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lordeasriel · 3 years

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ATTWN: A Look at Miss Brent

I keep circling around the idea of writing And Then There Were None meta, like a full, proper analysis of the novel, but I just can't settle down on how to do it, cause I do have many thoughts, but I can't seem to organise them in a way it will make sense. But-

I was thinking about Miss Brent today, and she's not exactly a character I have that many thoughts compared to Vera or Armstrong, but she certainly has my interest. What strikes me stronger about her is her complacency, in a way.

Let's look at the novel first: here's this sixty-something woman, a spinster who takes on girls from local charities/orphanages to train them into proper maids or whatever. It's not an unusual thing for that time based on the rest of Christie's novels, it seemed like a common occurrence for the period. At any rate, she's very righteous, uptight, her belief is almost borderline fanatical, she never hesitates over her "innocence" in front of the accusations, and the thing is: she doesn't deny shunning the girl away.

Unlike the others, who remain resilient on their innocence (Lombard the exception cause he literally confessed right away), Miss Brent never denies that she did refuse to help Beatrice. In her own mind, she didn't do anything wrong - and if we're going there, in its fucked up way, she technically didn't do anything wrong. She had no familial attachment to the girl, she didn't have to do anything for her legally speaking; morally, of course, she should have but we don't arrest people for being morally corrupt lmao Let alone death sentence them. *coughs*

But what gets me it's her complacency. You know, I'm blaming this on the windy day, but thinking about her, sitting by herself almost all the time (including when she died), she never does anything. Unlike the others, Vera included considering how Christie often writes the women isolated, Miss Brent never gets involved in either investigating or helping them to find a way out; she just sits and knits and eventually bosses Vera around or say some mean stuff to someone. She doesn't act, which is odd for us as a reader; I mean, if I was in her spot I would have already made a signal for help, even with the bad weather lmao This book heavily traumatised me anyway--

Miss Brent doesn't act, that's my main point. In her head, I suppose she expects some sort of divine intervention, in its way; not a miracle, but you know, she expected her righteousness guaranteed her safety. She sees the other deaths as punishment, she thinks them all guilty, perhaps not the General or Wargrave, but I've no doubt she considers the rest of them wicked and deserving of the punishment, but never herself. She didn't do anything wrong, she has got nothing to feel sorry for. There is a whole section, where Vera asks Miss Brent if she is not afraid or if she simply doesn't mind dying. To which she reacts exactly like I said before, like she was above them all, like death wouldn't come for her.

Now, I will just vaguely go over the show because I think their choice of handling her was an interesting one. I like most of the choices made by show, except the ending which I'll save for another day of ranting, but Miss Brent in the show behaves similarly, but her background gets deeper. For one there was two key things - I say two because I've seen two different interpretations of this - and they were 1) repressed lesbian and 2) predator. Now, these two could coexist with each other, she could have been taking in girls to take advantage of them, but I don't know, I think it would be hard for her to do that always, so I like to think if repressed lesbian was it, then it makes more sense for her crime and her reaction. It would be related to a feeling of betrayal - "I've given you a home, a job, affection and you still went behind my back to be a whore" - and it's something Miss Brent would probably not acknowledge. She was always too religious, too righteous, so Beatrice probably haunted her more in death than she did in life: no one would believe this ragged girl over any accusations - even if there was consent on her part. But that's just beside the point.

What I mean for the show is, they go in a different direction. Miss Brent's reactions over the murders are a little more in line with her religious dynamic for the show: when Tony dies, she makes a little prayer, she worries about Mrs. Rogers state when she sees her passed out (despite the fact she humiliated her earlier over being meek and weak and so on), she has a judgemental attitude towards Vera, but even that comes from a place of almost understanding? She still judges them harshly, but she is a lot less harsh to the ones she consider less harmful (aka she is absolutely distasteful about Lombard, whose crime is easily the worst crime in the show and she thinks so).

Of course, all of her views and beliefs and behaviours are based on her own lifestyle, so she is a bit blind and biased - when Lombard points out about the missionaries crimes in Africa, after she calls him out; or when she states she couldn't imagine crossing paths with a man like him, despite the fact she knows well enough they're all there because they're guilty - so she is bound to hypocrisy every now and again. But her fanaticism from the book is turned into a proper, religious attitude; she does abide by the Bible, she condemns very little her other companions (I mean, she still judges Vera over her youth and her inertia, she judges Armstrong's lack of calm, she judges Lombard because well, because of his Existence™ lmao) She is, of course, judgmental and vain and arrogant, but this is less cartoony and more realistic. More importantly, because her beliefs are much more ingrained in her life, she is afraid. She is genuinely afraid and that is an important, key change that I genuinely like.

Miss Brent has faith, at first, that they will leave the Island, so she stills acts very coldly at first and of course, she still denies her guilt, she still claims she did the right thing and Beatrice caused her own undoing. But, the show pursues the idea that Miss Brent, upon being reminded of the event, starts to feel guilt: when she is praying she hallucinates Beatrice (hallucionation was a choice they did to convey these feelings, but you could just claim that's a memory in her head); and more importantly, before her death - which happens the day after she hallucinates - her demeanor changes entirely. She goes from trying to stay calm and resolute before the tide, to feeling weary. That's important because unlike Book! Emily, she is fully aware she has committed a sin, and now whether that is her neglect of Beatrice's pleas or her own feelings for her, that's beside the point. The point is this woman realises she is very close to meet her maker and the burden of having sinned wears her down.

Miss Brent also adds "It's only wool" when Vera is pouring her coffee (which I had to crop cause Gif size), which is her redirecting her distress to something mundane (in another scene later, Vera mentions how doing the dishes is a mundane task, which she finds soothing. In fact, seeking a sense of normalcy is a recurring theme for the show, but also for the book) and ordinary. Vera, of course, notices her distress over being hunted; she shares the feeling, and I don't want to focus too much on Vera because I'll talk about her eventually later, but this shows how Miss Brent changes drastically.

On their first conversation after the dinner, Vera's impression of Miss Brent is of an uptight, self-righteous, straight-up cruel woman and she avoids her if she can help it, and truth be told, Miss Brent does act very badly and says bad things, Vera is not being touchy about it. So when Vera lays the coffee tray, she is ready to walk away before Miss Brent addresses her (she even makes a dry remark on "There is no milk, I'm afraid", which is meant to spite Miss Brent's earlier attitude over asking for perfect eggs after Mrs Rogers died and so on), and Miss Brent talks so unlike herself, a weariness that makes Vera reconsider and come back, to pour her coffee. She feels sorry for Miss Brent, because she finally cracked like the others; Miss Brent knows now that no amount of faith might defend her from this killer, because this killer has got nothing to do with a justice kill.

She stays seated, knitting again, but when she reaches for the coffee she hesitates. She realises Vera could have poisoned it (before entering the room, since she watches Vera pouring the coffee), and then she puts it down. There is a sense of danger in her, and she has no desire to die, unlike in the book where she so casually just stays behind, unafraid in her own attitude of superiority. I like this change a lot; I think showing her fear before her God enhances her religious mania a lot more, because she truly fears Divine Judgement, because she understands, deep down, that she did a bad thing; maybe not murder - I mean, it wasn't murder after all - but she still did a morally bad thing. If there is a Heaven, it won't be for her.

#and then there were none #emily brent #attwn meta #this is my tag for it from now on i'll keep it separate from hdm

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dwellordream · 3 years

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“Having established friendship’s intimate links to proper womanhood, and having demarcated the unrequited passions, obsessive infatuations, and conjugal relationships often conflated with friendship, we can now turn to female friendship itself. What repertory of gestures, emotions, and actions defined friendship? How did women mark their friendships and how did friendships evolve? How did friendship interact with kinship and marital bonds, religious belief, and the Victorian gender system?

One of the most striking differences between Victorian and twentieth century friendship is how often Victorian friends used “love” interchangeably with weaker expressions, such as “fond of” or “like,” and how often women used the language of physical attraction to describe their feelings for women whom a larger context shows were friends, not lovers. In 1864, when Lady Knightley’s beloved cousin Edith died, the twenty three-year-old offset her grief with a romantic quotation: “And yet through all I feel sure / ‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all’” (71). A year later, Knightley rhapsodized that a new woman, also named Edith, “has come to bless my life. . . . I have grown to love Edie very dearly” (105–6).

…Lifewriting provides many instances of a woman recording her attraction to other women or boasting of being “intimate” with other women in youth and adulthood; Ann Gilbert recalled how as a girl, her sister became “by instantaneous attraction” another girl’s “bosom friend” (24, 78). In an 1881 memoir published in 1930, fifty-one-year old Augusta Becher recalled a youthful meeting with a young woman who “proved just charming—took me captive quite at once” and went to dinner wearing “lilies of the valley I had gathered for her in her hair” (37–38). Ethel Smyth’s autobiography discussed her own sexual affairs with women in coded terms but openly described how her mother and the children’s author Juliana Ewing “were attracted to each other at once and eventually became great friends” (68, 111).

Others wrote of loving (rather than liking) women; in 1837, Emily Shore (1819–1839) wrote of her friend Matilda Warren, “I love her more and more. . . . It is difficult to stop my pen when once I begin to write of her.” The two women argued fine points of religious doctrine but concluded “that, after all, we agreed in loving each other very dearly.” Addressing her friend Catherine Marsh in 1862, twenty years after they first met, a married woman wrote, “My Katie, you were mine in 1842, and you have been twenty times more mine every year since,” reveling in friendship as the proud possession of a beloved intimate (40).

Such expressions of love between friends, as we have seen, were perceived as fulfilling the social function of feminization that led Sarah Ellis to promote friendship alongside motherhood and marriage as one of the duties of women. In The Bonds of Womanhood, historian Nancy Cott influentially argues that in the United States, domestic ideology promoted friendship between women as one way of confining women to a female world and to female roles, even as female friendship also laid the foundations for a feminist movement that sought to open the male worlds of education and professional work to women.

But even women who were not active feminist reformers enjoyed the ways that friendships allowed them to go beyond the limits assigned to their gender without being perceived as mannish or unladylike. Friendship was both a technology of gender and an enactment of the play in the gender system. As friends, for example, women were able to exercise a prerogative otherwise associated with men: taking an active stance towards the object of their affections. In an 1880s memoir about the 1830s, Georgiana Sitwell, later Swinton (1823–1900), recalled a governess who “was romantic, worshipped the curate, and formed a passionate attachment to our newly imported French governess.”

…Counseled to be passive in relation to men, women were allowed to act with initiative and spontaneity toward female friends, and friendship enabled women to exercise powers of choice and expression that they could not display in relation to parents or prospective husbands. Bonds with parents and siblings were given, not chosen, and friendship was for many girls their first experience of an affinity elected rather than assigned. For women who grew up in families with over ten children, friendship was also a girl’s first experience of a dyad rather than a swarm.

While women had the power to turn down marriage offers and had subtle ways of attracting men they wanted as spouses, they were not allowed to choose a mate too overtly; only in Punch lampoons did women propose to men, and it was considered equally improper for women openly to initiate courtship. It was perfectly acceptable, however, for a woman to make the first move toward friendship with another woman, or to solidify amity by writing to a female acquaintance, calling on her, or giving her a gift. Aristocratic women had exchanged gifts, miniatures, and poems for centuries, and in the Victorian era the practice became widespread among middle-class women of all ages.

One of adolescent Emily Shore’s several intimates, Elizabeth, gave her a “chain made of her beautiful rich brown hair” before leaving England, which Shore considered a token of her friend’s affection and looked forward to displaying as a sign of social distinction: “I have generally worn a pretty little chain of bought hair, and when people have asked me ‘whose hair is that?’ I have been mortified at being obliged to answer ‘Nobody’s.’ Now, when asked the same question, I shall be able to say it is the hair of my best and dearest friend” (269).

Mature women painted portraits of friends and composed poems about them that they then bestowed as gifts, creating a friendship economy based on artifacts whose praise of a friend’s beauty, loyalty, and achievements also implicitly lauded their maker for having chosen so wisely. Female friendship allowed middle-class women to enjoy another privilege that scholars have assumed only men could indulge—the opportunity to display affection and experience pleasurable physical contact outside marriage without any loss of respectability.

Women who were friends, not lovers, wrote openly of exchanging kisses and caresses in documents that their spouses and relatives read without comment. Women regularly kissed each other on the lips, a gesture that could be a routine social greeting or provide intense enjoyment. Emily Shore, whose Bedfordshire Anglican family was so proper they did not allow her to read Byron, described in a diary later published by her sisters the “heartfelt pleasure” she obtained from a visit to her friend Miss Warren’s room: “She was sitting up in bed, looking so sweet and lovely that I could not take my eyes off her. . . . She made me sit on her bed, and kissed me many times, and was kinder to me than ever [and] held my hand clasped in hers” (203).

Female amity gave married and unmarried women the opportunity to play the social field with impunity, since a woman could show devoted love, lighthearted affection, fleeting attraction, and ardent physical appreciation for multiple female friends without incurring rebuke. The editor of Emily Shore’s journals noted that when Shore wrote of loving Matilda Warren her diary was also “filled most especially with her passionate love” for a woman named Mary (207). Thomas Carlyle wrote indulgently about Geraldine Jewsbury’s affection for his wife Jane as well as about “a very pretty . . . specimen of the London maiden of the middle classes” who “felt quite captivated with my Jane.”

Marion Bradley, wife and mother, wrote of her deep bond with Emily Tennyson and in an 1865 diary entry observed more casually that her new governess was “a gentle, lively, wise, cultivated little creature. . . . I love her and hope always to be very thoughtful for her and good to her.” Equal latitude was afforded to unmarried women. The biography of Agnes Jones (1832–1868), written by her sister and published in 1871, narrated her life in terms of two arcs: achievements as a nurse and love for various women. In adolescence, her sister’s “ardent affectionate nature was drawn out in warmest love” for a teacher, followed by an “attachment” to a fellow missionary that “ripened into a warm and lasting friendship” as well as a close connection with another “devoted friend” (15, 21).

In an era that saw no contest between what we now call heterosexual and homosexual desire, neither men nor women saw anything disruptive about amorous badinage between women, and therefore no effort was made to contain and denigrate female homoeroticism as an immature stage to be overcome. Only in the late 1930s, after fear of female inverts had become widespread, did women’s lifewritings start to describe female friendship as a developmental phase to be effaced by marriage. Since then, erotic playfulness between women has either been overinterpreted as having the same seriousness as sexual acts or underinterpreted and trivialized as a phase significant only as training for heterosexual courtship.

…Victorian society harshly condemned adultery, castigated female heterosexual agency as unladylike, and considered it improper for women to compete with men intellectually, professionally, or physically. But a woman could enjoy, without guilt, the pleasures of toying with another woman’s affections or vying with other women for precedence as a friend. In maturity as in youth, women delighted in attracting and securing female friends whom they often singled out for being beautiful and socially in demand. In a letter to her brother in 1817, the unmarried Catherine Hutton of Birmingham (1756–1846) boasted, “I have been a great favourite with a most elegant and clever woman.”

To a married female friend who often gave her fashion advice she wrote of acquiring yet another “new” friend: “[S]he is beautiful, unaffected, and to me most friendly.” Female rivalry over men was discouraged because it implied that women fought for and won their husbands, but women were allowed the agency of competing for one another’s favor. Lady Monkswell crowed about having “supplanted” one woman as the “great friend” of Mrs. Edith Bland, and the relative who edited her published letters and diaries included many other instances in which she bragged of similar successes (12).

Such relish in contending with women over women was possible without any loss of ascribed femininity, even as it took women well beyond the parameters of womanhood as defined relative to men. Just as women boasted of making conquests of female friends, they also openly appreciated each other’s physical charms. Women commented compulsively in their journals and letters on the appearance of every new woman they met, even when they did not know the woman personally.

Adrienne Rich has influentially argued that “compulsory heterosexuality” works by stifling all kinds of bonds between women, from the homosocial to the homosexual, but Victorian society’s investment in heterosexuality went hand-in-hand with what we could call compulsory homosociability and homoeroticism for women. The imperative to please men required women to scrutinize other women’s dress and appearance in order to improve their own, and at the same time promoted a specifically feminine appetite for attractive friends and lovely strangers. Conduct literature praised female friendships for developing in women the loyalty, selflessness, empathy, and self-effacement that they were required to exercise in relation to men.

Women’s lifewriting shows an acceptance of that idealized and ideological version of female friendship; few women left records of conflict or rivalry with friends, though some acknowledged engaging in jealous competition with relative strangers over prized acquaintances and intimates. At the same time, friendship provided a realm where women exercised an authority, agency, willfulness, and caprice for which they would have been censured in the universe of male-female relations. Female friendship provided women with a sanctioned realm of erotic choice, agency, and indulgence, in contrast to the sharp restrictions that middle-class gender codes placed on female flirtation with men.

A woman who wrote of spending time alone with a man in his bedroom or giving him a lock of hair without being engaged to him would have transgressed the rules governing heterosexual gender, but to write of doing so with another woman was to describe an accepted means of forming social bonds and acquiring social status in the realm of homosocial gender. The celebration of women’s friendships shows that femininity was defined not only in relation to masculinity but also through bonds between women that did not simply tether them to the gender system but also afforded them a degree of play within it.”

- Sharon Marcus, “The Play of the System.” in Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England

#sharon marcus #between women #victorian #history #gender #sexuality

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juniorformulamotorsport · 5 years

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Sunday 15th September 2019 – Boppard, Schloss Rheinfels, Illkirch

After an excellent, and beautifully presented, breakfast at the Landgasthof Eiserner Ritter, which made us regret what we’d had for dinner the night before even more, we packed up ready to move on.

It was a glorious day, and we had a plan to start by visiting the centre of Boppard and then, if we had time, moving on to the nearby Schloss Rheinfels before we headed to our first destination in Alsace, and AirBnB in Illkirch-Graffenstaden, just outside Strasbourg.

We parked up at the railway station, which is close to the middle of town, and where we couldn’t argue with the graffitti, which translated to “Wine in principle” – seemed like a fair statement to us. The station also offered free parking under cover, at least on a Sunday anyway, which meant we’d come back to a cool car rather than an oven. Having found our way in, we then picked our way into town past the old city walls.

As in Oberwesel, the railway line runs right next to them, and from there a number of underpasses lead you into the town centre, past some rather odd sights…

It was around 10am and very quiet on the side streets. We walked past interesting – but closed – shops and businesses, including one selling the most odd fish (I think that’s what they were).

We also met a friendly, though not very helpful, local.

We could hear music in the distance, and so we headed towards it, finding ourselves on the riverside, where a local brass band was putting on a concert. Apparently this is a regular thing on September Sunday mornings, and quite a few people were already sitting around in the sun, enjoying the music.

We had also located the municipal museum, which is housed in the former Electoral castle, which was altered numerous times over the centuries, and which was fascinating both in terms of the actual building, and in terms of the history it related. First, something about the town itself. Just as with Oberwesel, there’s been a settlement on the site for a very long time (the earliest traces of occupation go back around 13,000 years) but the first real remnants that the visitor can see are Roman, probably replacing the Celts again. In the mid 3rd century the Romans had to evacuate their territory on the right bank of the Rhine and secure the river as their border. During the rule of Valentinian I a Roman castrum, the Römerkastell Boppard, was built and the Roman troops finally left the area in 405, when they were withdrawn to defend their home base. In 643 Boppard was recorded as a Frankish royal estate and a Merovingian state administrative centre.

It was thus a free imperial city (until 1309), which meant kings turned up to stay at the Royal Estate on a frequent basis. Then in 1309 Heinrich VII pledged Boppard to his brother, Archbishop Baldwin of Trier. The locals however, were having none of that, and they set up their own council, triggering a siege, after which Boppard finally became part of the Electorate of Trier, and Baldwin extended the castle, giving work to the locals both in the administration and the construction “sectors”. Despite this, the locals still weren’t happy, and so they turned to the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, who took their side against the Elector. Maximilian freed Boppard from Electoral jurisdiction and tolls, but then had to reverse the decision, which kicked off the Boppard War in 1497. The Elector of Trier sent an army of 12,000 to sort it out, and the resistance of the townsfolk promptly crumbled.

After that Boppard seemed to get in the way of a number of armies, losing a fair whack of its population during the Thirty Years’ War, when the town was occupied by Swedish troops (1632). During the Nine Years’ War the French attacked but were beaten off, but they came back during the War of the Polish Succession. Just to add to the fun, in 1794 French Revolutionary troops occupied the town and stayed for 20 years. As if that wasn’t enough, after Napoleon was defeated in 1814, Boppard was governed by the Imperial and Royal Austrian and Royal Bavarian joint Landesadministrationskommission for a very short period, before it was handed to Prussia as a result of the Congress of Vienna. It’s a miracle that anyone in the place had any idea where they belonged. That can, however, also be said for many places along the Rhine, as we would find out in the coming days.

As the museum was still closed (it was due to open at 11) we stopped off for a coffee at the first open café we could find, the Café Zeitgeist, which was rather lovely and provided an excellent cappuccino.

The owners reckon they are occupying the oldest surviving half-timbered house in the town, and as it dates from 1519 I’m not going to argue with them. It’s been modernised and given a lot of love since then.

After we’d finished, the museum was open, so we popped in and nosed around, surprising ourselves by stumbling across a bit of history we should have known about given our interests, but that had somehow passed us by. That being the story of Richard of Cornwall, the second son of King John, nominal Count of Poitou, Earl of Conrwall and – and this is the significant bit with regards to Boppard – King of Germany from 1257. He seems to have made a great deal of money and managed to become one of the wealthiest men in Europe at the time, and was clearly much more politically astute than his father. He presumably became even richer after he joined the Barons’ Crusade, where “he achieved success as a negotiator for the release of prisoners” and presumably was amply rewarded for it. The whole “King of Germany” thing was less than straightforward too, which shouldn’t surprise anyone I suppose. Only 4 of the 7 Electors originally supported Richard, though the fact that he had powerful relatives finally swung things in his favour, that along with bribes amounting to 28,000 marks anyway! He was crowned “King of the Romans” in Aachen on 27th May 1257 by Konrad von Hochstaden, Archbishop of Cologne. He made only four brief visits to Germany between 1257 and 1269 but one of those seems o have been to Boppard. I think it unlikely he stopped off here though.

Also of interest in the museum was a section all about the inventor of bentwood furniture, Michael Thonet, who was born and worked locally before going off to Vienna and becoming massively successful. The collection is substantial, and well displayed, and made me think about how such items are made for the first time. They’re also lovely, elegant, with beautiful curving shapes that make you want to touch them. It was also a pleasure being allowed to take photographs (without flash), something we found was common pretty much everywhere we went over the time we were away.

Just to add to tour enjoyment, there were also some entertaining portraits of composers from a variety of eras, by Michael Aptiz, another local. His exhibition, CHROMOFONIE, was fabulous. I especially liked Beethoven, though he also went modern with Bob Dylan, that work appearing on one of the staircases. He also creates stunning landscapes, some of which are also in the museum.

We also discovered you could get up into the tower of the castle from inside the museum, and although it wasn’t especially high, it did offer some excellent views up and down the river, and across the rooftops of the town. The tower also contained the remains of a small chapel, which had obviously been gloriously frescoed in its day.

Afterwards we figured we’d stop for another drink, this time at the eccentrically decorated Café and Bistro 60s, where we drank coffee and spotted – and then had to identify – a weirdly wonderful hummingbird hawk moth (macroglossum stellatarum), something I’d certainly never seen before, and that was moving too fast for me to get a photo of. They seem to be rather fond of geraniums. They weren’t at all interested in my coffee.

After coffee we decided we’d like to visit another of the town’s main attractions, Saint Severus’ Church, described as “one of the finest examples of late Romanesque church architecture in the Rhineland”. It stands on the site of the Roman military bath houses, and is visible from all over town with its white washed paired towers pointing up to the heavens. We were also told that “the webbed vaulting in the nave is unique in Romanesque architecture” and “the richness of the colours and decorative patterns is unmatched in the Middle Rhine region”. It had a lot to live up to; it didn’t disappoint. We’re really not used to richly decorated churches in England, given that most decoration was stripped away in the English Civil War, if it had survived the Reformation in the first place. Some of the churches we saw on this trip were mind-bendingly glorious in their vivid designs and colours.

As a throwback to its earliest history, there are Roman gravestones on display, but you could probably miss them if you let the interior overwhelm you, something it is determined to do at every turn.

We swung back through the town centre, stopped and bought a box of wine, and then reunited ourselves with the car, and headed one stop further along the riverside, and stopped at Sankt Goar, another ludicrously pretty town in the UNESCO World Heritage site. As with everywhere else along the Rhine Valley, Sankt Goar was already settled in Roman times, but takes its name from Goar of Aquitaine, a monk, who arrived in the reign of King Childebert I (511-538). He started out as a hermit, but then became a missionary, well known for his great hospitality, particularly towards the Rhine boatmen. He built a chapel and a hospice, and after his death it became a pilgrimage site, and the town developed from there, especially after King Pepin the Younger transferred the hospice and chapel to the Abbot of Prüm Abbey as a personal benefice. There is a claim that Charlemagne built a church over the site of the original hermitage, but then most places in the region make that sort of claim. It later came under the protection of the Counts of Katzenelnbogen, with Count Diether V building the structure we’d come to see, the massively monumental Burg Rheinfels.

Later the castle would be fought over by Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Darmstadt. which saw Burg Rheinfels and Sankt Goar besieged for several weeks in the summer of 1626 with help of Imperial troops. It was an argument that would continue for some decades, and probably only really stopped in the early 1700s. In 1711, after an inheritance dispute, Landgrave William of Hesse-Wanfried was awarded the Landgraviate of Hesse-Rheinfels and the Emperor transferred the castle to him in 1718. In 1731, Christian of Hessen-Wanfried (known since 1711 as Hessen-Eschwege) inherited the Landgraviate of Hesse-Rheinfels along with the castle and the castle was ceded to Hesse-Kassel in 1735. In 1755, after Christian’s death, the Landgraviate passed to the Landgraviate of Hesse-Rotenburg, in 1794, the castle was given up to French Revolutionary troops without a fight, and in 1796 and 1797, great parts of it were blown up.

And that’s how it remains to this day, despite a tentative plan by Wilhelm II to recreate it in an effort to promote German civilization. It didn’t happen and Wilhelm turned his attention to another castle in the region, but now in France, Haut Koenigsbourg, of which more another time. I think it’s fair to say that none of this stops you getting a good idea of just how intimidating it must have been in its heyday. It also commands the landscape for some distance, looming over the river and vineyards far below.

There is a small museum in the former chapel which detailed the history of the complex, and a downstairs room that seemed to be “we found all this lot lying around the castle and have to put it somewhere” which was diverting if not terribly informative!

With time running out – we needed to get on our way to Illkirch-Graffenstaden by 3pm at the latest and anyway our car parking stay was going to run out slightly before that – we figured we’d better get something to eat or we’d be very hungry by the time we could sort dinner out. We scooted into the restaurant on the other side of the entrance way and completely failed to get a table outside on the terrace. We settled slightly grumpily at an indoor table and looked enviously out of the nearest glass door where two people and a dog could be seen dining. We figured they were also on the main terrace, but then they got up and left, so I stuck my head outside and realised that there was what was in effect a tiny balcony all on its own overlooking the valley. We didn’t need a second invitation and threw ourselves out there, figuring that in this case possession was definitely 9/10ths of the law!

We ordered a flammkuchen each (in effect a very thin based local version of pizza topped with creme fraiche and whatever else the chef fancies if they’re being avant garde or with bacon and onions if they’re being traditionalist), one with feta cheese and peppers and one with wild mushrooms and bacon.

They were big but we were quite prepared to wrap any leftovers up and take them with us – it would save having to go and look for a restaurant open on a Sunday evening in France later on.

Enjoyed with a glass of local wine each, we settled in to enjoy our view, while remaining shaded from the frankly ferocious sun. Neither of us could manage more than half of the flammkuchen so we duly packed the spare up and stashed it in my bag.

We left the Rhine with plans to come back starting to percolate in my brain, especially now we knew about the Schloss Rheinfels Hotel! There followed a rather longer drive than I’d have hoped for as we found the main route from where we were towards Strasbourg was a single lane each way and was full of all sorts of annoyingly slow traffic. We arrived at one minute past the appointed hour and then had to faff around trying to contact our AirBnB landlady, but we eventually got in and got settled, unpacking for our three night stay on the edge of Strasbourg.

Travel 2019 – Alsace and Baden, Day 3, Boppard, Schloss Rheinfels, Illkirch Sunday 15th September 2019 - Boppard, Schloss Rheinfels, Illkirch After an excellent, and beautifully presented, breakfast at the…

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texanpeanut · 6 years

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Why Am I Here?

I think a lot. Probably too much by some standards, which is one of the reasons I wanted to join the Peace Corps. Once upon a time I believed if I made it to this position I would be forced to think less and do more. However, over the past six months I’ve experienced the opposite. Without mind-numbing mental distractions like Instagram and Facebook readily available while I’m in my rural site, and with the heat-forced downtime that occurs between noon and five p.m., I find myself thinking all the time. Not just in a hazy, half-aware state, but actively considering a handful of topics over and over again trying to find some satisfying conclusion that may or may not exist. So I’m not sure if the amount I think has changed since coming here, but perhaps the way I do has. Maybe now it’s more focused, more linear, less wiggly and sporadic. Maybe it’s more dense and easier to hold in my hand, like pudding versus water. Maybe it hasn’t changed at all and I’m just making it all up.

One topic currently seems to have a more substantial presence in my mind than the others, though. Sometimes it burns like a roaring campfire and I’m completely captivated and sometimes it nags silently like a mango string caught in my teeth that I run my tongue over again and again without actually making an effort to remove. When I sit on the floor of my hut at 6:30 am drinking Nescafe, when I fill my water bucket at the forage in the silent woods, when I escape the afternoon sun by doing crosswords in bed, when I sit with my family in the evening as we wait for dinner to finish cooking, I always come back to the same thought - why the fuck am I here?

For anyone reading this who doesn’t know, Senegal is a small West African country that happens to be the furthest western point on the African continent. I honestly don’t know that much about Senegalese history because all the empire formations and and dissolvements make my head spin, but I do know that it is certainly a very rich and diverse history, which has led to a very rich and diverse culture today. Although French is the national language, apparently 36 different languages are spoken in Senegal today, and each language corresponds to a different ethnic group with it’s own stories and traditions and beliefs. In my own region of Kedougou, I can travel between Bassari, Pular, and Jaxanke villages in just a few hours, and then if I travel up to any of the northern regions I find myself surrounded by Wolof or Pulaar du Nord or Serer.

So, take a trip in a time machine back to maybe the 7th century and you’ll find all these groups of people living their lives, forming empires and kingdoms, disbanding, migrating, adopting Islam, you know, whatever, the usual, until the advent of globalization at the end of the 15th century. At that point, Europeans began competing for trade and conquest in Senegal (like they did in almost all other non-white countries, as y’all know. I have a few other colorful ways to describe this but since I have family reading and I already dropped a fuck once (twice now, sorry) I’ll keep it tame.)* until 1677 when France won by gaining control of Goree Island, which is known for being a purchasing base in the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Travel forward in the time machine to 1961 and Senegal becomes independent from France. After centuries upon centuries of existing as a region under various kingdoms, then 300 years under French rule, Senegal becomes a country with a border, a tax system, a school system, elected officials, all that stuff. Now travel forward in the time machine to today, 2018, 57 years later.

SO MUCH BACKDROP. Was all that even necessary for what I’m about to talk about? We’ll see, I guess.

Living here, I see a lot of European and North American presence. Asian presence too, actually - a lot of the roads being built are Chinese construction projects, and the Renaissance Monument in Dakar was given as a gift from North Korea. There are other development organizations like UNESCO and World Vision, some religious missionaries, some adventurous tourists traveling on their own, some old French women sunbathing on the beaches of Mbour, and of course the obnoxious buses crammed full of European tourists coming to see a waterfall and stop by the surrounding towns to take photos of ~village life~ as if strolling through a zoo.

As a white person here I’m perceived differently based on which of these groups of white people Senegalese people have interacted with more. When I travel anywhere outside my village I hear the children sing-song chant “toubako okkan cadeau!” which means “westerner, share a gift with me!”. Sometimes the adults engage me too when I go to a boutique or wait for a car at the garage. They like to ask me if I’ll take their baby with me back to America, if I’ll give them my earbuds, my cell phone, or my dress, or if I’ll marry their old crusty-ass uncle I don’t even know. When I travel up to Thies I don’t get chanted at quite as much and am almost ignored, which is nice. The few times I’ve been to Mbour I’m almost ignored except for the occasional beach-walking knick-knack seller begging me to be their first customer of the day.

Even though they are just children, I get so incredibly annoyed sometimes by the chanting. I usually ignore it and go about my day but sometimes I just want to scream “my name is not Toubako, it’s Binta, and I don’t have a fucking gift, leave me alone and let me walk or bike or buy a piece of bread or whatever the fucking I’m doing at the moment.” The adults can be just as irksome, too. I don’t usually get into it and play these comments off as jokes but they make me so uncomfortable. I want to tell them “stop asking me for things. Every time you see me you only ask me for things. I came here to teach, to work, to plant at least like one fucking tree, not to take your baby or marry your god-damn uncle.”

I think I’m up to four fucks now, sorry. God, that’s five.

But I don’t respond because in some ways I feel like I deserve it. Even though I wasn’t here between 1677 and 1961 selling humans from Goree Island, even though I’m not one of these oggling, bus-going, camera-toting tourists, because I’m white I’m still part of that story. And in some ways isn’t “international development” another form of colonialism, of imperialism? Western groups coming in with resources and knowledge trying to fix what they perceive as problems? If the people of Senegal continuously rely on foreign aid organizations to supply resources and technical expertise, how sustainable is that for development in the long run?

So this is where my thoughts lead me every day. What’s my role as a volunteer here? How can I act as a white person without perpetuating colonialism? How can I work and learn here while being the least imposing as possible? In Peace Corps we’re told the role of a volunteer is to be a mentor, a teacher, a co-facilitator, a co-planner, etc. There’s a huge focus on “people-centered” work. Don’t do anything your village doesn’t want. Don’t force your own projects because when you leave no one will continue it. I think I feel comfortable with this part. So far I’ve really been trying to feel out my village for what they want, what they need, and what they’re willing to work toward. If no one wants to make a compost pile or build a tree nursery, I’m not going to force it. I try to see myself as a supplier of information, not an iron-fisted environmental ruler.

But even if I am trying to work with my village, even if I am truly trying to be this mentor/teacher/facilitator figure, and not a tyrant or giver of gifts like some other development organizations can be, why is that my responsibility as an American? All my technical training in Thies was done by Senegalese people. Wouldn’t this whole program be way more effective if Senegalese people trained other Senegalese people? People who live here and truly understand their land and their culture? People who don’t have to spend a year just trying to learn a language and fit in? People who aren’t going to go home to America or Canada or Japan after 2 years?

Well then I think maybe it’s not just about the work. The work is so fun, it’s a blast, it’s been my favorite part in village. Helping someone build a tree nursery, doing a small training, getting my hands dirty planting seeds or amending a garden bed - it’s fantastic and I say that without a single drop of sarcasm. But there’s three goals in Peace Corps - the first is about the work, the second is about sharing American culture with the host country, and the third is sharing host country culture with Americans. And I think many volunteers have a fourth, personal goal of learning about themselves or some kind of self improvement. That’s my other favorite part so far. The opportunity to challenge myself, to learn, to think in a focused way and not just bounce all over the place. But did I have to come all the way to Senegal to do that? Are there experiences I could have had in America that would have been this formative? If I’m here just to learn, is that another form of exploitation? Am I just using my village’s daily life and culture as a means to only better myself? Maybe I should really focus my efforts on this whole cultural exchange part?

I don’t know! I don’t know anything!

I’m not sure what my goal is in writing this post, but there was something inside me nagging me to put it down in type and send it into cyberspace. I do really appreciate my service in Senegal so far. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to go home. But I think this topic is something I will continue to come back to again and again over the next year and a half. Maybe other volunteers will see this and relate or offer some insight? Maybe some history nerds will call me out on all the mistakes I made in the earlier paragraphs? Maybe people will tell me to shut up and get back to the cool tree stuff or post more pictures of my dog?

Like I said, I don’t know.

If you got this far, thanks for reading. That’s all for now.

-Maggie

*Way earlier in this post I put a little asterisk, if you remember. I have a book recommendation. If you’re interested in globalization, colonialism, and/or potatoes I highly recommend 1493 by Charles C Mann. It’s the story about how the face of the Earth completely changed with the first Europeans coming over to North America. It tells a very, very interesting story and I encourage anyone interested in learning even a little bit to read it.

#peacecorps #senegal #peacecorpssenegal #peacecorpsafrica #africa #colonialism #globalization #howiseepc

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sonofhistory · 7 years

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What did the founding fathers think of Muslims?

In 1739, Benjamin Franklin became involved with one of the earliest documented places intended for interfaith use in America. It was built on the idea of being inclusive of all religions, including Muslims. In his writings, Franklin made clear:

“Both house and ground were vested in trustees, expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something to the people at Philadelphia; the design in building not being to accommodate any particular sect, but the inhabitants in general; so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.”

The “preaching-house” was to be a meeting place open to people of all faiths, including those of the “Muslim world,”. He went so far as to “preach” Islam in America. In his Autobiography he wrote concerning the non-denominational place of public preaching above “so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.”

And it being found inconvenient to assemble in the open air, subject to its inclemencies, the building of a house to meet in was no sooner propos’d, and persons appointed to receive contributions, but sufficient sums were soon receiv’d to procure the ground and erect the building, which was one hundred feet long and seventy broad, about the size of Westminster Hall; and the work was carried on with such spirit as to be finished in a much shorter time than could have been expected. Both house and ground were vested in trustees, expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something to the people at Philadelphia; the design in building not being to accommodate any particular sect, but the inhabitants in general; so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service. “

Benjamin Franklin not want to ban Muslims from coming to the United States, on the contrary, he wanted to invited them. However, In a March 23, 1790, letter to the editor of the Federal Gazette, Franklin wrote:

“Nor can the Plundering of Infidels be in that sacred Book [the Quran] forbidden, since it is well known from it, that God has given the World, and all that it contains, to his faithful Mussulmen, who are to enjoy it of Right as fast as they conquer it.”

Records at Mount Vernon show that some of George Washington’s slaves were, Muslims or at least descendants of Muslims [x]. These slaves were able to retain their Muslim-sounding. One Muslim slave, Sambo Anderson, Sambo fathered six children with two different women, both of whom lived at the River Farm area of Mount Vernon. In an article entitled “Mount Vernon Reminiscence” that was published in the Alexandria Gazette on January 18th, 1876, “an old citizen of Fairfax County” contends that Washington and Sambo had a close friendship. It continued by stating that Sambo was a “great favorite of the master [Washington]; by whom he was given a piece of land to build a house on.” It contended that Washington allowed Sambo to keep a small boat to “cross over the creek in, and for other purposes,” a rare privilege for any slave. Sambo was also claimed to be excellent hunter and was given permission by Washington to own a gun and ammunition, which were also rare privileges for a slaveowner to bestow up a slave. According to notes recovered from Washington’s ledger, he used to visit Sambo to buy duck meat and honey.

Washington tolerated the presence of Muslims in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Bampett Muhammad fought for the “Virginia Line” between 1775 and 1783, and there was Yusuf Ben Ali. Ben Ali served as an aide to General Thomas Sumter in South Carolina. Sultain Sidi Muhammad ben Abdallah of Morocco, who showed interest in helping the Americans in their fight against the British Empire. Abdallah assisted Washington by listing the newly independent United States of America as a country whose trading ships would be welcomed in the ports of Morocco, a move which offered the potential for supplies to be shipped to Washington’s army. These early diplomatic relations between the United States and Morocco showed in the ratification of the Treaty of Marrakech in 1786, which remains the longest standing foreign relations treaty in American history.

In a personal letter from 1783, he made it crystal that America would be “open to receive… the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions, whom we shall welcome to participation of all our rights and privileges … They may be Mahometans [Muslims], Jews, or Christians of any sect.” another letter written to Edward Newnham in 1792 he wrote that battles over religious differences were “the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated.” He was explicit to avoid religious disputes, feeling problems might “endanger the peace of society.”

Correspondence from Tench Tighman in 1784, Tilghman inquired as to what type of workmen George Washington would like at Mount Vernon. Washington wanted good work men and confirmed, “they may be of Asia, Africa or Europe. They may be Mahometans [Muslims], Jews, or Christians of any sect, or atheists.”

At Mount Vernon, Despite Washington’s views, there were challenges to anyone practicing the Islam faith. Pork was a traditional and often breakfast for slaves [x]. The standard work week stretched from Monday through Saturday, making traditional Friday Islamic prayers nearly impossible to continue at the plantation since Friday was a work day.

John Adams referred to Islam when discussing religious freedom, typically referring to Muslims as Mahometans. It is untrue that Adams passed into act the Treaty of Tripoli to keeps Muslims out of America. The treaty was because of the American ships who were being acted by such pirates who happened to be Muslim–but just because they were Muslim. Article eleven of the treaty explicitly states:

“As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, – as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims], – and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

In translation, America was not against their religious beliefs nor were they ever and that even if those attacking American vessels were Muslim there would be no ill feelings towards others of the religion. The language indicates the United States of America was merely neutral on religion in a treaty that was all about protecting U.S. ships.

President John Adams wanted to secure commercial shipping rights, and the countries he wanted to negotiate with happened to be Muslim, and happened to justify piracy by declaring war on Christian nations. Adams addressed that declaration by claiming that the United States was not Christian, and was not at war with Muslims.

Adams named the Prophet Muhammad one of the world’s great truth seekers alongside Socrates and Confucius. He said that Prophet Muhammad was a “Sober inquirer of the truth.” He helped to write the Massachusetts constitution, which indicated “the most ample liberty of conscience for Deists and Mohometans.”

During the Election of 1800 another of the claims thrown at Thomas Jefferson was that he was secretly Muslim. Jefferson owned a Quran which he bought as a twenty-two year old law student and he had previously stated that a Muslim, with rights ensured to them by the Constitution, could indeed become the President of the United States. Jefferson did not leave any notes on his immediate reaction to the Qur’an, he did criticize Islam as “stifling free enquiry” in his early political debates in Virginia, but this is a charge he also heaved against Catholicism. He thought both religions combined religion and the state at a time he wished to separate them.

A few months after authoring the Declaration of Independence, he returned to his home in Virginia to draft legislation about religion for his state. Writing in his private notes a paraphrase John Locke’s 1689 “Letter on Toleration”:

“[he] says neither Pagan nor Mahometan [Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion.”

This claim, Jefferson incorporated into the legislation:

“(O)ur civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions.”

Jefferson believed strongly in the separation of state and church as well as that religious liberty and political equality would not be exclusively Christian meaning. The original legislative intent had been “to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.” as he stated in his autobiography.

In 1805, at the White House, President Jefferson welcomed the first Muslim ambassador. Because it was Ramadan, the president moved the state dinner from 3:30 p.m. to be “precisely at sunset,” a recognition of the religious beliefs.

I can find nothing on John Jay and Muslims.

The government, James Madison reasoned, has no more right to tolerate someone’s religious beliefs than it does to interfere with them. Madison also believed specifically in the inclusion of religious voices in a democratic system: “In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other the multiplicity of sects.”

He worked on the same legislature as Jefferson, see above for more details.

I can find nothing on Alexander Hamilton slavery, nor does he have any letters pertaining to the subject.

When Muslim Barbary Pirates committed terrorist attacks, under President James Monroe, he refused appeasement and instead deployed the U.S. Navy, as he stated, March 5th, 1821:

“Our relations with the Barbary Powers are preserved…by the same meansthat were employed when I came into this office. As early as 1801 it wasfound necessary to send a squadron into the Mediterranean for theprotection of our commerce.”

In his State of the Union speech on December 3, 1822, President James Monroeexpressed regret that the “gloomy despotism” of the Muslim Ottomans had spread over much ofthe world. For Monroe and his audience, this Islamic despotism was a threat to Westerncivilization and American democracy. As with Adams, the pirates still placing attacks were mean’t to be seen as terrorists and not just for their religious beliefs. His were closely in line with James Madison and Thomas Jefferson (above).

(If anyone wants to add anything, go ahead I am away from my bookshelf currently so there may be things missing.)

#Flood pressles box #sincerely anonymous

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ianfaulkner1-blog · 5 years

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By Roxanne Reid It’s like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole to a wacky world where there’s no front door, walls are made of books, friendly ghosts walk the passages, and you’ll meet a character just as intriguing as the March Hare. Find out why to visit the Royal Hotel, Bethulie, Free State.

Bethulie lies in sheep-and-cattle country in South Africa’s dry heartland. Call it the Free State or even the Upper Karoo, no one will argue. Founded back in the 1830s, it sits on the northern banks of the Orange River about 50km from the massive Gariep Dam. At first sight this dusty little dorp looks like it has little to offer a visitor. You might wonder what the hell you’re doing here and whether you should turn tail and run – especially when you can’t find an entrance to your accommodation at the Royal Hotel. Litter and dry leaves scuttle across the pavement and the midday heat beats down as you walk the length and breadth of the hotel’s facade. Not a door is unlocked. Eventually you’ll go round the back, through an eerily empty parking lot and hear voices through a half-open door.

The hotel faces the street on two sides yet you have to go round the back to find the entrance

Yes, the young woman told me, I was in the right place. If I just went to that door around the back and waited, someone would let me in. I did and before long the hotel’s owner, Anthony Hocking, was beetling his bushy brows at me, smiling a Cheshire Cat welcome and gesturing me in. Down the rabbit hole. One step inside and all you see are narrow wood-floored passages lined with books. More books than you’ve ever seen in one place outside a library. (Probably more books than inside a lot of libraries.) This is the reason I’m here. Because I’ve heard about it. And I love books.

The book passage, your first sight of the Royal Hotel's interior

There’s a rabbit warren of dimly lit reception rooms stuffed with books and vinyls too (or LP records to the oldies among you). You see, Anthony is a bit of a pack rat, but with very specific tastes. He reckons his collection totals about 120 000 books and 80 000 records, but only a fraction of those are on display in the hotel. The rest spill over into his house across the road, and one or two other buildings he owns nearby.

No, it's not wallpaper - books, books, books everywhere

The collection is eclectic. Some of the books may be valuable, others he perhaps used for research when he was writing his own books, a medley of works about the paper and mining industries, the Oppenheimers, a few about Canada. The collection includes history and biography, travel and art, as well as a ton of fiction paperbacks, some of them bought for a pittance as job lots to fill the boundless spaces. The tale of the Royal Hotel Back in the 1860s the building that was to give way to the Royal Hotel was a trading store owned by JB Robinson who later made a big splash in diamonds and gold. The hotel itself was founded in the 1880s and has seen its share of well known people, like the infamous Lord Kitchener and Boer President Marthinus Steyn. Anthony has had a home across the road since 1983 so he watched as the Royal Hotel slid into shabby dilapidation. After it was auctioned and the deal fell through he bought it for song in 2005, not quite sure what he was going to do with it. Luckily, he soon struck a deal to fill the rooms with people manning road works in the area. That brought in some income for about 18 months. Later, a Spanish tour company expressed interest in adding the hotel to their stopover route if he’d restore it. And that’s how the Royal Hotel’s renaissance began.

Just a few of the vinyls in the extensive collection

It makes a good base for visitors who want to explore the historical sites of Bethulie. And although nothing was happening when we stayed there, you might strike it lucky and visit when a music recital, poetry reading, wine weekend or murder mystery weekend is on the go. The rooms are nothing fancy, but they’re clean and have all the bits and bobs you need, including a life-saving portable fan to cope with the summer heat. It’s enough for anyone who’s there chiefly for the deluge of books. Stories, stories, stories A collection that’s more subtle, less in-your-face than the books or vinyls is the anthology of stories that Anthony has on the tip of his tongue. He styles himself a storyteller and raconteur and can certainly spin a good yarn, whether it’s about the town’s history or his own life adventures. Over dinner, as we sat dwarfed by books from floor to ceiling, we discovered he’s a keen Bethulie historian and a bit of an Anglo Boer War buff. He drenched us in stories of the war and of his days as a dishwasher in Montmartre or working on a ship during his university holidays. Over breakfast he told us more about ‘the war’ (which around here always refers to the Anglo Boer War of 1899-1902) and about the hoax debutante ball he and some friends at Oxford threw together for a lark. He tells a ripping ghost story too. Inset into the walls of books are a few panels where paintings hang. Four of them in one of the reception rooms are blank white spaces. Those, he insists, are portraits of ghosts, who he describes in great detail – like war correspondent Edith Dickenson whose ghost helps to keep the others upbeat. Generally, they’re a peaceful lot so there’s no need to be afraid.

Portraits of two of the 'ghosts'

Stories come burbling out non-stop. If you look interested and he’s not busy he might volunteer to take you to see historical sites around the town, all the while relating tales about shenanigans and perhaps some bad behaviour in the old days. His Duracell-bunny energy and tendency to jump from story to story can be exhausting, battering your brain with new information at breakneck speed. But if you can keep up, you’ll learn a lot of fascinating stuff. Things to do in Bethulie Obviously, experiencing the Royal Hotel’s book and vinyl collections and meeting its colourful owner are hefty reasons to stay over in Bethulie. But they’re not the only things to do in this small town. Here are some others. 1. Visit the oldest house in the Free State. Back in 1828 there was a London Missionary Society station here to convert the San, until Jean Pierre Pellissier of the Paris Missionary Society arrived in 1832. The Pellissier House museum dates back to 1834-35 and now has displays that include old furniture, photos, clothes and war relics.

Pellissier House, the oldest house in the Free State

2. See the house where actor and storyteller Patrick Mynhardt lived as a boy. He is most well remembered for his renditions of Herman Charles Bosman’s character Oom Schalk Lourens and for his autobiography The Boy from Bethulie. 3. Visit the Louw Wepener monument on a farm 10km west of Bethulie on the Springfontein road (R715). Wepener led the Free State commandos during the second Basotho War and was killed in 1865 while trying to storm Moshoeshoe’s mountain fortress of Thaba Bosiu.

Louw Wepener monument

4. If you’re interested in San rock art and fossils, you’re in luck. Talk to Anthony or Bethulie Tourism for more info about a guide who can take you to see them. You probably need to arrange this ahead. 5. Pay homage at the Bethulie concentration camp cemetery, Kamp Kerkhof. When it was thought the Gariep Dam was going to flood the original Anglo Boer War concentration camp site, bones were exhumed and reburied on higher ground just out of town in 1966. (Later it was discovered there was too much dolerite rock where they planned to put the dam so it was built in its current position instead.) At one place in the monument it says 1737 people died here during the Anglo Boer War, in another place it says 1714. Either way, it’s a lot. At the back, under lock and key, are some of the original rough gravestones. The monument is made of austere grey stone and when we visited a blistering wind made for an appropriately grim atmosphere.

Kamp Kerkhof, the Bethulie concentration camp cemetery and memorial

We also went to the site of the actual concentration camp with Anthony, finding a desolate piece of veld and some remnants of broken gravestones. As many as 5000 people were interred here at full capacity. It was the worst of all 33 camps around the country – largely because the Brit running it was young and inexperienced. He put the tents too close together so disease spread quickly. Water rations were short and the inmates used stream water that was contaminated by cattle that had died of rinderpest and been buried upstream. Typhoid spread like wildfire in the cramped conditions. At the original site there’s also a strange blockish monument that looks like a ruin but in fact was never finished. British women funded the monument that was started in 1918 in solidarity with Boer women but the Boer women were in no mood to accept the gesture, so it was never finished.

Unfinished monument at the site of the Bethulie concentration camp

6. Take a drive to the Gariep Dam about 50km from Bethulie on the R701. It was completed in 1971 and is the biggest in South Africa, with a surface area of 374 square kilometres and storage capacity of 5,340,000 megalitres. Here you’ll find activities like water sports and game viewing in the adjacent nature reserve, where you might spot wildebeest, eland, kudu, red hartebeest, springbok and other antelope. Word is that the dam is silting up and there’s a plan to raise the dam wall. 7. At sunrise or sunset feast your eyes on the arched sandstone bridge across the Orange River. Known as the Hennie Steyn Bridge, it’s the longest road-rail bridge in South Africa. At 1.2km, it connects the Free State to the Eastern Cape.

Longest road-rail bridge in South Africa

8. If you’re a history buff, there are many more old buildings and monuments to discover in Bethulie, from an ox wagon monument and a monument to honour the role horses have played in South Africa’s history, to the Dutch Reformed church completed in 1887 and now a national monument.

What's left of an old water cooling plant on a hill above Bethulie

9. Visit the old railway station at the edge of town. It’s an atmospheric corrugated iron building dating back to 1894 and painted a sun-bleached red. It has a connection to the Bethulie ‘book hotel’ too. When it was slated for demolition, Royal Hotel owner Anthony Hocking, who loves a bit of history, bought it to save it from destruction. For his efforts in preserving this small piece of heritage, the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge (an organisation dedicated to preserving Afrikaans culture and heritage) recently gave Anthony (a dyed-in-the-wool Englishman) an award. He’s understandably chuffed.

The old railway station

10. If you’re looking for something more action-packed, there’s hiking, cycling (on-road and off-road trails), fishing, star-gazing and ghost hunting. If those don’t appeal to you, just sit back and do bugger all – it’s equally exhilarating. Like it? Pin this image!

You may also enjoy 15 things to do in Clarens in the Free State Maliba Lodge: a romantic & honeymoon getaway Copyright © Roxanne Reid - No words or photographs on this site may be used without permission from roxannereid.co.za

#bethulie #RoyalHotel #bookhotel

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tigerathleticmissionexperience · 5 years

Text

Wednesday’s summary of the ETBU Women’s Soccer Tiger Athletic Mission Experience trip to Costa Rica is provided by Senior Cristal Monzon-Hernadez.

This morning’s devotional was a study on the Lord’s Prayer. The team was divided into groups of four to begin and verse by verse, Matthew 6:5-15, was broken down and elaborated on. After each segment was read and explained, each group took the time to pray over the segment and how it related to their own lives. The highlight of the Bible study for me was being reminded of several promises that God had made to me and being encouraged to pray for God’s grace, patience, and strength.

After the devotion, I had the opportunity to help cook brunch in the kitchen. I helped fry the chicken patties and was able to fellowship with the kitchen staff while doing so. Along with chicken patties, brunch for the day consisted of eggs, black beans, and rice.

Around 1:00, we headed to our game against a team in the second division of Puerto Viejo. On the way there, we realized that the beach was only 5 minutes from the base we have been staying at most of our team glanced sadly out of the windows longing to be at the beach.

Even though we won the game, it was the most challenging opponent we have faced this week. The team was was skilled and hard working and some of the girls on the opposing team attended the clinics and games from the previous days, so we were able to build on the relationships that We already had with them.

After the game, we were treated to deliciously cold gelato from a shop right by the beach. A couple minutes later the team was delighted to spend time at the beach. The girls and I ate gelato, took hundreds of pictures in the water, and admired the beauty of the scene, which was all created by God.

After dinner, we had family night which consisted of worship, testimonies, and a sermon. Friends from the community came to join us. The worship was incredible because we sang in both English and Spanish, which reminded me that even though we may speak different languages, we still praise the same God. Two of our girls, Ashleigh and McKenna, gave their testimonies to the crowd. Ashleigh spoke of how important it is to have a personal relationship with God. McKenna told great news of her recent decision to go into full-time ministry. A man from Teen Challenge (the organization we worked with yesterday) also gave his testimony. He spoke of how he used to be a drug-addict and dealer and explained how God liberated him from that. Dr. Seely gave the sermon on what “Knowing God” means. It was cool to hear that God knows every detail of our lives and fully loves us.

After the sermon, we spent time fellowshipping with one another, as well as with the people from the community. I talked to one man, named Julio, that was also a drug-addict on the streets of San Jose a couple months ago. His story was extremely inspiring because this man is now on fire for Christ. Jesus completely turned his life around and now all Julio wants to do is bring glory to God, as well as build his relationship with Him. Some of the girls on the team played guitar and worshiped for another hour. This late-night worship is basically an everyday thing now.

I ended my night drawing with one of the missionaries on staff here at the YWAM base named Kesha, that I met the first day in Costa Rica. We have grown to be good friends over these past couple of days. Kesha completely left her home and all of her family to serve God.

God’s presence was evident throughout the day. I am not ready to go back to the states yet.

#TAME

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thereachingapp-blog · 7 years

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I Love to Tell the Stories

Deuteronomy 6:20-23 20 “When your son asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What do the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments mean which the Lord our God commanded you?’ 21 then you shall say to your son, ‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord brought us from Egypt with a mighty hand 22 ‘Moreover, the Lord showed great and distressing signs and wonders before our eyes against Egypt, Pharaoh and all his household; 23 He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land which He had sworn to our fathers.’

There’s a homeless man who lives in Chattanooga tucked under a towering overpass. He abused crack cocaine and alcohol. Physically, his life was a wreck and heading for death. Spiritually, he was heading for hell. But about a year ago, someone navigated quarry stones, briar bushes and the threat of personal harm to share the Gospel with him.

Today, “Tree Man” Smith is clean and sober, and is a missionary because he is taking the Gospel to others ranked among societies outcasts.

There’s a Mexican man living just south of Knoxville who never read a Bible and never heard the story of Jesus. Actually the only time he really ever heard Jesus’ name was when it was taken in vain. He lived just outside the Bronx, in New York, for more than 20 years, but he heard the Gospel on a visit to Knoxville during a neighborhood dinner in a trailer park. Conviction hit hard and grace descended quickly. He was baptized on a rainy July Sunday afternoon in a lake new Oak Ridge.

There’s a young Muslim man who came to the United States a year ago to study English at the University of Memphis. He had a limited grasp of the language and knew only one other person on campus. But that changed when a young man from U of M’s Baptist Collegiate Ministry became a friend. That friendship grew to spiritual mentorship, and that led to deliverance from the oppressive religion of fundamentalist Islam to the salvation found in Christ and through the Gospel.

I share these three great stories because they communicate the importance of the local church, the Cooperative Program and the Tennessee Baptist Convention working together to bring to bear a Gospel witness on the spiritually lost population living in our state.

Over the past several weeks I’ve been sharing the TBC’s desire to see at least 50,000 Tennesseans annually saved, baptized and set on the road to discipleship by 2024; to have at least 500 Tennessee Baptist churches revitalized by 2024; and to plant and strategically engaging at least 1,000 new churches by 2024. These are the first three objectives of what we call the Five Objectives. Number 4 is to, “realize an increase in annual local church giving through the Cooperative Program that reaches at least 10 percent by 2024.”

If you’ll notice, the first three of these objectives focuses on reaching Tennesseans with the Gospel. This fourth objective relates to resourcing that initiative. It is appropriate that this column falls in this second week of October since October is Cooperative Program month. It is certainly an opportunity to celebrate how the Cooperative Program has been at the heart of our Great Commission effort as Southern Baptists for more than 90 years. What a great opportunity to pause and thank God for the millions of lives He’s allowed us to impact through our cooperative effort during that time.

But let’s not get lost in nostalgia. We have 3.65 million people in Tennessee alone who are still as spiritually lost as were the three men I mentioned earlier. So how, exactly, did local churches, the Cooperative Program and the Tennessee Baptist Convention make a difference in these three lives and how can we continue to make a difference long into the future?

First, local churches had a direct involvement in reaching these men by financially giving through the Cooperative Program. Although geographically disbursed, Cooperative Program offerings given through the TBC enabled church planters and specialists to be on the front lines of spiritual darkness sharing the Gospel. In the case of the University of Memphis, churches (and associations) across our state support 24 campus ministers who are mentoring the next generation of missionaries. These young men and women are leading people to Christ who are from some of the world’s most spiritually closed countries.

Another connection between local churches, the Cooperative Program and the TBC is that the TBC works in cooperation with local churches to extend local church ministry. Two of our Chattanooga Baptist Churches have been heavily involved in reaching the homeless, and the TBC has offered practical support and expertise. One of our Hispanic Churches in Knoxville is launching multiple 1-5-1 Bible study groups and the TBC has provided training and guidance. Multiple churches in the Memphis area tangibly support the work of our BCM in ways like providing meals for functions, but they also welcome into their congregations these new believers from around the globe.

As you can see, the Cooperative Program truly does allow us to do more together here in Tennessee, across North America and around the world than we could ever do individually. It is a shared opportunity that reaps a God-glorifying result. Churches increasing their Cooperative Program giving even the slightest amount individually will have a profound collective impact. As Southern Baptists, we’d be able to significantly increase the number of missionaries we send out to our respective Jerusalems, Judeas, Samarias, and to the ends of the earth.

I’ll have traveled to all 95 Tennessee counties this year by the first week of November. I’ve met some great people, preached in some great churches and seen God doing some great work. God has used Southern Baptists and the Cooperative Program to accomplish His mission in our state and around the world. Let’s celebrate, but let’s keep pressing forward in a cooperative effort through the Cooperative Program for the glory of our Savior.

There are still a lot more great stories waiting to be told.

Randy Davis is the Executive Director of the Tennessee Baptist Convention and the former Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Sevierville, TN.

Today’s Evangelism Challenge by david evans: Drop a “faith flag” today. In a conversation with someone drop a “God bless you,” “I’ll Pray For You,” “The Lord is Good,” or a “Jesus Rocks” in a normal conversation. You never know how a “faith flag” may change a moment.

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evilxxmunkee · 7 years

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Miracles and Answers to Prayers

Hello everyone. I am writing this after just getting an answer to a prayer. I was praying about God’s plan, and why I have felt directed to hold onto my ex wife, why I feel like we will be together again... It has been hard, going through this entire process.. (I will explain it all later in a post so you have a fair idea of what has transpired between us).

I got the feeling like I need to continue to do what I am doing. To strive to be doing well... I then felt prompted to open my Gospel Library app. I prayed and closed my eyes and selected a random conference talk. I literally could see the spot where I should click with my eyes closed... This was the talk I had to read.

Abundantly Blessed By Thomas S Monson (April 2008 General Conference)

....I think it was Brother Uchtdorf who said, “You told the audience today about your heritage on your mother’s side. What about your father’s side?” So I conclude with just a word or two about my father’s side.

My father’s father came from Sweden, and his wife from England. They met on the ship coming over. He waited for her to grow up, and then he proposed marriage. They were married in the Salt Lake Temple, and he wrote in his journal, “Today is the happiest day of my life. My sweetheart and I were married for time and eternity in the holy temple.”

Three days later, on April 23, 1898, he wrote, “Took the train at the Rio Grande Western Depot enroute eventually to Scandinavia, where I have been called as a missionary.” Off he went to Sweden, leaving his bride of three days.

His journal, written in pencil, came to me from an uncle who somehow chose me to receive his father’s journal. The most frequent entry in the journal was, “My feet are wet.” But the most beautiful entry said: “Today we went to the Jansson home. We met Sister Jansson. She had a lovely dinner for us. She is a good cook.” And then he said, “The children all sang or played a harmonica or did a little dance, and then she paid her tithing. Five krona for the Lord and one for my companion, Elder Ipson, and one for me.” And then there were listed the names of the children.

When I read that in the journal, there was my wife’s father’s name as one who was in that household, one who probably sang a song, one who became the father of only one daughter, the girl whom I married.

The first day I saw Frances, I knew I’d found the right one. The Lord brought us together later, and I asked her to go out with me. I went to her home to call on her. She introduced me, and her father said, “ ‘Monson’—that’s a Swedish name, isn’t it?”

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “Good.”

Then he went into another room and brought out a picture of two missionaries with their top hats and their copies of the Book of Mormon.

“Are you related to this Monson,” he said, “Elias Monson?”

I said, “Yes, he’s my grandfather’s brother. He too was a missionary in Sweden.”

Her father wept. He wept easily. He said, “He and his companion were the missionaries who taught the gospel to my mother and my father and all of my brothers and sisters and to me.” ...

... My sweet Frances had a terrible fall a few years ago. She went to the hospital. She lay in a coma for about 18 days. I sat by her side. She never moved a muscle. The children cried, the grandchildren cried, and I wept. Not a movement.

And then one day, she opened her eyes. I set a speed record in getting to her side. I gave her a kiss and a hug, and I said, “You’re back. I love you.” And she said, “I love you, too, Tom, but we’re in serious trouble.�� I thought, What do you know about trouble, Frances? She said, “I forgot to mail in our fourth-quarter income tax payment.”

I said to her, “Frances, if you had said that before you extended a kiss to me and told me you love me, I might have left you here.”

Brethren, let’s treat our wives with dignity and with respect. They’re our eternal companions. Sisters, honor your husbands. They need to hear a good word. They need a friendly smile. They need a warm expression of true love.

... To you who are able to attend the temple, I would counsel you to go often. Doing so will help to strengthen marriages and families.

Let us be kind to one another, be aware of each other’s needs, and try to help in that regard.

.....

I have not included the full talk, but I strongly encourage you to go and read the full talk. It can be found here

I have added italics and bold to emphasize some key points that stuck out to me. My eternal companions family and mine too have a shared history. My great great (I think thats the right one...don’t hold me to it) grandfather was a polygamist. His second wife he kept in another home that is now where my eternal companion’s family lives and owns land. While not the same as having a missionary come and convert your spouses family in the past, there is still a link that sticks out to me.

Likewise, I fell for my eternal companion and knew she was suppose to be with me before we met. I remember so vividly hearing a voice as I asked the Lord for me to be ready and worthy of my future wife that stated “The time is sooner than you think”. The next day I received a friend request from her.

We we’re married in the Logan Temple and the humor in which President Thomas S Monson shows his relationship with his own wife, reminds me of the friendly teasing we did when we were dating.

Another key point is where I made the text bold. He talks about honoring women, our wives. To treat them with respect and dignity. My ex wife is my eternal companion. We were sealed for time and all eternity over 8 years ago.

It is small miracles like this that have stuck out to me. There really are too many to count, but when I need a reminder, Our Heavenly Father sends a reminder that calms my soul. I felt that there is still room to improve, and so I shall.

I want to take just a moment now to bear my Testimony to anyone who may read this. I know beyond a doubt that this church is true. I know we are led and guided in this modern age by a Prophet of the Lord who is led and directed by Our Heavenly Father and Lord Jesus Christ. If you are struggling, if you need help, please, pray to your Father in Heaven. Pray for strength, for answers. Seek out the scriptures, if you can go to the temple of the Lord, go and keep that prayer in your heart. Ask others to pray for you in times of your struggles. I promise you, God is aware of you. He knows you personally and he loves you beyond our ability to comprehend it. You will find what you seek, and if you follow his will, his word, the blessings that are bestowed upon you will be great and many, so many that you will not be able to count. Remember the blessings you have now, and to give thanks. Once you start listing them, I promise you will find it hard to stop. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

#testimony #LDS #lds faith #answers to prayers #prayers answered #miracles do happen #miracle #tender mercies #my answer #Journal Post #Prophet #Apostles #Prophet Thomas S. Monson #faith #humble #answers #Latter Day Saints

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