Category Archives: landscape wondrous

The Mahadevan Sisters and The Conviviality of Galle Fort

Tiffany Tang, year date unclear, …. posted at https://i-discoverasia.com/meet-two-interesting-locals-in-galle-fort/ … with this title “Meet Two Intersting Locals in Galle

Galle is a town of colour, texture and sensation totally unlike anywhere else in Sri Lanka. It is exotic, bursting with the scent of spices and salty winds, and vaguely familiar like a whimsical medieval European down unexpectedly deposited in the tropics” from a visitor’s travel journal in the 1980s. He stumbled upon this charming, ramshackle town shortly after it had been inscribed into the UNESCO World Heritage List. Now, almost 30 years down the road, many of the old crumbling mansions have been renovated into boutique hotels, but the cobblestone streets with pastel-coloured houses are still as picturesque as a street can possibly get.

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A President One Could Die With … in Portugal

Ryan Fahey for MailOnLine, 17 August 2020

  • Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, 71, swam out to rescue the two stranded women  
  • The Portuguese president was in the Algarve for 2 days in a bid to boost tourism 
  • Footage shows the head of state, who underwent minor heart surgery last year, swimming out to help assist the pair whose canoe had capsized 

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Richard Koenigsberg’s Succinct Summary of the Law of Sacrifice

Richard Koenigsberg: “The Proof of the Pudding is in the Dying”

  • The desire to die and kill–in war, genocide, revolution and terrorism–grows out of attachment to an ideology conceived as absolute
  • Dying and killing are undertaken with the purpose of validating an ideology (“proof of the pudding”).

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Norah Roberts: A Letter from Her Past, April 1995

My sister Norah Roberts, I now realise, was a remarkable woman. Further elaborations along these lines will follow in a second “Memoriam.” The present display is via a Letter she sent to Fr Corera of the Vanareeth House for Elders run by the Sisters of Charity in Galle on the 15th April 1995 …. a copy of which has been preserved by Moninna Goonewardena of 15 Parawa Street, Fort, Galle.[1]

The copy of the Letter below will be followed by a commentary on several facets touched on within the letter; while my Ode in Praise in a subsequent essay will present details on Norah Roberts and her difficult circumstances of total deafness from her 32/33rd years on earth.

GalleFort~library~2002

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Eelamist Movement Rises Again in the North?

Dinasena Ratugamage, in Island, 15 August 2020, where the title is “Wiggy makes vow before LTTE memorial”

Newly elected TMTK (Thamil Makkal Thesiya Kuttani) MP C.V. Wigneswaran, on Thursday (13), vowed before the LTTE memorial at Mullivaikkal that he would fulfill the aspirations of the Tamil people.

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The British Planters and Cricket: Supplementing David’s Work

This striking picture of the British planting community in their finery watching a game of cricket has been taken from Palinda De Silva’s collection at http://www.imagesofceyon, No 442 and can also be seen as No. 62 in Roberts, Potency, Power & People in Groups, Colombo, Marga Institute, 2011 ….  Michael Roberts in support and appreciation of the work put in by David Colin-Thome ……………………………….. https://thuppahis.com/2020/08/14/ceylon-tea-planting-clubs-and-cricket-over-the-years/ Continue reading

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Ceylon Tea, Planting Clubs and Cricket over the Years

David Colin-Thome: “The History of Tea and Cricket in Sri Lanka,” at https://www.elanka.com.au/the-history-of-tea-and-cricket-in-sri-lanka-by-david-colin-thome-2/

“You will think I write a lot about the scenery, but if you saw it you would not think I said too much” – James Taylor (Pioneering tea planter describing Ceylon in a letter to his father in Scotland in 1858)

In Sri Lanka, the relevance of tea to the game of cricket extends further than that of a twenty-minute break that separates lunch and the end of a day’s play. And while tea to the Western world is but a tiny item in a crowded shopping trolley of groceries, in Sri Lanka, it is the trolley itself.

THE HISTORY OF TEA AND CRICKET IN SRI LANKA - BY David Colin Thome

Source: history of ceylon tea

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The Ubiquitous Banyan Tree and Galle Fort

Two ‘Monuments’ …. The VOC Crest and a Banyan Giant

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Fighting Death and Covid: Mike Ryan of WHO in Straight Talk … and More

Mike Ryan of WHO interviewed by Melissa Fleming

The info-demic can be just as damaging as the pandemic itself, because if people aren’t getting the right information, if they’re not able to trust that information, and then we have a problem. There’s no point having solutions to offer people if they don’t hear about them, or they don’t believe in them,” said Michael (Mike) Ryan in this latest episode.

https://www.un.org/en/awake-at-night/S3-E4-we-need-to-save-more-lives

 

2 January 2019 – A helicopter transports a wounded health worker with their team including Dr. Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the Health Emergencies Programme for WHO (far right) and Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General (second from right). Dr. Ryan helped attend to the health worker, who had been wounded in an attack against the Ebola vaccination team in Komanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Evacuated for advanced care, he later recovered from his injuries – Photo: ©WHO/Lindsay Mackenzie

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Remarkable Voting Results in Sri Lanka … Especially in the North and East

Chandre Dharmawardana, in an article entitled Tamil speaking voters  decisively reject vengeance-peddling Genocide-Claiming parties in Sri Lanka’s  elections,” –which will presumably appear in digital or print form somewhere

Sri Lanka, a nation troubled by decades of civil strife and a separatist war  has just concluded a parliamentary election bringing back the war-winning government. Western observers have keenly focused on the North, with its Tamil population (5% of the Nations population) previously controlled by the separatist Tigers. Their  “MaVeera”  (suicide fighters  presented as heroes) are celebrated covertly and even overtly by hard-liner Tamil politicians in the North, and in Western diasporas.

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