At the going down of the sun
Today happens to be Anzac day, which is similar in concept to Memorial Day. This year the focus of the remembrance ceremonies have broadened to place more emphasis on the Western Front, which was after all the scene of the Anzac victories, unlike Gallipoli, which was an unmitigated disaster under British command.
About a week ago, on my way back from a meeting, there was a ceremony at the Cenotaph in Martin Place at about 20:22 local. The Canon G7 was more than equal to the low light and took this video. It provides a glimpse into the sort of traditions that are upheld down under and incidentally, what Sydney looks like by night.
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posted by wretchardthecat at 4/25/2008 03:58:00 AM
8 Comments:
And to think I was drinking German beer in a Bavarian pub at the time ;)
Sorry I can't view your video at work, but thanks for mentioning ANZAC Day. I just returned from the ANZAC Day dawn ceremony at the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C. It was a simple, reverential ceremony. ANZAC Day is a huge event for Australians and New Zealanders. I was fortunate enough to attend the 90th commemoration, at Gallipoli in Turkey (actually Cannakale in Turkish) in 2005, and as one of the few Americans there I was amazed by the size of the crowds. Tens of thousands of Aussies and Kiwis had made the pilgrimage halfway around the world to the site where their countries paid an incredibly heavy price in blood to join the world community. Yet, there is tremendous respect between those on opposite sides of the conflict, the ANZACs and the Turks. That respect, born in battle, only grew stronger when 19 years later, at the 1934 ANZAC Memorial Ceremony at Gallipoli, Mustafa Kemal Attaturk, as president of the Republic of Turkey, said one of the most statesman-like passages I've ever read, "...To those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives...you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears. Your sons are now living in our bosom and are in peace. Having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well." Ataturk was President in 1934, but in 1915, he was just Colonel Mustafa Kemal, the leader of the eventually victorious Turkish defenders on the peninsula at Gallipoli. His victory made him a national hero, and empowered him to become a national leader.
The Land Down under is linked by strange paths to the rest of the world. To the Irish I may say, we are other end of the story that is told in The Fields of Athenry, and I'd like to say to Irish lass who prayed for the safety of her love as he sailed away to Botany Bay that the rum was pretty good out there.
imho the most beautiful english in the world is spoken by irish women.
its a mystery to me how irish men can get their footing in the presence of such music.
they must be forever compelled to vow. I am more irish than thou.
Australian cavalry charging entrenched Turks, and making it work. The Light Horsemen.
Happy ANZAC Day, mates.
And to think
I have no irish at all in me.
Tis a pity
What Darwin Saw Out Back
Though most people associate that book and Darwin’s ideas generally with his voyage to the Galápagos and his study of finches there, his work with plants was far more central to his thinking, said David Kohn, a Darwin expert and science historian who is a curator of the exhibition.
Even in the Galapágos he focused on plants, said Dr. Kohn, who is general editor of the Darwin Digital Library of Evolution at the American Museum of Natural History. “He did not even label the finches,” he said. “He was fascinated by plants,” particularly the way their variation and sexual reproduction challenged the idea that species were stable, a key idea in botany at the time.
As Dr. Kohn writes in the exhibition catalogue, “plants were the one group of organisms that he studied with most consistency and depth over the course of a long scientific career” of collecting, observing, experimenting and theorizing. But Darwin studied more than flowers. He was intrigued by what Dr. Kohn calls the “behavior” of plants — how they move, respond to light, consume insects and otherwise act in the world.
Journeys Yosemite National Park: What Adams Saw Through His Lens
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