The Virtual Stoa

My dear friend Ewen Green died last week at 47, after years of wrestling with multiple sclerosis. His obituary appears in today’s Independent.

Pablo Neruda, poet, born Parral, 12 July 1904, died of leukemia in Santiago, 23 September 1973.

I don’t often have patriotic moments, but my British heart swelled with pride when I read these words:

Figures from Mintel reveal that we eat a tonne of crisps every three minutes in the UK.

I think that’s a tremendous (multi-) national achievement. I’m not sure, however, that this is the reaction I’m supposed to be having.

If there are any Calendar Bores out there, can he or she (but, more likely, he) tell me how often the French Republican New Year and the Jewish New Year coincide? It seems that from sunset this evening until midnight Paris time we have overlapping New Year festivities, which I don’t think I’ve ever noticed before.

(Will French Republican Jews celebrate with especial vigour this evening, or do they worry that that would compromise their French Republican identity? I like to think that they will.)

Download it here.

This page links to the six earlier reports published by the same office.

It is, of course, Décade I, Primidi de Vendémiaire de l’Année CCXV de la Révolution today, in the ongoing calendrical celebration of the people’s triumph over monarchical tyranny that is the French Republican Calendar.

Following Bob Timbs’s by-election victory in Lye Valley last night, the Labour group is once again the largest group on Oxford City Council, and that’s a very good thing.

If anyone reading this falls into the “have read Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue more often than most and thinks it’s a pretty good book” category, can you drop me a line.

Thanks.

… to my brother Michael’s new blog, Closely Watched DVDs, devoted to the world of Czech cinema.

Hurry over there now to learn the handy Czech phrase, “Tomorrow I’ll wake up and scald myself with tea”*, and do remember to go back every day in January, when he’ll be presenting his Jan Švankmajer blog-retrospective.

[* The only Czech phrase I can really remember from the time I tried to learn the language is the equally handy, “I think there’s going to be a revolution in the West soon.”]

Stephen Marks points me to this one-stop shop for all your Russian / Soviet anthem needs.

There’s an astonishing collection of recordings of the song formerly known as the Hymn of the Soviet Union here — Paul Robeson, obviously [and there’s more on Robeson today here]; but also the broadcast from the Victory Parade in Moscow in June 1945; a wartime version for the BBC conducted by Sir Adrian Boult; sung in Moscow before a rugby international against Wales; various pop and rock versions; and what may be my brother’s favourite recording of anything ever, the Leningrad Cowboys and the Alexandrov Red Army Ensemble performing Gimme All Your Lovin’ / The Hymn of the Soviet Union as part of their epic 1993 Helsinki concert, the Total Balalaika Show; and so on, and so on, and so on.

And there’s more…

There’s the only recording of the Internationale made by a Nazi band, at the time of the 1936 Olympics (though in the end the USSR team didn’t show up). There are three pre-Revolutionary recordings of Bozhe, tsarya khrani, better known as the main theme from the 1812 Overture (and another recording by the Pipes and Drums and Military Band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards). There are lots of recordings of related songs, parody versions, historical curiosities.

It’s a fabulous, fabulous collection (and these are terrific songs, too). Why haven’t I stumbled across it before?

Please note (above) that today is “Jour de la raison”, as we’re into the annual cycle of holidays that closes out the French Republican Calendrical year, so can we stop talking like pirates and start being rational.

(Don’t worry: it’s just for one day.)

Annie Besant, Fabian Socialist and Theosophist, born 1 October 1847, died 20 September 1933.

Today be International Talk Like A Pirate Day, aarrrr, me hearties! So get talkin’ like a pirate in the comments box, or be walkin’ the plank like the scurvy varmints y’arr.

(It’s also my excuse to post my annual link to my favourite on-line pirate-themed joke, of which I never tire, though it is possible, gentle readers, that you do.)

Duncan Hallas, Socialist Worker, born 23 December 1925, died 19 September 2002.

Sean O’Casey, Irish playwright, and socialist. (Bibliography and timeline here.) Born 30 March 1880, died 18 September 1964.

Bruno Jasieński, Polish futurist poet and Communist. Born Wiktor Zysman in Klimontów, 17 July 1901; purged on 17 September 1938 in a Moscow prison.

Osugi Sakae, Japanese anarchist, born 17 January 1885, killed by police after the Great Kanto Earthquake, 16 September 1923. Also Ito Noe, Japanese anarchist and feminist, born 21 January 1895, killed by police after the Great Kanto Earthquake, 16 September 1923.

Livio Maitan, Italian revolutionary socialist, born 1 April 1923, died 16 September 2004.

Victor Jara, Chilean socialist songman, born 23 September 1932, murdered about 16 September 1973 in the repression following the coup of 11 September.

Finally, the military brought Victor Jara and other political prisoners to the Stadium of Chile, the place where the concert for Allende has previously been held. There the military men tortured and killed many people. They broke Victor Jara’s hands … so that he couldn’t play his guitar, and then taunted him to try and sing and play his songs. Even under these horrible tortures, Victor Jara magnificently sang a portion of the song of the Popular Unity party. After this, he received many brutal blows, and finally was brutally killed with a machine gun and carried to a mass grave.

More here.

Sergio Ortega, Chilean composer who wrote the songs “Venceremos” and “El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido”. Born 2 February 1938, died 15 September 2003.

J. D. Bernal, Irish scientist and communist; born in Nenagh, 10 May 1901; died 15 September 1971.

And, while I’ve got the scanner out, here’s a blast from the past — a William Hague-era Conservative Party pledge-card that I was lucky enough to be given…

Front:

Back:

I’m moving offices at the moment, which means, among other things, going through old boxes of stuff. Here’s something I found in one of them, a label from a Libyan bottle of mineral water:

Don’t worry. I don’t think this is going to become a daily feature. Anyway, here’s Enkidu, Mac User, a few moments ago: