War Quandaries

Only English (not Americans) as in The Great Escape Movie

This account by Rick Danby was sent to Warplane Heritage Museum

on April 6, 2018 about the Great Escape.

The Great Escape (untouched for almost seven decades), the tunnel used in the Great Escape has finally been unearthed. The 111-yard passage nicknamed “Harry” by allied prisoners was sealed by the Germans after the audacious break-out from the POW camp 'Stalag Luft III in western Poland.

Despite the huge interest in the subject encouraged by the film starring Steve McQueen, the tunnel remained undisturbed over the decades because it was behind the Iron Curtain and Soviet authorities had no interest in its significance.

But at last, British archeologists have excavated it ~

discovering its remarkable secrets.

Many of the bed boards which had been joined together to stop it collapsing, were still in position. And the ventilation shaft, ingeniously crafted from used powdered milk containers known as Klim Tins, remained in working order. Scattered throughout the tunnel, which is 30 feet below ground, were bits of old metal buckets, hammers and crowbars which were used to hollow out the route. A total of 600 prisoners worked on 3 tunnels at the same time...named Tom, Dick and Harry ~ and were just 2 feet square for most of their length. It was on the night of March 24, 1944, that 76 Allied airmen escped through Harry. Barely a third of the 200 prisoners, many in fake German uniforms and civialian outfits and carrying false identity papers, who were meant to slip away, managed to leave before the alarm was raised when escapee number 77 was spotted.

Only 3 made it back to Britain. Another 50 were executed by firing squad

on the orders of Adolf Hitler, who was furious after learning of the security breach.

In all, 90 boards from bunk beds, 62 tables, 34 chairs and 76 benches, as well as thousands of items including knives, spoons, forks, towels and blankets, were squirrelled away by the Allied prisoners to aid the escape plan under the noses of their captors.

Although the Hollywood movie suggests otherwise,

NO Americans were involved in the operation.

Most were British: the others from Poland, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

All the tunnelers were Canadian personnel with backgrounds in mining.

Harry was originally concealed under a stove in Hut 104.

Watching the excavation was Gordie King (now 91) an RAF radio operator who was 140 in line to use Harry ~ and therefore missed out. Said he: This brings back such bitter-sweet memories,” as he wiped away his tears.”I'm amazed at what they found.”

Another tunnel called George was never used ~ as the 2,000 prisioners

were forced to march to other camps as the Red Army approached in January 1945.

(Many thanks, Tom, for submitting the foregoing to me.)

In post war-time, Mrs. Irene Graham delighted an audience

with her reminiscence of the German Prisoner of War who was weekly sent

to tend to her garden. “Repatriated in 1945, he'd always seemed a nice friendly chap.

When the crocuses came up in the middle of our lawn in February, 1946,

they spelled out Heil Hitler!”

Actual Announcements of London Tube Drivers to Passengers

Ladies and Gentlemen: I do apologize for the delay to your service. I know you're all dying to get home, unless, of course, you happen to be married to my ex-wife in which case, you'll want to cross over to the Westbound and go in the opposite direction.

Your delay this evening is caused by the line controller suffering from E & B syndrome, not knowing his Elbow from his Backside, I'll let you know any further information as soon as I'm given any.

Let the passengers off the train FIRST ~ (a long pause) ~ Oh, Go on, then, stuff yourselves in like sardines! See if I care ~ I'm goiing home.

We can't move off because some idiot has his hand stuck in the door.

Please move baggage away from the doors. (Pause) Please move ALL belongings away from the doors. (Pause) This is a personal message to the man in the brown suit wearing glasses at the rear of the train. Put the pie down, Four Eyes, and move your bloody golf clubs away from the door before I come down there and shove them up your bum sideways.

Britain's Dumbest Criminals

(a few from a book loaned to me by Rosemarie)

These are based on stories from police officers and county court clerks around the UK.

Gormless Golfer: A customs officer beckoned over a visiting German golfer as a 'routine check' at Dover ferry port. The man was well dressed and explained he was looking forward to 'a spot of golf'' between business meetings.he'd arranged in Kent. Being a keen golfer himself, the official inquired into the German's handicap. But he was perplexed by the answer: “I don't have a handicap ~ I'm very fit and present.” So he tried another question: “How many birdies are you hoping to shoot?” The tourist replied, “None. I don't believe in 'blood sports' and shooting birds in Germany is illegal.” Smelling a rat, the customs man asked the German to demonstrate his swing. This he executed perfectly, but in reverse. A significant amount of narcotics was found in his bag.

Too Neat: Pharmacies are often victims of drug users who can't afford to buy their requirements on the street. One such ship in Liverpool had taken precautions and locked all their materials in a large safe (following previous break-ins). The local users were made aware and break-ins' to the pharmacy almost stopped overnight. One user, however, went a step further upstream and broke into a doctor's surgery to steal some prescription pads. Having written out his own prescription, he then went into the pharmacy and handed over his slip. The police were called and he was arrested. When asked why they had been alerted, one of the staff said, “The prescription was perfectly legible and written in block letters. All the doctors around here have totally indecipherable scrawls!”

What? My Car? Fed up with his old rusting Volkswagon, a man from Norwich decided to report it stolen. Calling in to his local police station, he explained how the car had been stolen from outside his workplace. Details were taken and the man left with the duty sergeant telling him he would be contacted when the vehicle showed up. The man left and returned home. His car, reported 'stolen' was noticed by a passing patrol car, parked in the car-park of the police station. Officers called at the man's house and after detailed questioning, managed to get him to admit it was a scam. He had driven it to the police station to report it missing...then mistakenly, left it in their car-park!

Written by Merle Baird-Kerr...July 11, 2018

Comments welcome: mbairdkerr@bell.net or inezkate@gmail.com

Gardening ~ A Legacy

Little things seem nothing ~ but they give peace, like those meadow flowers

which individually seem odorous ~ yet, altogether, perfume the air.

(Georges Behamos)

It all depends on your purpose! Is it a forced activity, depending on circumstance? Is it an opportunity to develop, to expand on, to create unimaginable colour and beauty? My mother, during the Great Depression, had such decision to make. Her country garden was a sight to behold ~ and the outcome she could not have predicted. A long, narrow garden sided the country lane. A lover of dahlias and gladioli, she carefully over-wintered in our cool dirt-floor basement, Then in the spring, she replanted and labelled them for identification. Mixed with the soil was manure from the barn ~ and patiently, she watched their growth. Neighbours dropped by for a cup of tea, just to observe her 'glads' and dahlias ~ yet to them, Mom's purpose was not revealed.

Cemetery Day, a yearly celebration was mid-August when country-folk decorated graves and friendly-visited others honouring 'those who had passed.' My mother was most skillful in designing floral sprays adorned with asparagus greenery.; and neighbours would pre-order arrangements for their kin and pay Mom accordingly. And then when country fairs opened in September and October, she submitted her autumn floral bouquets for judging ~ frequently cash money for first, second, or third placement in the judges' eyes. To her, gardening was not a necessity ~ it was a pleasure to give these bulbs opportunity to claim use, beauty and often necessaary cash for house and home winter expenses.

My incentive for relating this experience, was a colour photo of someone's garden with dahlias abloom

in a garden of green grassy growth. The garden setting fronted a stylish white stucco building. A sturdy tall trunk forced its branches into the blue cloudless sky.

The joy to Mom was the given pleasure to her success of garden flowers.

* * * * * * *

To Linda and Brian who reside on Hamilton's Tragina Avenue,
their garden is a legacy. They've been growing it for 34 years.

It's a place of family memories ~ a living scrapbook.

Their garden had constantly changed to meet the needs of four growing boys.

When Rob Howard (a garden writer, speaker and garden coach) visited, he found a delightful back garden under a Sunburst locust tree close to the house. At the rear, a hot direct sun around a salt-water pool. Throughout there's a great mix of foliage together with perennials, annuals, vines and containers.

In a separately fenced area, the sun sparkled off a 'hump-back lagoon' pool.

Of interest to me was a large grey stone face nestled among vines; the eyes are closed as in silent meditation as the mind and soul both savour the spirit the garden inspires.

Their garden is a living scrap-book of the couple's life together

which has grown and changed with their family.

Remember that children, marriages and flowers reflect

the kind of care they get. (H. Jackson Brown)

Compiled by Merle Baird-Kerr...July 14, 2018

Comments welcome: mbairdkerr@bell.net or inezkate@gmail.com

Woolly Mammoths

“Why do we humans have such a fascination with woolly mammoths?”

asks Hendrik Poinar.

“Woollys are a quintessential image of the Ice Age;

We seem to have a deep connection with them as we do with elephants,” says Poinar in this sci-fi worthy talk . I have to admit there's a part of the child in me that wants to see these majestic creatures walk across the permafrost of the North. It may be even now, thanks to a new development. An incredible discovery on the permafrost of an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean

propelled the conversation of de-extincting mammoths forward.

Blood, possibly in liquid form and muscle tissue was discovcered

inside the well-preserved body of a 10,000 to 15,000 year old female woolly mammoth ~ to help ignite our imagination. Bring back the woolly mammoth!

The Woolly Mammoths lived in the north closer to the glaciers

of the Ice Ages from Alaska through Canada

and east to the Great Lakes and New England.

Facts About the Magnificent Woolly Mammoth

Contrary to common belief, the woolly mammoth was hardly mammoth in size. They were roughly about the size of modern African elephants. A male woolly mammoth 's shoulder height was 9 to 11 feet tall and weighed around 6 tons. Its cousin the Steppe Mammoth was perhaps the largest one in the family ~ growing up to 13 to 15 feet tall.

The ears of a woollly mammoth were shorter than the modern elephants' ears. Like their thick coat of fur, their shortened ears were an important cold-weather adaptation because it minimized frostbite.

Scienists can discern a woolly mammoth's age from the rings of its tusk ~ like looking at the rings of a tree. The tusk yields more finite detail than a tree trunk ~ revealing a major line for each year and a line for the weeks and days in between. Scientists can even tell the season when a woolly mammoth died as the darker increments correspond to summers. The thickness or thinness of the rings indicate the health of the mammoth during that time; the tusk would grow during favourable conditions.

The woolly mammoth was not the only 'woolly' type of animal. The woolly rhinoceros co-existed with the woolly mammoth. Like the woolly mammoth, the rhino adapted to the cold with a furry coat...and was depicted by human ancestors in cave paintings (becoming extinct around the same time).

By the end of the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, much of the world mammoths had succumbed to Climate Change and predation by humans. The exception was a small population of woolly mammoths that lived on Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia until 1700 BC. Subsisting on limited resources, Wrangel Island mammoths grew to much smaller sizes than their Woolly Mammoth relatives and were often referred to as dwarf elephants. Fortunately for scientists, the Woolly Mammoths have been preserved by permafrost.

Cave paintings drawn by ice age humans, show the important relationship they had with the woolly mammoths. The Rouffignac cave in France has 158 depictions of mammoths, making up about 70% of the represented animals dating back to an earlier period. There is also evidence of the use of bones and tusks by humans to create portable art objects, shelters, tools, furniture and even burials.

Today the hunt is on for woolly mammoth tusks in the Arctic Siberia. Due to global warning, the melting permafrost has begun revealing these hidden ivory treasures for a group of local tusk-hunters to find and sell. A tusk can range from 10 to 13 feet in length and a top-grade mammoth tusk is worth around $400 per pound. Mammoth ivory, unlike elephant ivory, is legal.

Their large curved tusks may have been used for fighting.

They may have also been used as digging tools for foraging meals

of shrubs, grasses, roots and other small plants under the snow.

The first fully documented woolly mammoth skeleton was discovered in 1799. It was brought to the Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Science in 1806 where Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius put the pieces together Basing his task off an Indian elephant skeleton, Tilesius was successful in reconstructing the first skeleton of an extinct animal except for one error. He put the tusks in the wrong sockets, so that they curved outward instead of inward.

The coat of a woolly mammoth consisted of a guard of foot long hairs and an undercoat of shorter hairs. Preserved mammoth hair looks orange in colour; however, researchers believe the pigment was changed because of prolonged burial in the ground.

Even a kid can discover a preserved mammoth. In September 2012 in Russia, an 11-year-old boy named Yevgeny Zhenya Saliner happened upon an extremely well-preserved woolly mammoth carcass while walking his dogs. The remains were of a 16-year-old male woolly mammoth that died about 30,000 years ago. The discovery helped scientists conclude that the large lumps on a mamoth back were extra stores of fat to help it survive winters. The mammoth was nicknamed Zhenya.

It was here, that in May 2007 a reindeer herder stumbled on the corpse

of a perfectly preserved female baby woolly mammoth

which he named Lyuba after his wife.

The final resting place of woolly mammoths was Wrangel Island in the Arctic. Although most of the woolly mammoth population died out by 10,000 years ago, a small population of 500 to 1,000 woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island until 1650 BC. That is only about 4,000 years ago! For context, Egyptian pharoahs were midway through their empire and it was about 1,000 years after the Giza pyramids were built. The reason for the demise of these woolly mammoths are unknown.

Opinion of Hendrik Poiner:

Scientists always thought that because the Mammoths roamed

such a large territory from Western European Woolly Mammoths,

that North American Woolly Mammoths were simply a side-show

of no particular significance to the evolution of the species.

Future Hope

Because Woolly Mammoths went extinct recently and related

more closely to modern elephants,

scientists may be able to harvest the DNA and its incubated fetus

in a living process known as de-extinction.

A team of researchers recently announced they have decoded

the complete gnomes of two 40,000 year-old woolly mammoth species.

Written by Merle Baird-Kerr...August 4, 2018

Your comments welcome: mbairdkerr@bell.net or

inezkate@gmail.com

Travel Benefits

They wandered along an RBG path;

Filtered with sun and streaks of shade.

Family love was on their brows

For he was Papa Drake and she was Mother Goose.

And strutting slowly ahead ~ a gosling

With his still feathery fuzz ~

lookin' around at his big world.

(M BK)

Francis Bacon states: Travel in the younger sort, is a part of education.

And in the elder, a part of experience.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry and die. It can introduce the idea that if we try to understand each other, we may even become friends.

(Maya Angelou)

Hidden Waterfall

An awe-inspiring waterfall in Iceland can only be reached by through a crack in a cliff.

Called “Gljufrafoss” it is also close to another famous waterfall “Seljalandsfoss” in the southwest part of the country, If visitors want to view “Gljufrafoss” from above, they can hike up a canyon to the top to take a look. Or, they can wade in a stream through a crack in the rock walls surrounding the falls. Although the water is cold, the trek is worth it. Adventurous viewers will be rewarded with a close-up view of the water as it tumbles down the canyon. Visitors are advised to wear water-proof boots and raincoats for this outing!

The Findhorn Feeling

“Scottish eco-village offers visitors the experience of connecting with themselves and the land,”

writes Karen Cumming ~ a journalist who loves a great education.

“The world has recently teetered on the brink of nuclear war...the president of U.S. is routinely caught lying to the media...and the earth's temperature is so hot, the polar ice caps are melting. As dear-departed Dad would say: The world has gone to hell in a hand basket.

Many of us have stressful jobs...technology beeps at us from morning till night...traffic makes us crazy...we eat too much...and we sleep too little. It's enough to make us scream “ENOUGH!”

I had just finished post-grad studies in Workplace Wellness and Health Promotion. Long days of commuting to class on the GO Train and long nights of working on assignments, had left me decidedly unhealthy. I felt burned out and looking for a way to disconnect from the world in order to reconnect with myself. Instantly, I jumped online to do some research ~ leading me to book a plane ticket.

Destination: Northeast Scotland and the Findhorn Foundation.

(a world-renowned eco-village, holistic education centre and spiritual community).

It resonated with me ~ and felt drawn to it...the feeling was powerful.

I got my first taste through an introductory course: Experience Week that draws hundreds of people from around the world each year. The idea is to 'attune' what is right for you. The Foundation's mission is to spread what it calls the transformation of human consciousness in everyday life.

Published with this article, Karen submitted a dramatic colour photo

of Windmills framed by a Rainbow in rural fields near Findhorn.

Saving a Species From Becoming Dinner

Richard C. Paddock from the New York Times, writes from Legian, Indonesia:

The people of Bali have long been of 2 minds about endangered sea turtles. Some want to save them ~ some want to eat them. But Legion Beach is crowded with tourists from around the world who come for the sand and surf...and now to see the sea turtles ~ classified as 'a vulnerable species'.

After a turtle laid her eggs and returned to the Indian Ocean, a conservationist volunteer

dug up the 136 eggs (each the size of a ping-pong ball)

then put them in a bucket and took them away to hatch in a safer spot.

“The sea turtle belongs to everyone, so everyone should take responsibility.”

A spacious colour photo depicts children

sitting on a giant turtle structure that houses the Bali Sea Turtle Society's conservation centre.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes,

but in having new eyes. (Marcel Proust)

Tourists Can Discover the Ancient Sport of Falconry Up Close

Having a Falcon Land on Your Hand is Really an Incredible Experience

writes Lisa Rathke from The Associated Press.

“From Woodstock, Vermont: Falconry is an ancient old tradition in many parts of the world, including Canada, the United Kingdom and the Middle East. Now it's starting to be offered as an activity for tourists at hotels, vineyards and other sites around the U.S. from Vermont to Colorado to California.

“The ancient sport of using birds-of-prey to hunt wild animals has existed for at least 4,000 years. Experiences designed for tourists typically show off the birds' flight and faithful return to their handlers through these programs ~ and birds don't usually bring back creatures they've caught.

During a 45-minute-session at the Woodstock Inn in Woodstock, Vermont, a professional falconer flies a trained bird and provides a history of falconry and information about raptors. Then, guests can try it themselves, handling and free-flying a Harris's hawk ~ or they can just observe the sport. In longer 90-minute-sessions, a second raptor is flown

Bouchaine Vineyards in the Carneros region of California's Nappa Valley

started using falconers in 2016 to keep other birds (like starlings and migratory species)

from eating their grapes. Visitors were so intrigued to see the Peregrine Falcons fly

and work with their trainer, that the vineyard decided to offer experiences

to its guests along with wine-tasting and lunch.

“It's wonderful to showcase the birds ~ and to be able to hold a glove out and have a falcon land on your hand is really an incredible experience,” said Chris Kajani, Bouchaine winemaker.”

“At New England Falconry in Vermont last month, a young Harris Hawk was eager to do what he was trained to do. He launched from a high wooden platform, soaring through the swirling winds over a grassy field and landed squarely on the falconer's gloved hand, where he was rewarded with a a piece of meat. This Harris hawk had rich brown and tawny feathers...sturdy yellow legs with long black talons...and intense eyes that allow him to spot prey while soaring high in the sky.”

“Each falcon has a unique personality...as do sceeching barn owls used.”

The World is a book...and those who do not travel, read only a page. (Saint Augustine)

Written by Merle Baird-Kerr...July 28, 2018

To comment: mbairdkerr@bell.net or inezkate@gmail.com