22 March 1950: birth of Mary Tamm, who played the first Romana in 1978-79.
ii) broadcast anniversaries
22 March 1969: broadcast of third episode of The Space Pirates. Clancey and the Tardis crew evade General Hermack and arrive at the pirate base on Madeleine's plant.
22 March 1975: broadcast of third episode of Genesis of the Daleks. Sarah has failed to escape from the Thal dome, but Harry and the Doctor arrive to rescue her – and the Doctor is electrocuted.
22 March 1983: broadcast of first episode of Time-Flight. A Concorde is kidnapped and the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa investigate.
22 March 1985: broadcast of first episode of The Twin Dilemma, first full episode for Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor. The new Doctor is behaving strangely; meanwhile the Sylvest twins have been kidnapped.
22 March 2003: webcast of "The Child, Part 3", the seventh episode of Death Comes to Time.
22 March 2010: broadcast of Oroborus, eleventh episode of the Australian K9 series. K9 notices a change in behaviour in his friends and discovers time itself is being disrupted. Small chunks of time are being eaten away. A Time Snake has invaded the mansion and Starkey makes a discovery about his own parents that means he alone can face the Oroborus. He offers himself as a meal to defeat the creature.
iii) date specified in-universe:
22 March 2011: setting of most of the Torchwood: Children of Earth episode Rendition. Jack and Gwen are unwillingly transported to America, and Jack survives poisoning.
My next three reviews will be of the winners of the Tiptree, Clarke and BSFA Best Novel Awards published in 2000 and winning in 2001, starting with Tiptree winner The Kappa Child.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
The temperature inside our station wagon was unbearable. We might have cooled our bodies by turning on the heater full blast. Past the point of bickering, my sisters and I stuck helplessly to the vinyl, too hot to bother avoiding the gluey smear of skin on skin.
A complex novel of a Japanese-Canadian girl whose family moves from British Columbia to the harsher landscape of Alberta, trying and failing to farm rice there. The Kappa is a Japanese water creature; the protagonist becomes mysteriously pregnant; she and her sisters are oppressed by their father and by the heat. The plot threads overlap and I found it a little hard to keep track, but I did enjoy the vivid writing. You can get it here (for a price).
The Kappa Child won the James Tiptree Jr award in 2001. As far as I know, Goto was the first writer of colour to win it (I count half a dozen since). The other shortlisted works were all novels, unlike in some years: Dark Light, by Ken MacLeod; The Fresco, by Sheri S. Tepper; Half Known Lives, by Joan Givner and The Song of the Earth, by Hugh Nissenson. I am sure I have read the MacLeod and I have probably read the Tepper, but have not heard of the other two writers let alone their books. For what it's worth, The Kappa Child seems a more obvious Tiptree choice than MacLeod or Tepper. My next two reviews will be of the Clarke and BSFA winners that year, Bold As Love and Chasm City.
Sat, 12:56: RT @DrBenLitherland: Spiked are getting attacked for being woke because they did a reasonably fair summary of Jordan Peterson which upset h…
Sat, 14:48: Houston Dairymaids sends cheese into space for NASA astronauts https://t.co/b7eY8gU7Qc Not just any cheese, but *Belgian* cheese!
Sun, 10:02: 12 years ago: a trip along the Karpass peninsula in Cyprus, taking in the ruins of ancient Salamis and Kantara Castle. With wild donkeys. https://t.co/0NblKKracn
Sun, 10:38: RT @devesian: WANTED Project Manager for Building Development at St Ed’s Mottingham, London SE9 4AQ Contact revdrcath@gmail.com for details…
Sun, 10:45: The clown king: how Boris Johnson made it by playing the fool https://t.co/h5Pu7JHPvy More reflective than the headline suggests.
Sun, 11:57: This is quite a difficult call – the two stories are trying to do very different things, The Gunfighters a Western setting with music, Frontier in Space a good old space opera plot. But I think in the end the later story does it better. https://t.co/ECDoPjHlIH
21 March 1915: birth of Ian Stuart Black, author of The Savages (First Doctor, 1966), The War Machines (First Doctor, 1966) and The Macra Terror (Second Doctor, 1967).
21 March 1923: birth of Peter Pratt, who played the Master in The Deadly Assassin (Fourth Doctor, 1976).
21 March 1936: birth of Roger Hammond, who played Francis Bacon in The Chase (First Doctor, 1965) and Dr Runciman in Mawdryn Undead (Fifth Doctor, 1983).
21 March 1944: birth of Hilary Minster, who had two rather minor roles as Thals – Marat in Planet of the Daleks (Third Doctor, 1973) and an unnamed soldier in Genesis of the Daleks (Fourth Doctor, 1975), but is of interest to me as the only person to have been semi-regular character in both Secret Army, where he played Hauptmann Muller, and Allo! Allo!, where he played General von Klinkerhoffen – a high ranking Wehrmacht officer in both cases.
21 March 1946: birth of Timothy Dalton, who played Rassilon in The End of Time (2009-2010).
21 March 1970: birth of Chris Chibnall, currently show-runner for New Who, writer of seven other episodes and head writer of first two seasons of Torchwood, first came to prominence as a Doctor Who Appreciation Society critic of the show in 1986.
21 March 1983: birth of Bruno Langley, who played Adam in Dalek and The Long Game (2005).
21 March 2002: death of Neville Barber, who played Dr Humphrey Cook in The Time Monster (Third Doctor, 1972) and Howard Baker in K9 and Company (1981).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
21 March 1964: broadcast of "Rider from Shang-Tu", fifth episode of the story we now call Marco Polo. The Tardis crew are unable to persuade Marco Polo that Tegana is the source of their problems, and he prevents their escape.
21 March 1970: broadcast of first episode of The Ambassadors of Death. An attempt to rescue a lost Mars probe is frustrated by a signal sent from a vacant warehouse; UNIT investigates and is attacked.
21 March 1981: broadcast of fourth episode of Logopolis, ending Season 18: last appearance of Tom Baker and first of Peter Davison as the Fourth Doctor regenerates into the Fifth, after falling from a radio telescope while preventing the Master from blackmailing the people of the Universe.
21 March 2009: broadcast of Fragments (Torchwood), the one with all the flashbacks.
Dances With Wolves won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1990, and six others: Best Director (Kevin Costner), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, and Best Sound Mixing. That year’s Hugo winner, Edward Scissorhands, was nominated in one category, Best Make-up, where it lost to one of the two other contenders.
That year’s other Best Picture nominees were Awakenings, Ghost, The Godfather Part III and Goodfellasthink I’ve seen The Godfather Part III but don’t remember much about it. IMBD users rank Dances With Wolvestop on one system but only 9th on the other, behind Goodfellas, Home Alone, Edward Scissorhands, Back to the Future Part III, The Godfather: Part III, Die Hard 2, Total Recall and Pretty Woman.
I’ve seen twelve films made in 1990, The Godfather: Part III and Dances with Wolves, also (in rough IMDB order) Edward Scissorhands, Pretty Woman, Total Recall, The Hunt for Red October, Wild at Heart, Presumed Innocent, Postcards from the Edge, Cyrano de Bergerac, Truly Madly Deeply and Nuns on the Run, which has a particular place in my heart because it was filmed around where my aunt lived in Chiswick. I also have a deep love for Red October and Total RecallDances With Wolves. Anyway, here’s a trailer.
None of the cast had been in previous Oscar, Hugo or Nebula-winning films, or in Doctor Who.
To cut straight to the point: this is, as Anne succinctly put it, worthy but dull. It maybe didn’t help that I ended up watching the 4-hour extended version (almost as long as Gone With the Wind) rather than the original 3-hour theatrical presentation. But all the white people except our hero are bad, all the Pawnee are bad, and all the Sioux are good and if they do happen to do bad things it’s for very understandable reasons. I mean, it should go without saying that the exploitation, displacement and mass murder of the original inhabitants of the Americas by European-descended settlers is a terrible thing. But I think it might be possible to tell a more interesting story about it, and Costner and Blake have not tried very hard.
It’s a better film than Cimarron, the only other Western (so far) to win the Best Picture Oscar, but that’s not saying a lot. One area where Cimarron does score better is that at least its women characters have some agency (even if most of the feminism of the original book has been surgically removed). Here Mary McDonnell in the lead female role just smoulders a bit. You can tell she is smouldering, because unlike all the other women, she doesn’t do much with her hair.
I should not be too unfair to her, but I will note that the role was surely intended for a younger actor; McDonnell is the same age as the actors playing her adoptive parents. But I guess the same is true of Costner’s own role, and he was hardly going to recast himself.
I am going to grumble about two more things, and then I will say a couple of nice things too. First, Costner’s voice-overs of Dunbar’s diary entries are crashingly monotonous and dull. It’s rather surprising, given how much the film was obviously a labour of love, that he slipped up on this rather crucial element. Maybe delivering those lines so boringly was intended to distract attention from the implausibility of the diary as a plot device, but if so it doesn’t work.
Second, I’m sorry, but as soon as the wolf appears, we know a) that it symbolises Dunbar’s coming into harmony with the pre-European environment and b) that it’s going to be killed by another white man at the end.
OK, to be positive. I often whine about the music for these films but this time it seemed a good fit with the spectacular scenery. (And the scenery really is spectacular.) So, good marks there.
The film is about a white guy getting to grips with a non-white culture, but it’s an honest effort to portray that culture as real and valuable, and perhaps better than what replaced it. And I think it’s really worth acknowledging the fact that a large part of the dialogue is in Lakota. I see a scurrilous story that Lakota is a gendered language and that only the female version was taught to the actors, with the result that grizzled warriors are engaging in girl-talk, to the amusement of real Lakota speakers. TBH that seems a bit too good to be true, and even if it is, I’m giving Costner full marks for trying: it’s important for native English speakers to be reminded that other languages are not necessarily foreign.
So, all in all, I’m putting it just ahead of the halfway mark in my list, above Out of Africa but below Lawrence of Arabia, films with which it shares some common themes.
The film is ostensibly based on a book, which I also read. Here’s the second and third paragraphs of the third chapter:
Had it not been for the lettering, crudely gouged in the beam over Captain Cargill’s late residence, Lieutenant Dunbar could not have believed this was the place. But it was spelled out clearly. “Fort Sedgewick.”
The book was actually written with a view to making a film out of the story, which is why the film cleaves more closely to the original plot than almost any other adaptation. The biggest difference is that the Good Indians are Comanche in the book but Sioux in the film, apparently for production reasons. I found the prose pretty clunky, especially in the early chapters, but it is a mercifully quick read. You can get it here (in omnibus with its sequel).
OK, next up is The Silence of the Lambs, but before that, Edward Scissorhands.
Fri, 12:00: 20 hours left to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards! If you were a CoNZealand member, and you want to nominate, check now to make sure that you are in the system.
Fri, 12:06: RT @POLITICOEurope: It is with great sadness that POLITICO announces the death of our much-loved editor in chief, Stephen Brown, at the age…
Fri, 12:43: If the Hartlepool by-election is on 6 May, it will be 92 weeks after Brecon & Radnor (1 Aug 2019) – we have already beaten the previous 83-week all-time record. By comparison, the 11-month parliament from January to December 1910 had 21 by-elections. https://t.co/8XcefVvyN2
Fri, 13:28: I found this today’s toughest choice. If no An Unearthly Child, we would not be having this discussion. Both have superb first episodes. But 2-5 of Mind Robber better than 2-4 of Child, so it gets my vote. https://t.co/hACNF2bRqS
Fri, 20:18: #DoctorWhoOnThisDay I’m watching the Doctor Who originally shown on 19 March in previous years. First up, “The Return”, third episode of the story we now call The Ark, recorded on 4 March 1966 and shown two weeks later.
Sat, 10:45: No saint, no spartan, no reformer: the life of Robert Walpole https://t.co/DhYKMpBXPk Food for thought re British prime ministerial history.
20 March 1979: birth of Freema Agyeman, who played Martha Jones in New Who and Torchwood.
ii) broadcast and production anniversaries
20 March 1965: broadcast of "The Centre", sixth episode of the story we now call The Web Planet. The Doctor and Vicki are captured by the Animus; but Ian and the Optera attack from below, and Barbara and the Menoptera from above, and Barbara destroys it.
20 March 1971: broadcast of second episode of The Claws of Axos. The British are determined to control the world's supply of Axonite; the Axons, however, are a parasitic organism intending to suck the planet of all its energy.
Current Romeinse sporen: het relaas van de Romeinen in de Benelux met 309 vindplaatsen om te bezoeken, by Herman Clerinx Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco
Last books finished It’s the End of the World: But What Are We Really Afraid Of?, by Adam Roberts Threading the Labyrinth, by Tiffani Angus Dances With Wolves, by Michael Blake The Fountains of Paradise, by Arthur C. Clarke Titus Alone, by Mervyn Peake
Next books Kaleidoscope: diverse YA science fiction and fantasy stories, eds Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios Worlds Apart, by Richard Cowper
Thu, 14:23: One year ago. “Passen Sie gut auf sich, und auf Ihre Liebsten auf.” “Look after yourselves, and look after the people you love.” https://t.co/tzFEvP6wEI
Thu, 16:00: 40 hours left to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards! If you were a CoNZealand member, and you want to nominate, check now to make sure that you are in the system.
Thu, 16:05: RT @BSFA: “No artist ever set out to do less than his best and did something good by accident. it doesn’t work that way. You head for perfe…
Thu, 16:38: For me this was the most difficult poll today. War Machines, viewed in sequence, is an amazing step forward – first case of the Doctor allying with contemporary Earth, before that became normal. I know, I know, Holmes, Sladen, but am voting War Machines. (Am in minority.) https://t.co/OCA2K4ZTKT
Fri, 02:00: 30 hours left to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards! If you were a CoNZealand member, and you want to nominate, check now to make sure that you are in the system.
Fri, 08:59: RT @worldcon2021: 1000 people submitted their nominations We’ve got 23 hours left so if you haven’t submitted yours yet – now is the tim…
19 March 2019: death of Clinton Greyne, who played Ivo in State of Decay (Fourth Doctor, 1980), Stike in The Two Doctors (Sixth and Second Doctors, 1985) and the Sontaran commander in In A Fix With Sontarans (Sixth Doctor but disowned, 1985).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
19 March 1966: broadcast of "The Return", third episode of the story we now call The Ark. The Tardis returns to the Ark centuries after its original visit, to find that the Monoids are now in charge. The Doctor and Dodo are sent to investigate Refusis.
19 March 1977: broadcast of fourth episode of The Talons of Weng-Chiang. The Doctor escapes from Li H'sen Chang on stage; Weng-Chiang's men capture the Time Cabinet from Litefoot's house.
19 March 2005: broadcast of the Doctor Who night on BBC, including the Mastermind Special.
19 March 2008: broadcast of Adrift (Torchwood), the one with the island full of people rescued from Torchwood's vault by Jack.
iii) date specified in-universe
19 March ?2009: setting of From Out of the Rain (Torchwood, 2008).
19 March ?2011: Miracle Day, starting the fourth series of Torchwood.
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.
As noted, we started August at my sister's in Burgundy, and then had two weeks in Northern Ireland, where F was kind enough to help with the catering arrangements for one of our younger visitors.
The most memorable thing about the holiday was that I got the time of the return sailing wrong and we had a long overnight drive through Wales at the other end. The following few days were spent at the Discworld Convention in Birmingham, where I had an absolutely excellent time but I took no photographs and have not found myself in anyone else's. It was of course moving to see Terry Pratchett in what we all knew would be one of his last appearances; I was also very happy to help my friend J in her successful election bid as Low King of the Dwarves.
Wed, 20:00: 60 hours left to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards! If you were a CoNZealand member, and you want to nominate, check now to make sure that you are in the system.
Wed, 20:03: RT @My_Mums_Voice: A poignant end to our journey on this St Patrick’s Day sees mums headstone finally installed, today may mum finally rest…
Wed, 21:49: Well. Nice to have a system that rewards parties who are prepared to work with each other. (But after 21 years living in Flanders, wow, the Dutch sound *so* Dutch!) https://t.co/5GD5FtldiE
Wed, 22:00: RT @DavidHenigUK: The Dutch election presumably proves the EU will collapse tomorrow according to UK experts?
Thu, 06:00: 50 hours left to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards! If you were a CoNZealand member, and you want to nominate, check now to make sure that you are in the system.
Thu, 09:22: RT @alexstubb: Gotta admit that I am getting increasingly worried about the nationalistic rhetoric around #COVID19 in the UK. I can sort of…
18 March 1967: broadcast of second episode of The Macra Terror. Ben is brainwashed by the secret rulers of the camp; he and Polly encounter a Macra, but he denies it has happened.
18 March 1972: broadcast of fourth episode of The Sea Devils. The Doctor and the Master arrive separately at the Sea Devils' lair and try to negotiate with them.
18 March 2010: broadcast of Space, Time, and The Doctor Drops In, three mini-episodes. (Space and Time are very funny, watched together.)
Second paragraph of third story ("Old Faithful", by Raymond Z. Gallun):
The two messengers who had come to his workshop that afternoon had not seen into his heart, and he received their message with the absolute outward calm that was characteristic of his kind – at the end of forty days Number 774 must die. He had lived the allotted span fixed by the Rulers.
I got this in 2014 because the last story, "A Matter of Form" by H.L. Gold, was up for the Retro Hugo for Best Novella that year (beaten by the classic "Who Goes There?", which got my vote). It's a collection of seven stories from the Golden Age, published between 1934 and 1953, all by men. The weakest is an early story of Pohl's own, "Wings of the Lightning Land"; several of the others have aged poorly, including Eric Frank Russell's "…And Then There Were None". I don't especially like Kornbluth's "The Little Black Bag" but I think it's a well-executed story. You can get it here.
This was the sf book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next is another anthology from another era, Kaleidoscope: diverse YA science fiction and fantasy stories, eds Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios.
Tue, 12:56: RT @cult_edge: Sad to learn of the recent passing of writer James Follett. James wrote two episodes of Blake’s 7 – Dawn Of The Gods and Sta…
Tue, 13:12: RT @AyoCaesar: Julie Burchill abused me for being Muslim – but at the time, the press made her out to be a victim of ‘cancel culture’. Ou…
Tue, 14:00: 90 hours left to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards! If you were a CoNZealand member, and you want to nominate, check now to make sure that you are in the system.
Tue, 19:55: RT @singharj: EXC Dominic Raab has told officials in a video call leaked to @HuffPostUK that Britain will seek trade deals with countries a…
Tue, 23:32: RT @GMB_union: BREAKING NEWS: Uber has finally done the right thing. From tomorrow, all 70,000 Uber drivers will be paid holiday time, be…
Wed, 00:00: 80 hours left to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards! If you were a CoNZealand member, and you want to nominate, check now to make sure that you are in the system.
Wed, 09:38: The first St Patrick’s Day celebration in America: 1600 and 1601 Here’s a fascinating piece by Michael Francis, looking at the history of St Augustine, Florida – the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the contiguous USA founded by Europeans. https://t.co/GizDZ9hHL0
Wed, 10:00: 70 hours left to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards! If you were a CoNZealand member, and you want to nominate, check now to make sure that you are in the system.
Wed, 10:45: Government plans to change mayor of London elections to First Past the Post https://t.co/5S4z0J6RFC A late consequence of the botched 2011 referendum.
It's well known that St Patrick's Day parades were originally a diaspora phenomenon, and the first really big parades were in the eighteenth century in the USA. But the first recorded celebration of St Patrick's Day in what is now the United States was a good deal earlier. St Augustine, in Florida, is the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the contiguous USA founded by Europeans, in 1565. It was a Spanish settlement, but in 1600 the parish priest was an Irishman, Richard Arthur, known as Ricardo Artur locally; and he invoked the protection of St Patrick (rather than St Augustine, after whom the town was named) for the settlers. Local historian Michael Francis has found records that Artur organised public celebrations of St Patrick on 17 March 1600 and 1601, including a public procession in 1601. It's not quite St Patrick's Day as we know it; there was not much of a diaspora in Florida, and the tradition ended when Artur left the town. But let's take a moment to think of the weirdness of that historical moment.
More locally to here, the Irish College in Leuven claims to be the first place to have celebrated St Patrick's Day as a diaspora festival, with a public sermon in around 1610. The Franciscans at the college were certainly instrumental in helping Luke Wadding to persuade the Vatican to make St Patrick's Day an official feast day of the church. There were Irish colleges elsewhere of course – most famously in Salamanca, Lisbon, Douai and Rome itself – but Leuven claims the earliest documentation, and as they are my neighbours I will take their word for it.
Most years there has been much celebration, both by the college in Leuven and by the Irish community in Brussels. Last year's St Patrick's Day was exactly when the lockdown was imposed, and this year things are not a lot better yet. Here's hoping for 2022.
17 March 1942: birth of Ken Grieve, director of Destiny of the Daleks (Fourth Doctor, 1979)
17 March 2011: death of Michael Gough, who played the Toymaker in The Celestial Toymaker (First Doctor, 1966) and Hedin in Arc of Infinity (Fifth Doctor, 1983). He was also married to actress Anneke Wills.
ii) broadcast anniversary
17 March 1973: broadcast of fourth episode of Frontier in Space. The Master has the Doctor and Jo captive, but all three are captured by the Draconians.
iii) dates specified in-universe:
17 March 1898: death of Mary Eliza Millington in The Curse of Fenric (Seventh Doctor, 1989).
In 2010, an exhibit on Vincent van Gogh opened at the Musée d'Orsay, as seen in The Lodger (Eleventh Doctor, 2010).
Also, for the day that’s in it, my guide to Ireland in Doctor Who written in 2019 (therefore missing last year).
This is the tenth year that I have been tracking these figures. Last year's winner was fifth out of sixthird out of five. The top ranked novel on this basis won the Best Novel Nebulas for 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014. The 2013 winner (Ancillary Justice) was fourth of eight. The 2012 winner was second of six. So was the 2011 winner. So in the last nine years, the top-ranked novel on this ranking has won almost half the time, and one of the top two has won two-thirds of the time.
Striking that Mexican Gothic has more owners on LT than all the others combined, but the lowest reader ratings on both systems. Of course with best-selling books, it's often more likely that readers who didn't like them will register an opinion.
Skipping the Novella category because not all of them were separately published.
Last year the fifth out of six finalists won (as with Best Novel). The previous year, the top-ranked finalist in this category won. I failed to do the calculation for the 2017 award; for the 2016 award, the winner was fifth out of seven on this ranking.
Mon, 12:56: EU rail passenger rights revamp falls short of disabled groups’ hopes https://t.co/5r9GlhxJpC Trains are really unfriendly to people with disabilities – my old friend @jchoste is quoted.
Tue, 01:48: RT @sfwa: The #Nebulas2021 Finalists for THE ANDRE NORTON NEBULA AWARD FOR MIDDLE GRADE AND YOUNG ADULT FICTION are: (see next tweet)
Tue, 01:48: RT @sfwa: -Raybearer, Jordan Ifueko (Amulet) -Elatsoe, Darcie Little Badger (Levine Querido) -A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, T. King…
Tue, 01:48: RT @sfwa: – “Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse”, Rae Carson (Uncanny 1-2/20) – “Advanced Word Problems in Portal Math”, Aimee Picchi (Da…
Tue, 01:48: RT @sfwa: – “The Eight-Thousanders”, Jason Sanford (Asimov’s 9-10/20) – “My Country Is a Ghost”, Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 1-2/20) – “…
Tue, 01:55: RT @sfwa: – “Stepsister”, Leah Cypess (F&SF 5-6/20) – “The Pill”, Meg Elison (Big Girl, PM Press) – “Burn or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells…
Tue, 01:55: RT @sfwa: – “Where You Linger”, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (Uncanny 1-2/20) – “Shadow Prisons”, Caroline M. Yoachim (serialized in the Dystopia…
Tue, 02:07: RT @sfwa: – Blaseball, Stephen Bell, Joel Clark, Sam Rosenthal (The Game Band) – Hades, Greg Kasavin (Supergiant) – Kentucky Route Zero, J…
Tue, 02:07: RT @sfwa: – Scents & Semiosis, Sam Kabo Ashwell, Cat Manning, Caleb Wilson, Yoon Ha Lee (Self) – Spiritfarer, Nicolas Guérin, Maxime Monast…
Tue, 02:28: RT @sfwa: – “Tower of Mud and Straw”, Yaroslav Barsukov (Metaphorosis) – Finna, Nino Cipri (Tordotcom) – Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark (Tordot…
Tue, 02:28: RT @sfwa: – “Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon”, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa…
Tue, 02:28: RT @sfwa: The #Nebulas2021 Finalists for THE RAY BRADBURY NEBULA AWARD FOR DRAMATIC PRESENTATION are: (see next tweet)
Tue, 02:28: RT @sfwa: – Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, Christina Hodson, Warner Bros. Pictures – The Expanse: “G…
Tue, 02:28: RT @sfwa: – Lovecraft Country, Season 1, Misha Green, Shannon Houston, Kevin Lau, Wes Taylor, Ihuoma Ofordire, Jonathan I. Kidd, Sonya Wint…
Tue, 04:00: 100 hours left to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards! If you were a CoNZealand member, and you want to nominate, check now to make sure that you are in the system.
Tue, 11:32: RT @BoozeAndFagz: On 13 December 2020 I made defamatory statements about @AyoCaesar, which I sincerely regret and retract and have undertak…
This is the last of the seven dates of the year on which six episodes of Old Who were broadcast; it saw the demise of Adric in 1982, of the Fifth Doctor in 1984, and of Paul Darrow's credibility in 1985.
i) births and deaths
16 March 1935: birth of Donald Tosh, script editor in 1965-66, author of "Bell of Doom", fourth episode of the story we now call The Massacre (First Doctor, 1966).
also 16 March 1935: birth of Tristan de Vere Cole, director of The Wheel in Space (Second Doctor, 1968).
16 March 1943: birth of John Leeson, the voice of K9 in Old Who (apart from one season), New Who, the first Sarah Jane spinoff K9 and Company, the more successful Sarah Jane Adventures and let's not forget the Australian K9 series (though I think he himself might like to). He also appeared in person as Dugeen in The Power of Kroll (Fourth Doctor, 1978-79).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
16 March 1968: broadcast of first episode of Fury from the Deep. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive at an oil refinery where the chief refuses to do anything about the mysterious noises and pressure fluctuations in the pipelines.
16 March 1974: broadcast of fourth episode of Death to the Daleks. The Doctor destroys the City, freeing both Earth astronauts and Daleks; but Galloway has hidden on the Dalek ship, and destroys it as it takes off.
16 March 1982: broadcast of fourth episode of Earthshock. The Cybermen are defeated, but the freighter crashes into prehistoric earth, killing Adric. Last regular appearance of Matthew Waterhouse as Adric.
16 March 1983: broadcast of second episode of The King's Demons, ending Season 20. The Doctor takes control of Kamelion and defeats the Master.
16 March 1984: broadcast of fourth epsiode of The Caves of Androzani. The Doctor rescues Peri as everyone else on Androzani Minor gets blown up or otherwise killed, but is unable to save himself. Last regular appearance of Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, and first appearance of Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor.
16 March 1985: broadcast of second episode of Timelash. The Borad turns out to be mad scientist Megelen, who the Doctor kills twice, returning Herbert to Scotland to become H.G. Wells.
16 March 2007: Lauren has a new English teacher. But who is Mr Logan? Or rather, Mr Logan is Who.
Second paragraph of third episode, “Station Management”:
The Night Vale Business Association is proud to announce the new Night Vale Stadium, next to the Night Vale Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area. The stadium will be able to seat fifty thousand, but will be closed all nights of the year except November 10, for the annual Parade of the Mysterious Hooded Figures, in which all of our favorite ominous hooded figures — the one that lurks under the slide in the Night Vale Elementary playground, the ones that meet regularly in The Dog Park, and the one that will occasionally openly steal babies, and for a reason no one can understand, we all stand by and let him do it — all of them will be parading proudly through Night Vale Stadium. I tell you, with these new facilities, it promises to be quite a spectacle. And then it promises to be a vast, dark, and echoey space for the other meaningless 364 days of the year.
The scripts of the first 25 episodes of Welcome to Night Vale, the cult podcast's first year, with also the first stage show. The printed page is of course no substitute for the mellow tones of Cecil Baldwin delivering the words directly to our ears, but has the minor advantages that you can savour the text at your leisure and not worry about losing the next line due to laughing too much. Each episode is topped by a note from one of the creators, usually Fink or Craynor but with contributions from others as well. Really, it speaks for itself, and rathe than write more I'm just going to reproduce some of my own favourite lines, starting with the moment in episode 1 when we first realise that this is going to be seriously weird:
The City Council announces the opening of a new Dog Park at the corner of Earl and Somerset, near the Ralphs. They would like to remind everyone that dogs are not allowed in the Dog Park. People are not allowed in the Dog Park. It is possible you will see Hooded Figures in the Dog Park. Do not approach them. Do not approach the Dog Park. The fence is electrified and highly dangerous. Try not to look at the Dog Park, and especially do not look for any period of time at the Hooded Figures. The Dog Park will not harm you.
Followed soon after, in the same episode, by:
And now a brief public service announcement.
Alligators: can they kill your children?
Yes.
More pithily, from episode 3:
Monday would like you to leave it alone. It’s not its fault that you are emotionally unprepared for your professional lives.
Skipping ahead to episode 24:
Here’s a public service message to all the children in our audience:
Children, the night sky may seem like a scary thing sometimes. And it is. It’s a very scary thing.
Look at the stars, twinkling silently. They are so far away that none of us will ever get to even the closest one. They are dead-eyed sigils of our own failures against distance and mortality. And behind them, just the void. That nothingness that is everything, that everything that is nothing.
Even the blinking light of an airplane streaking across it does not seem to assuage the tiniest bit of its blackness – like throwing a single stray ember into the depths of a vast arctic ocean.
And what if the void is not as void as we thought? What could be coming towards us out of the distance? Insentient asteroid with a chance trajectory? Sentient beings with a malicious trajectory? What good could come of this? What good, children, could come of any of this?
Fear the night sky, children, and sleep tight in your beds, and the inadequate shelters of blankets and parental love.
Sleep sound, children.
This has been our Children's Fun Fact Science Corner.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2016. Next on that pile is Roger Zelazny's The Dawn of Amber, by John Gregory Betancourt, which I fear I will not enjoy as much.
Sun, 12:00: 140 hours left to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards! If you were a CoNZealand member, and you want to nominate, check now to make sure that you are in the system.
Sun, 12:56: RT @RobotArchie: As a general thing one of the best ‘thank you’ messages you can send people who work on conventions is to send them photos…
Sun, 15:29: RT @BobbyMcDonagh1: Irish Government has confirmed that all students in Northern Ireland (including students from GB) will be able to parti…
Mon, 06:49: RT @Cygie: Volgens sommige experts is dit volgens verwachting. Ik ben geen expert maar ik vind dat het virus nu heel snel aan terrein wint.…
Mon, 08:00: 120 hours left to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards! If you were a CoNZealand member, and you want to nominate, check now to make sure that you are in the system.
Mon, 09:43: RT @MrMichaelSpicer: To any protesters, please remember not to engage in an act of clear provocation with the police such as lighting a can…
Mon, 10:45: RT @ItReachesOut: Today in Highly Important Tasks, I made my spreadsheet of first-impression Eurovision rankings. There’s some beauty here,…
15 March 1928: birth of Mervyn Haisman, who co-wrote The Abominable Snowmen (Second Doctor, 1967), The Web of Fear (Second Doctor, 1968) and (uncredited) The Dominators (Second Doctor, 1968).
15 March 1943: birth of Scott Fredericks, who played freedom fighter Boaz in Day of the Daleks (Third Doctor, 1972) and turncoat scientist Maxilian Stael in Image of the Fendahl (Fourth Doctor, 1977).
15 March 1947: birth of Tony Osoba, who played Lan in Destiny of the Daleks (Fourth Doctor, 1979), Kracauer in Dragonfire (Seventh Doctor, 1987) and Duke in Kill the Moon (Twelfth Doctor, 2014).
15 March 1992: birth of Anna Shaffer, who plays Ram's girlfriend Rachel in two episodes of Class (2016).
15 March 2008: death of Dennis Edwards who played the Centurion in the story we now call The Romans (First Doctor, 1965) and the surgeon Time Lord Gomer in The Invasion of Time (Fourth Doctor, 1978).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
15 March 1969: broadcast of second episode of The Space Pirates, the one surviving episode of the six-part series. With the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe trapped on one of the fragments of the beacon, Milo Clancey is arrested as a suspected pirate.
15 March 1975: broadcast of second episode of Genesis of the Daleks. The Doctor and Harry meet Davros and his team, including the newly-invented Daleks. Sarah, captive in the Thal dome, tries to escape.
15 March 1982: broadcast of third episode of Earthshock. The Cybermen take over the space freighter.
15 March 1983: broadcast of first episode of The King's Demons
15 March 1984: broadcast of third episode of The Caves of Androzani. Morgus kills the President; The Doctor, captured by Stotz, manages to take control of Stotz's ship and bring it back to Androzani Minor for a crash landing.
15 March 2003: webcast of "The Child, part 2", sixth episode of Death Comes to Time.
15 March 2010: broadcast of Curse of Anubis, tenth episode of the Australian K9 series. K9 meets the Anubians, a race he helped in his forgotten past. Once peaceful, these creatures have now become warmongers. They trick K9 by worshipping him as their saviour. They unleash control devices and take over Gryffen, who banishes Darius from the mansion. Starkey opens up the Anubian Book of Deliverance and discovers their true plans. It is left to Darius to release K9 from Anubian control and thwart an alien invasion.
Having done my epic tour of western Belgian megaliths, I realised that I didn't have any photos of the one closest to us, so took U on an expedition to photograph it this afternoon. In the grand park behind the Africa Museum in Tervuren, three stones, now referred to as a "dolmen" (although they do not even touch each other, let alone form a structure) were placed at the intersection of seven woodland paths.
They are large but not obviously structured, suitable for smaller people than U to clamber on. Having been moved from the nearby village of Duisburg (not to be confused with the large German city of the same name), it is now still called the Duisburg Dolmen.
An early postcard shows them fenced off from the public, but also declares that they are in fact simply parts of an erratic stone from the glacial period.
I don’t have a strong view on that; I will say that initially I was very suspicious about the Belgian habit of moving megaliths from their original locations for the sake of farmers – Irish farmers seem to manage OK – but on reflection I can see that it’s nice to put them where everyone can see them, and they occupy a sort of position of honour. (Cf also the menhir at Neerwinden.)
Sat, 12:56: RT @davidallengreen: Post-Brexit policy does not need to be like this – no, it really does not – but there are no other post-Brexit policie…
Sat, 14:48: RT @journeymaxx: Blackadder II may have been the pinnacle of the series certainly the Potato episode with a post-DW Tom Baker as the mad Re…
Sat, 16:00: 160 hours left to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards! If you were a CoNZealand member, and you want to nominate, check now to make sure that you are in the system.
Sat, 16:05: RT @KeohaneDan: I try to explain a dichotomy here: On one hand I am not at all optimistic that CSDP or EU more broadly will contribute mo…
Sat, 16:31: RT @cstross: Reminder for Americans: a) This is why the UK doesn’t allow civilians to have handguns. b) This is why the UK doesn’t have s…
Sat, 20:48: RT @Fizzygrrl: Help Twitter plz help i found a bird dead, floating in the water bin we leave out for our raccoons and it was in there 20+…
Sun, 08:07: RT @johnreppion: Ah, I see that the same people who were all for Lockdown protests (because “freedom of speech” and “lockdown’s worse than…
14 March 1938: birth of Eleanor Bron, who played one of the art critics in City of Death (Fourth Doctor, 1979) and Kara in Revelation of the Daleks (Sixth Doctor, 1985).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
14 March 1964: broadcast of "The Wall of Lies", fourth episode of the story we now call Marco Polo. Marco Polo confiscates the Doctor's spare Tardis key; Tegana continues to plot against him.
14 March 1970: broadcast of seventh episode of Doctor Who and the Silurians. The plague is cured, the Silurians return to hibernation, and the Brigadier blows up their caves.
14 March 1981: broadcast of third episode of Logopolis. Nyssa arrives at Logopolis; the Master has sabotaged the city and it collapses. But will he bring the rest of the Universe down with it?
Some names have been changed below; some have not.
As previously mentioned, I’ve been getting a lot of useful distraction from the Ancestry.com website of late. Back in December I reported that I’d had a call with a lady whose mother was found abandoned in a Philadelphia park as a three-week-old baby, in 1917. DNA suggests that she and her siblings are my fourth cousins or thereabouts. As it happens, my American grandmother was born in Philadelphia in 1899, but the genetic distance is too great for the baby to have been in her immediate family, or even first cousins; and she had loads of second cousins, never mind more distant possibilities.
To give a fuller picture, here are my top seven hits from Ancestry.com, with all names but one blanked out. These are Ancestry.com users who have submitted their DNA and who match with mine. For six of the seven, I had enough genealogical information to confidently identify them. None is closer than second cousin once removed, ie (in both cases) my great-great-grandparents are their great-grandparents, my great-grandparent is their grandparent’s sibling, my grandparent is their parent’s first cousin, and my parent is their second cousin. Those coded yellow are descended from at least one of the parents of Rebecca Hibbard née Wickersham, my American grandmother’s mother, who died in childbirth in 1905. Those coded orange are descended from the parents of Jean Stewart née McElroy, my Irish grandmother’s mother (who I remember well; she lived until 1985). Like most people, I have eight pairs of great-great-grandparents, but only the Wickershams and McElroys seem to have direct descendants on Ancestry.com.
So “Bella” stood out. It became clear after some back and forth that her brother “Derek” and sister “Patricia” are also linked to me on Ancestry.com. Patricia and I share about half the DNA that I share with Bella, and Derek and I half that again; our relationship could be anything from third cousin to much more distant. It was their mother who was found abandoned in a Phildelphia park as a baby. That story is told in a newspaper article from 25 August 1917:
Bella, Patricia and Derek, all now in their 70s, knew nothing more about their mother’s origins, and were somewhat frustrated by the DNA results that they got and also by not always getting hugely helpful information from others who they had contacted on the site. I corresponded back and forth quite a lot with Patricia, and with her friend Susan who was doing some of the research on the ground (if hampered by the pandemic situation).
I spent some time thinking about it, and eventually sent over a list of forty Ancestry.com users who I know I am related to through my American grandmother. Patricia and Susan, god bless them, cranked through my list and found nothing at all. Not a single one of my grandmother’s forty identified DNA relatives had also a DNA link with Patricia.
This was disappointing but really not so surprising. I get the sense that some bits of DNA are more “sticky” than others; you may get quite a large lump from a distant ancestor, you may get nothing at all from a closer ancestor. I have identified genealogical links with tenth and eleventh cousins with whom I share scraps of genetic material from mutual ancestors born in the 16th century. On the other hand, I also have a known third cousin with whom I apparently share no DNA at all – apparently the chance of this is around 10%, and we are both genetically linked to other known relatives, so it’s not like there has been any messing with the records.
Patricia then gave me access to her own records and requested that I just try anything that might seem to work. The Ancestry.com search interface is somewhat frustrating, and also must respect privacy; after a couple of false starts, I tried inputting the surnames of my grandmother’s great-grandparents and seeing how many hits that got from Patricia’s DNA matches. If there were a significant number of hits, I tried to link them via genealogy to my own ancestors with those surnames.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that this actually did produce results. My American 5xgreat-grandparents’ surnames (my grandmother’s great-grandparents) were Hibbard, Charlton, Smith, Locke, Wickersham, Shallcross, Belt and Bordley. Smith is obviously useless, with far too many hits to tell us anything; of the others, only Hibbard and Belt pulled up anything resembling a decent number of credible hits, which meant I could provisionally eliminate the other five. Encouraged, I tried the surnames of the mothers of my Hibbard, Smith and Belt 5xgreat-grandparents – respectively Talcott, Whitehouse and Dulany. Only Talcott produced results of the same strength as I had from Hibbard. When I tried the next generation back, the maternal grandmothers of my Hibbard 5xgreat-grandfather, I again got very good results for their surnames, Leavens and Lyman.
So I felt pretty sure that Bella, Patricia and Derek were all descended from my Hibbard/Talcott ancestors, who were born in Connecticut in the 1750s and died in Vermont (her in 1831, him in 1845). The Hibbard family actually have an official genealogy published in 1901, which made things a little easier.
Er, yeah. That’s 13 children, and even knocking off the one who died young, and the one I’m descended from (Lyman, the third son), that still leaves eleven. (Research revealed that Electa did in fact marry and have children, contra this record.)
I tried the same trick as before, inputting the surname of each child’s spouse into Patricia’s records to see which produced the best hits. Again, this weeded out quite a lot of them, leaving only two that seemed particularly promising. I tried again for those children’s spouses, and unhelpfully both of them had results that looked equally plausible, neither more than the other. But then I looked at the next generation, and things became clear. One of the lineages I was following had moved to California, and never came back. The other family had settled in a New England town which I will call Hilltown, about 300 miles from Philadelphia and about 150 miles from Concord, VT. The only descendant of the right age to have fathered a baby in 1917 was a travelling salesman, born around 1870, who I will call Bill. It’s not impossible of course that someone based in California could have fathered a child in Philadelphia, but a travelling salesman living only a couple of states away seems a much better bet.
Bill, the travelling salesman from Hilltown, New England, would have been my grandmother’s third cousin. They probably did not know of each other’s existence. (How many of your third cousins do you know about?) When the baby in the park was conceived in 1916, Bill had a wife and three young sons back in Hilltown, the kids all fourth cousins of my father’s. It’s entirely possible that he died in 1942 unaware that he had a daughter. His sons all married in due course, and some of their children may still be living; if I am right, Bill’s grandchildren, all born with his surname, are half first cousins to Patricia and her siblings, and all of them are fifth cousins to me.
Having got this far, I then had a look at Patricia’s other DNA hits to see if anything else could be learned. She has a lot more close relatives on Ancestry.com than I do – starting of course with her siblings Bella and Derek, and then another five who are all genetically her second cousin or closer. The top two of those five, I quickly realised, were both descended from a couple who I will call Hugh and Peggy, both born in the 1890s, who married in 1919 in Philadelphia. The other three were all related to Peggy but not to Hugh. It seemed pretty clear to me. The baby in the park’s mother was certainly Peggy. The baby’s father was definitely not Hugh.
Peggy’s family lived less than a mile from Fairmount Park in Phildelphia, where the baby was found. She is recorded as being a professional musician in the 1910 and 1920 censuses. She and Hugh appear to have had a baby together in 1916, but did not get married until he returned from the war in 1919. Their marriage did not last, and the 1930 census records that Peggy and their child were living in Philadelphia while Hugh was living with a new wife on the West Coast. Hugh died in the 1930s, and Peggy successfully applied for a pension as his widow, with dependent child, from the Veterans’ Administration, suggesting that their divorce, and Hugh’s other relationship, were never formalised. As noted above, several of Patricia’s DNA connections are descended from their child born in 1916; they had no other children together. (Actually I have no genetic proof that the 1916 baby’s father was Hugh, except that he seeems to have acknowledged his own paternity.)
Reading between the lines, I speculate that Peggy and Hugh had split up around the time that their child was born in the first half of 1916, and somehow she and Bill got together – perhaps only once, perhaps more – towards the end of the year, with the August 1917 baby in the park as a result. But by the time the baby was born, Peggy and Hugh had reconciled. Hugh had just been drafted for the war, and the new baby was surplus to the requirements of the rekindled relationship. So Peggy took a sad walk to the park that warm August evening. (Or possibly her mother did, if the reports of the older woman in the area are correct.) I find this really heart-breaking: she gave up her baby to a completely uncertain future, for the sake of a relationship which had already failed once, and was destined to fail again.
The note left with the baby said that “The mother died at childbirth at the age of 22. The father, a professional singer, travels, but has now gone to the war.” If I am right, the only true fact here is that the father travelled for a living. The mother had not died, was 27 rather than 22, and it was she who worked as an professional entertainer. The baby’s father was too old to be drafted; it was the mother’s fiancée who was just about to go to the war. To quote G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown:
“Suppose someone sent you to find a house with a green door and a blue blind, with a front garden but no back garden, with a dog but no cat, and where they drank coffee but not tea. You would say if you found no such house that it was all made up. But I say no. I say if you found a house where the door was blue and the blind green, where there was a back garden and no front garden, where cats were common and dogs instantly shot, where tea was drunk in quarts and coffee forbidden — then you would know you had found the house.”
The story ends with a twist. The baby in the park was adopted, grew up, married her childhood sweetheart, whose parents were of Jewish and Scottish ancestry (which is rather helpful in distinguishing his genetic relatives from hers), and had three children, Bella, Patricia and Derek. Eventually she and her husband retired, after a life mainly spent in Illinois where he was a lecturer. And here’s a truly extraordinary coincidence: the place they chose for their retirement, and where both eventually died, was her biological father’s home – Hilltown, New England (whose population is only 12,000, on a good day). Bill had been dead for years at this point, but one of his sons was still living elsewhere in the state. I wonder if he or any of his brothers ever returned to Hilltown and unknowingly bumped into their half-sister? Edited to add: As previously mentioned, I was way off here, and the Hilltown relatives were second cousins not siblings to the baby in the park. Still, they may well have unwittingly bumped into each other.
One final reflection: the available genetic information can be somewhat hit-and-miss. As noted above, of my top seven DNA matches in the system, three are descended from one of my eight pairs of great-great-grandparents and three from another (one of those three has a different great-great-grandmother to me and the other two). I have not identified any Ancestry.com user descended from any of my other twelve great-great-grandparents. (I’ve had more luck with 23andMe in this regard.) Of Patricia’s hits, the relatives of the mother of the baby in the park are very much more strongly represented than the family of the baby’s father, or Patricia’s own Scottish-Jewish father. So I think the warning for anyone else hoping to resolve their family past through Ancestry.com is that you may not be as lucky as Patricia. But I’d be happy to try and help.
Fri, 12:43: RT @jonworth: Interesting thread. The common problem seems to be Downing Street not wanting to see Northern Ireland as a problem until it…
Fri, 12:46: It is a fascinating interview, like several others have been, but the most jaw-dropping moment is when he whines that the Irish government did not do enough to educate No 10 staff about Northern Ireland. https://t.co/KzvPh442lc
Fri, 12:51: RT @AndrewPRLevi: @nwbrux Whining. Ignorance. Arrogance. Cynicism. Self-awareness on a sub-atomic scale. It’s hard to work out why it all w…
Fri, 14:23: RT @HeleneBismarck: @nwbrux Quite. Why would a government led by the conservative and *unionist* party need the Irish government to explain…
Fri, 16:05: Brexit Britain: The buccaneering begins at home – European Council on Foreign Relations https://t.co/Rjz6qxnGjo What Global Britain means may be starting to take shape – but its emphasis appears more on the “Britain” than the “global”
Fri, 17:11: RT @borzou: “The F-35 is the most expensive weapon in history, with a cost of $1.7 trillion. That’s more than Russia’s GDP. If this aircraf…
Fri, 20:01: 180 hours left to nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards! If you were a CoNZealand member, and you want to nominate, check now to make sure that you are in the system.
Fri, 23:34: RT @DecKelleher: At no stage from 2016 on did the Irish Government consider leaving the north south border issue to the trade talks. For us…
Sat, 09:10: RT @Malmstrom4OECD: It was as an honour to be in the race for Secretary General of @OECD I want to thank everybody who supported me and th…
Sat, 09:24: RT @nwbrux: More than 100 times when people warned that Brexit would create problems on the Irish border, *before* the referendum.
Sat, 10:34: My next Oscar-winning film is Dances With Wolves. Unfortunately I discovered that I don’t have the original 3-hour theatrical release but the 4-hour Director’s Cut. Wish me luck…
Sat, 10:45: RT @williamnhutton: These are extraordinary numbers just out – a Brexit trade implosion.British goods exports to the EU month on month down…
13 March 1965: broadcast of "Invasion", fifth episode of the story we now call The Web Planet (not to be confused with The Invasion, the 1969 Second Doctor story). The Doctor controls a Zarbi with his ring, escapes with Vicki and joins forces with Barbara and the Menoptra.
13 March 1971: broadcast of first episode of The Claws of Axos. Furge thangering muck witchellers rock throbblin' this time o' day… Ur bin oughta gone put thickery blarmdasted zones about, gordangun, diddenum? Havver froggin' law onnum, shouldnum? Eh? Eh? Arn I?
13 March 2009: broadcast of From Raxacoricofallapatorius With Love (SJA), a mini-episode for Comic Relief.
I've been sequencing these ten-day updates from St Patrick's Day last year, when the full lockdown was imposed, but the first inkling we got of how bad things would get was almost exactly a year ago on Friday 13 March, when the foundation where B and U live told us that we would not be able to see them until 3 April. We knew that it was unlikely that the situation would improve in three weeks; we didn't think that it would be more than three months before we could see the girls again (we next saw B on her birthday on 19 June, and U came home again a week later).
Thank heavens, we are now relatively unimpeded in our contacts with the girls; U has just come home for the weekend, and we visited B last Sunday and took her to the new park that I discovered for her in Landen in January. And if that was the worst thing that happened to our family during the pandemic, we can count ourselves lucky.
That morning on my way to work I took a picture of the relatively empty platforms at Ottignies station; from the perspective of a year later, it looks pretty crowded.
Back in those days, three months of lockdown seemed an inconceivable prospect. It's now five months since October…
Meanwhile the numbers for Belgium remain stubbornly in much the same place they have been since mid-December, with the mini-surge of late February having subsided. Vaccinations are still moving slowly, but surely; I went to the dentist for a checkup this afternoon, an appointment that had been postponed from yesterday because he was getting his jab done. My mother in Dublin also got hers yesterday.
I managed a couple more walks in Brussels last week with diplomatic contacts.
But the weather has turned nasty again and the forecast for next week is also miserable, so I'm going to leave it a bit longer before I return to the city. There are also reports that the authorities are checking offices to make sure that nobody is sneakily going to work. And I am kept quite busy enough operating from home anyway.
I haven't mentioned it much, but votes are rolling in for nominations in this year's Hugo Awards, a process that I am overseeing. We have managed to get a decent software solution in place for actually counting them using the peculiar system introduced four years ago. My current reading, however, is dominated by the extra long BSFA Award shortlist. Some good books there; one or two that aren't.
Anyway, we are promised that vaccination will accelerate next month, and that non-essential travel will be authorised after Easter. Here's hoping.
