Photo courtesy of my old student pal Piyasiri Wickramasekara ….more details below
Category Archives: heritage
KD Paranavitana’s Felicitation Volume: A Treasure Trove
Filed under accountability, ancient civilisations, architects & architecture, art & allure bewitching, authoritarian regimes, British imperialism, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, military strategy, paintings, power politics, sri lankan society, transport and communications, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes
Historical Revaluations: The Boundary Books of the Matale District
Gananath Obeyesekere: Historical Revaluations: the Boundary Books of the Matale district[1], being Chapter 19 in Professor KD Paranavitana Felicitation Volume, edited by Vinie Vitharana & Prasad Fonseka, Colombo, Godage & Bros (pvt ltd) …. ISBN 978-955-30-9035-5
Professor K. D. Paranavitana has not only written important work on t, edit by Vinnie Vitharane Dutch Period in Sri Lanka that has influenced my own writing but he also has been also associated with the National Archives. These archives as well as those in Europe, such as the British Library are replete with popular Sinhala texts that constitute an enormous resource for understanding the pasts of our nation. The term vitti pot or “books of events” is a useful term to broadly characterize this genre of literature. Among these vitti pot are various boundary books (kaḍaim pot), some dealing with the boundaries of the nation, some with specific regions and some on family genealogies (banḍāravaliya).
A Restrained but Reconciliatory Feast at St. Anthony’s in Kachchativu in 2021
The Jaffna Divisional Secretary informed the public, well in advance, that St. Anthony’s Feast in the Kachchativu island had been cancelled this year due to the Covid- 19 pandemic. The decision was well understood by devotees of both Sri Lanka and India.
Filed under accountability, architects & architecture, centre-periphery relations, charitable outreach, communal relations, cultural transmission, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, performance, pilgrimages, Rajapaksa regime, religiosity, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, the imaginary and the real, tolerance, transport and communications, travelogue, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes
Order of the Rising Sun for Professor Purnendra Jain in Adelaide
ADELAIDE UNIVERSITY New Item
Emeritus Professor Purnendra Jain (School of Social Sciences) was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays With Neck Ribbon by the Consul-General of Japan, Mr. Junji Shimada , in a ceremony on 26 March 2021.
Charlie Chaplin in Bali
Tony Donaldson’s Treasure Trove
Here are two photos of Charlie Chaplin in Bali from my collection.
In one photograph, we see Chaplin in a comical moment as if he is conducting a gamelan orchestra in a Balinese village, possibly Ubud. He could also be dancing in front of the gamelan — for the way his arms and hands are positioned suggest this We can’t say for sure. The gamelan players are clearly enjoying this moment with Chaplin, with lots of fun and laughter. A gamelan orchestra is led by the kendang (drum) player – the nearest thing to a kind of conductor in a gamelan.
Sustaining Memory as a Central Facet of Transitional Justice
Gehan Gunatilleke: “The Right to Memory: The Forgotten Facet of Transitional Justice* with highlighting emphasis imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting — Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979)
Introduction
Memory does not explicitly feature among the four pillars of transitional justice: truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence. Hence the precise role memory plays within a transitional justice process is often left to those negotiating the contours of the process. Memory is a vital ingredient in ascertaining the truth and in securing evidence to ensure justice for victims and survivors. Moreover, memorialisation of loss has a place in the symbolic initiatives owed to victims and survivors under the reparations pillar. Meanwhile, public memorials commemorating man-made tragedies contribute towards a society’s collective commitment to non-recurrence. Thus memory often becomes the lifeblood that preserves and binds the traditional pillars of transitional justice.
Filed under accountability, atrocities, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, democratic measures, education, European history, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, meditations, nationalism, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, social justice, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, UN reports, unusual people, war crimes, war reportage, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes
Ilse Weber: Two Lullabies
Tony Donaldson
Apropos of your item on Jewish lyrics and compositions from the depths of misery in Nazi concentration camps, I convey herewith two lullabies by the composer Ilse Weber who was sent with her family to Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942. She worked as a nurse in the camp, wrote poems and songs, and performed her songs accompanying herself on the guitar. Here are two songs – a quiet moving lullaby called Wiegala, and the song Ich wandre durch Theresienstadt (I wandered through Theresienstadt). It is said that she sang the song Wiegala while facing her death. She died in Auschwitz in 1944.
Songs and Music from Auschwitz and Other Concentration Camps
Meagan Flynn, in Washington Post, 17 April 2018, where the title runs thus: “How thousands of songs composed in concentration camps are finding new life”
Ilse Weber 1903-1944
Ilse Weber, a Jewish poet, was imprisoned at the concentration camp at Terezin in German-occupied Czechoslovakia when she wrote a song called “When I Was Lying Down in Terezin’s Children’s Clinic.” The song was about caring for sick children at the camp where Weber worked as a nurse. She had little-to-no medicine available. But she had her poetry and her music — some of which her husband managed to salvage by hiding the written verses in a garden shed after her death at Auschwitz in 1944.
Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, ethnicity, Fascism, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, Hitler, human rights, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, martyrdom, meditations, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, trauma, travelogue, unusual people, war crimes, war reportage, world events & processes, World War II
