes.

Today the hot chocolate brewing follows an age-old secret recipe, cooked up in cauldrons, by a brotherhood of well-trained “Mestres xicolaters” (maîtres chocolatiers).

A Master Chocolatier, Xicolatada
A Master Chocolatier serves Xicolata

Xicolatada – specialities-de-france.com

Xicolatada – histoireduroussillon.free.fr

Glorious 12th

The Game Act of 1773 established what has come to be known as “the Glorious 12th” in England. Not to be confused with Northern Ireland’s Glorious Twelfth in July, August’s Glorious 12th is the first day of hunting season of red grouse in England. Apparently this is a big deal.

The foregoing observations relative to partridges may be nearly as well applied to grouse shooting, when we recollect that Lord Strathmore’s keeper, in killing forty-three brace of muir-game before two o’clock in the afternoon, had only bagged three birds at eight in the morning…The chief difficulty to be guarded against in this delightful sport, is the maneuvre of the old cock, who is cackling forward, in order to lead you away from the brood.

Instructions to Young Sportsmen in All that Relates to Guns and Shooting – by Peter Hawker, 1844

Grouse-shooting Behind Global Warming?

Swiss National Day

August 1

“In Switzerland they had brotherly love — they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

So goes Orson Welles’ famous line from The Third Man. But the Swiss will tell you Switzerland has produced much more than the cuckoo clock, the army knife, holey cheese, and those nifty bank accounts. Here, for the first time ever, ranked by the world’s most brainiest scientists, are the top 20 things to come out of Switzerland over the last 500 years:

20. internal combustion engine
19. e (as 2.71828 )
18. fondue
17. Amish people
16. Nescafe
15. velcro
14. absinthe
13. William Tell
12. i (square root of negative 1)
11. LSD
10. LCDs
9. Rorschach tests
8. Diesel
7. aluminum foil
6. cheese spread
5. the Red Cross
4. the World Wide Web
3. Toblerone
2. photosynthesis
and…
1. Ursula Andress

Ah the Swiss...Ursula Andress in Dr. No

Despite these achievements, women in Switzerland didn’t get the right to vote until 1971. Since then, however, they’ve had two female Presidents.

Today’s National Day celebrates the Federal Charter of 1291, penned in August of that year. It states:

…know all men, that the people of the valley of Uri, the democracy of the valley of Schwyz, and the community of the Lower Valley of Unterwalden, seeing the malice of the age, in order that they may better defend themselves, and their own, and better preserve them in proper condition, have promised in good faith to assist each other with aid…against one and all, who may inflict upon any one of them any violence, molestation or injury, or may plot any evil against their persons or goods.

And they meant it. Mild-mannered as they seem today, the Swiss Confederation was the terror of Europe starting in the days of national hero William Tell in the 14th century until 1515 when French, German, and Venetian troops defeated 20,000 Swiss–the best trained army on the continent–in the Battle of Marignano. The battle also marked the end of the days of pikes and phalanxes and the beginning of the dominance of field artillery.

Switzerland joined the United Nations in 2002.

Lughnasadh

July 31-August 1

Book of Hours, August

Today is Lughnasadh! Not to be confused with Lasagna Day. That was July 29.

Also known by its more Christian name, Lammas, aka “Loaf-mas”, Lughnasadh marked the time of year villagers would celebrate the first Harvest, on or around August 1, by baking and sharing bread from the first grain of the season.

Lughnasadh is a cross-quarter day—days that fall directly between equinoxes and solstices—the others being Imbolc (Candlemas), Beltane (May Day), and Samhain (Halloween).

The holiday would have been celebrated by the Celts starting at sundown (on the 31st) until the following day.

July 31 is also Harry Potter’s Birthday! Coincidence?

Today the ancient pagan tradition is carried on by wiccans and is becoming increasingly popular in neopaganism.

from http://jksalescompany.com/dw/wicca_calendar.html

http://thunder.prohosting.com/~cbarstow/lammas.html

Lughnasadh recipes

The Way of Saint James – Spain

July 25

Saint James

July 25th is the feast day of St. James.

James and his brother John, sons of Zebedee, were two of Jesus’s twelve Apostles. After Jesus’s crucifixion, James took the Gospel westward to unchartered territories—Iberia—and never looked back. Oh wait, he did look back, unfortunately. After receiving a vision of the Virgin Mary, James returned to Judea where he was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I in 44 AD.

But that’s not the end of James’s story. No, James’s hagiographers tells how James’s followers risked their lives to bring James’s body back to Iberia. They witnessed several miracles on the way, eventually laying his relics to rest at the edge of the western world: Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain.

Santiago de Compostela is the destination for thousands of pilgrims who make the journey to St. James’s resting place each year. The route is known as Camino de Santiago, or the Way of Saint James.

El Camino Frances, Spain
El Camino Frances, Spain

The most commonly traveled route is the Camino Frances. It starts somewhere north of the border in the French Pyrenees near St Jean Pied de Port. The trail winds 780 kilometers westward across Northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, though many pilgrims continue a little further west to Cape Finisterre on the Atlantic. Finisterre comes from the Latin for “land’s end”.

The cape was once believed to be the end of the world.

On foot the pilgrimage takes about a month of walking. Peripatetic veterans recommend walking from 6am to 1pm. There are plenty of towns to stop in along the way, and such a schedule figures in nicely with the Spanish siesta, falling around 2pm each day.

The numbers of pilgrims have skyrocketed since the 1980s, when only a few thousand travelers would make the journey each year. These days that number is in the hundreds of thousands. Religious devotion varies among trekkers.

“Modern Pilgrimages seems to be a lot less about religion and more about peace, finding something in their life, a time to think, and for some a challenge…

“I did not set out on a Spiritual or religious journey – but it ended being that way…”

http://www.caminodesantiago.me.uk/camino-frances/

All about El Camino de Santiago

Belgium’s National Holiday

July 21

 

Belgium’s National Holiday on July 21st isn’t celebrated with quite the pomp and circumstance as other July National Days, such as Bastille Day or American Independence, but the celebration is growing.

The country’s still essentially split in two, with the Flemish community in the northern part and the French community in the South. In fact each group has its own holiday–the Flemish celebrate their holiday on July 11th, the French on September 27th.

Belgium was once the southern province of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The French-Catholic community wasn’t too happy with the Dutch Protestant government up in Holland, particularly with the king, William I. Also, the French region was undergoing difficult economic times, while the civil service and parliamentary system favored the Dutch.

On August 25, 1830, a riot broke out in Brussels after (I’m not making this up) a particularly rousing performance of the opera La Muette de Portici. Yes, and they say today’s movies & music incite violence. Well, at least they don’t lead to full scale revolution. Few could have anticipated the riot would have created an independent Belgium, but the king failed to quell the rebellion, or to reach any sort of agreement with the people.

Episode of the Belgian Revolution, 1834, Egide Charles Gustave Wappers

The United Kingdom of the Netherlands was dissolved in December at the London Conference, in February the Belgians drew up a new constitution, and in June they chose Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg to be their new king.

Belgium’s National Holiday marks the anniversary of Leopold I taking the oath in 1831 to become the country’s first monarch, the moment seen as the true inception of Belgium’s independence.

Belgians Mark National Holiday