Although most of the country will celebrate the beginning of the American Revolution in 2026, the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, in my town the big event is 2025 — 250 years after farmers with muskets confronted British soldiers at the North Bridge.
All New England calls it Patriots Day, and this year it will be more like Patriots Month. We started early with activities, and I took some pictures at the quilt show.
I couldn’t study every quilt as there were too many, but I’ll explain why these caught my eye.
The first, a traditional log cabin style, I thought was in amazing condition to have lasted from the late 1800s.
I photographed the green heron because I love herons and I liked this realistic one.
Contemporary New England cherishes its baseball team, the Red Sox, and Fenway Park, where the Sox play. Rosemary Brown, of Stow, went to town on that.
Until recently most Concordians didn’t realize there had once been slaves in our holier-than-thou town. In fact, I’m told, some slaves kept the farms going as the farmers took up their muskets. Brister Freeman is one we’ve been learning more about in recent years. He eventually gained his freedom, and he has an area of town named after him. Sharon Chandler Correnty explains her quilt below.
I was really moved by the next one, a nontraditional concept. Heartbreaking.
Below I share one thing I can do to help mend my broken heart. My thanks to the coat maker for the reminder that the country belongs to the people. We had a revolution for that.
Photo: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian. Artist Hans K Clausen is on track to collect 1,984 copies of 1984 for an exhibition on Jura, the Scottish island where George Orwell wrote it.
Is it 2024 right now or 1984? Remember when 1984 seemed a long time in the future? I do. Now it’s far behind. Meanwhile, the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four seems to many of us to have stopped being fiction.
The Guardian‘s Scotland editor Severin Carrellwrites about a celebration of the novel and author George Orwell, an exhibit on the island where he wrote it.
“Copies of George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four,” writes Carrell, “have been arriving at an artist’s studio in Edinburgh for months. Every shape and size, posted from Ukraine, Hong Kong, Peru, Germany, Cape Cod and Sarajevo.
“Some are in mint condition, others are dog-eared, tea-stained, heavily annotated or turned into graffitied art works. One is a water-stained first edition; one is a secret love letter from a married woman to her first love; another, a graphic novel version, came from Orwell’s son Richard Blair.
“Each has been donated to a unique installation in the community hall of Jura, the Hebridean island where Orwell, in dire poverty and desperately ill, wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four during the late 1940s, to mark its publication 75 years ago.
“Hans K Clausen, a sculptor based in Edinburgh, is collecting 1,984 copies of the book to exhibit on Jura for three days in [June]. It will be an interactive, ‘living’ sculpture where visitors are invited to open and read every volume.
“Many have arrived, often with overseas postmarks and customs stamps, addressed to ‘Winston Smith, care of Hans K Clausen.’ [Winston is the novel’s protagonist.]
“ ‘I don’t see my art project as political,’ Clausen said. ‘It has politics woven through it, but it also has a love story woven through it. … I’m interested in all the layers,’ he said. ‘Often people overlook the romance and the love, and this man trying to find his own humanity. It gets lost in the Big Brother-ness of it all.’ …
“One correspondent, a married woman who called herself Julia, after the hero Winston’s lover, sent in her personal copy as a memorial to her first love, a man also married to someone else, her Winston.
“Clausen said his installation, the Winston Smith Library of Victory and Truth, is designed to be ‘a monument [to] the defiance of the printed word.’ He is still taking donations. … In return, each donor receives an enamelled pin-badge as a gesture of thanks.
“Clausen wants visitors to appreciate the materiality of each volume: the Russian copy printed on coarse paper; the impeccably printed Japanese edition; the hand-cut Canadian volume on thick paper; the musty odor and yellowing edges of the oldest copies; the intense annotations and highlighting in others, and the inexpert repairs with sticky tape to the ones with battered spines. …
“Clausen has worked with secondary school pupils in Edinburgh, London and on Jura itself, with pupils who live there but go to school on neighboring Islay, who have customized copies using paint, scalpels and pens. A teacher and sculptor at Cape Cod community school in Massachusetts cut an intricate Big Brother artwork into his.
“The installation includes audiobooks on cassette and films on DVD. The audiobooks will be broadcast over two wide-mouthed loudspeakers reminiscent of the omnipresent speakers that indoctrinated the citizens of Airstrip One.
“Visitors to Jura will find a desk with a 1940s typewriter and a paperweight, in reference to the object Winston bought in the antique shop above which he and Julia conducted their illicit affair. The [shop] was a front for the thought police. …
“The project has the blessing of the Orwell Society, a group set up under Richard Blair’s patronage in 2011. … Quentin Kopp, the society’s chairman, whose father, George, was Orwell’s commander in the Spanish civil war, said they spent time talking to Clausen.
“ ‘We satisfied ourselves this was a very genuine initiative,’ Kopp said [adding] ‘This book has a clear modern resonance with many things that are going on. It’s staggering how prescient Orwell was.’ ”
Photo: Travel PR. The Kuomboka, celebrated at this time of year if the conditions are right, marks the arrival of the wet season in Zambia. (The elephant’s ears are removable.)
According to my little book of holidays, a celebration called Kuomboka should take place in Zambia today to mark the change of seasons. Several websites, however, say the date is flexible.
GoWhereWhen, which says that coronavirus is an issue this year, describes the event: “This annual procession marks the transition of the Litunga (king) from his summer to winter residence, which is located on higher ground, away from the seasonal flood plains. This ceremony dates back more than 300 years when the Lozi people broke away from the great Lunda Empire to come and settle in the upper regions of the Zambezi.”
Wikipedia adds, “Kuomboka is a word in the Lozi language; it literally means ‘to get out of water.’ In today’s Zambia it is applied to a traditional ceremony that takes place at the end of the rain season, when the upper Zambezi River floods the plains of the Western Province. …
“Historians claim that before the time of the first known male Lozi chief Mboo, there came a great flood called Meyi-a-Lungwangwa meaning ‘the waters that swallowed everything.’ The vast plain was covered in the deluge, all animals died and every farm was swept away.
“People were afraid to escape the flood in their little dugout canoes. So it was that the high god, Nyambe, ordered a man called Nakambela to build the first great canoe, Nalikwanda, which means ‘for the people,’ to escape the flood. Thus the start of what is known today as the Kuomboka ceremony.
“The ceremony is preceded by heavy drumming of the royal Maoma drums, which echoes around the royal capital the day before Kuomboka, announcing the event. … The ceremony begins with two white scout canoes that are sent to check the depth of the water and for the presence of any enemies. Once the scouts signal the ‘all clear,’ the journey to the highland begins. … The journey to Limulunga normally takes about 6–8 hours. Drums beat throughout to coordinate and energise those paddling the barge. …
“On the barge is a replica of a huge black elephant, the ears of which can be moved from inside the barge. There is also a fire on board, the smoke from which tells the people that the king is alive and well. The Nalikwanda is large enough to carry his possessions, his attendants, his musicians, his 100 paddlers. It is considered a great honour to be one of the hundred or so paddlers on the nalikwanda and each paddler wears a headdress of a scarlet beret with a piece of a lion’s mane and a knee-length skirt of animal skins.
“For his wife there is a second barge. This one has a huge cattle egret (Nalwange) on top. The wings move like the ears of the elephant, up and down.”
Lonely Planet points out that the dates are not fixed: “They’re dependent on the rains. In fact, the Kuomboka does not happen every year and is not infrequently cancelled because of insufficient flood waters; the 2012 ceremony was called off because it’s against Lozi tradition to hold the Kuomboka under a full moon.”
More at GoWhereWhen, here, at Wikipedia, here, and at Lonely Planet, here.
Photo: Dietmar Hatzenbichler Legend has it that an African god told a man called Nakambela to build a great canoe to escape the floods. The boat was called Nalikwanda.
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