sandr020

In Nov 2016, Animal Medicines Australia released its Pet Ownership in Australia Report, providing insight into the state of pet ownership in this country.  At 62%, Australia continues to have one of the highest household rates of pet ownership in the world with 5.7 million of Australia’s 9.2 million households home to a pet. Dogs remain the most popular type of pet. Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital  in its report agreed that pets are an integral part of  our lives as Australians - some 80% of Australians have an animal companion at some time in their life. Sometimes pet relationships are ranked higher than certain kinds of human relationships for comfort, esteem, support and confidence, with benefits in areas of child development, family harmony and health. For a more detailed examination, let us go over to  Mat Coulton  of  Wileypup , with thanks for his text, photos and links. Recent scholarship has demonstrated the health benefits dogs offer...

Ida Wells (1862-1931) was the first child of James and Lizzie Wells who had been slaves of the Confederate states. The par­ents were freed by the Union, thanks to the Emancipation Proc­lamation in Dec 1862 . However living in Missis­sippi, these African Americans still fac­ed racial prej­ud­ices and discrim­inatory practices. As a member of the progressive Republican Party during Re­const­ruction, Ida’s father was involved with the Freed­man’s Aid Soc­iety  - a group that sent a supply of teachers from the Nor­th and pro­­vided housing for them in the South. And James also served on the first board of trustees at Shaw Univ­ersity-Rust Coll­ege , a school that opened in Holly Springs MS for new­ly freed slaves in 1866. Southern Horrors, one of the many books and booklets written by Ida Wells But Ida suddenly had to leave school when both of her parents and one sibling died of yellow fever in the 1878 epidemic; she became the primary care giver for her 6 surviving siblings! Only in...

As you can tell from my old posts, I've long been interested in Leipzig’s musical connections . Now let us summarise the details published in Discover Leipzig and then focus on the historic Bose House -museum. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was active in Leipzig’s musical life from 1723 on. He was responsible for the services and special cer­emonies at the churches of St Nicholas and St Thom­as . And, as the city's Director Musices, he was also charged with the organ­is­ation of a wide range of secular events. He directed an association of pro­f­essional performers and musically active students. Many of his major compositions were written in Leipzig, including annual cycles of choral cantatas, St John and St Matthew Passions, Christmas Oratorio, Art of the Fugue and his Mass in B Minor. Since the C19th no end of effort has been put into the study and interp­ret­ation of Bach's works in Leipzig, and several instit­ut­ions, societies and competitions have been establishe...

The first part comes from the Blavatsky Archives ; many thanks.  Helena Petrovna von Hahn was born at Ekaterinoslav in Southern Russia, in 1831. She was the daughter of Colonel Peter von Hahn, and writer Helena de Fadeyev. Her mat­er­nal grandmother was Princ­ess Helena Dolgorukov, noted botanist-writer. After her mother’s early death in 1842, Helena was brought up with the grand­parents. This clever linguist was a sensitive child, and was soon aware that her psychic powers puzzled others. At 18 she married the much older Nikifor Blavatsky , Vice-Governor of Yerivan Province. The marriage was never consummated and she soon escaped and travelled across Turkey, Egypt and Greece. Only 2 years later, in London in 1851, she met the Mahatma/ Master  Morya of her childhood visions, and fully accepted his guidance. In 1852, Helena left for Canada, the USA, Mexico, South Am­erica and the West Indies, then went via the Cape to India and Tibet. Then to Britain, America again, India vi...

The names Australians gave new born babies was a widely cited post, covering the most popular first names given to boys and girls in Victoria since 1900. But I have never tackled surnames , given that everyone of my generation seemed to come from Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Hungary or Germany. Ancestry shows that many families actually have surnames passed down from ancestors in Britain. Last names were not widely used until after the Norman conquest in 1066, but as the country’s population grew, people found it necessary to be more specific when they were talking about somebody else. Thus arose descriptions like Thomas the Baker, Norman son of Richard, Henry the Whitehead, Elizabeth of the Field and Joan of York that ultimately led to many current surnames.  There are perhaps 45,000 different English surnames, but most had their origins as one of these types. 1. Occupational Occupational names identified people based on their job or position in society. Calling a...

The Chase School of Art opened to students in 1896 and two years later it became the New Yorker School of Art . New Yorker Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) enrolled in art classes at this school in 1908. Two years later, in 1910, he left high school to study art at The National Academy of Design and then The Art Stud­ents League . Thomas Fogarty and George Bridg­man were excellent teachers, preparing Rockwell for professional commissions. No Swimming, 1921 Saturday Evening Post While still very young, Rockwell was hired as art director of Boys’ Life , the publication of the American Boy Scouts, and illustrated a range of young people’s publications. In New Rochelle, Rockwell set up a studio with a cartoonist and produced work for such magazines as Life , Literary Digest and Coun­t­ry Gentleman . In 1916, 22-year-old Rockwell painted his first cov­er for The Saturday Evening Post , and for five decades, 321 Rockwell more covers appeared on the front of the Post. The 1930s and 1940s were s...

Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate  is by Neil Baldwin  (published in 2002). Baldwin reported that car manufacturer  Henry Ford (1863-1947), inventor Thomas Edison and tyre magnet Harvey Fires­t­one used to go on motor-car expeditions to the Appalachian and New Eng­land hills. Normally, when the great business tycoons of the early C20th met, most of them generally kept their views hidden be­hind the fences of their very private country clubs. Ford, on the other hand, advert­ised his anti-Semitism almost as widely and loud­ly as he promoted his Model T. As did aviator Charles Lindbergh. In 1919, Ford purchased The Dearborn Independent ,  then a small newspaper published in the Michigan city where his factory was. For the next eight years, the weekly publication became a veh­ic­le for his bigoted political views. One of the paper’s chief targets was the “International Jew”, a sinister figure cited as the root cause of WWI. For 91 newspaper editions, ...

Victoria   Spanning 200 ks across rural  Wimmera-Mallee  in Victoria, the fed­er­al and state-funded  Silo Art Trail  was designed to stimulate soc­ial, cultural and economic benefits to the region through art and tourism. Famous Brisbane street artist  Guido van Helten ’s works adorn public walls in UK and Ireland, France, Ukraine, Bel­arus and Est­on­ia. He was invit­ed to  Brim  (pop 260 in the Wimmera) during 2015, and was asked to come up with a design inclusive of the locals. The project organ­is­er of  a Melbourne art management business said the project would cost $10,000, made possible with grants from Yarriambiack Shire, Regional Arts Victoria and the Brim Active Community Group, plus donations. Luckily Guido always believed that silos had perfect sur­faces for painting street art. In Brim he painted a 30m x 30m scene dep­icting the Farmer Quartet across the four GrainCorp’s decom­mis­s­ioned grain silos. Created in van Helten’s fam...

In 1628, Dr William Harvey  was an English physician who published a book in which he described the circulation of blood in humans. Researchers commenced experim­ents involving the intraven­ous injection of various substances into an­imals, which progressed into blood transfusions between animals. Richard Lower , a member of the Oxford Experiment­al Group, showed that transfusion could be used in cases of severe blood loss by exsanguinating a dog and transfusing it with blood from another. Dr Jean-Baptiste Denys (1643–1704) was personal physician to King Louis XIV and was noted for having performed the first fully docum­ented human blood transfus­ion. In 1667 he administered tran­sfus­ions of calf's blood to a man who died during the trans­f­usion. Denys was charged with murder and although he was acquitted, the practice of blood transfusion was deemed a crim­in­al act by the French parl­iament in 1670. The Royal Society expressed uncertainty about blood transfusion and the n...