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The 6th edition of The Mabati Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature, suspended last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is back. Founded in 2014, the prize recognises writing in African languages and encourages translation from, between and into African languages. Kiswahili is widely spoken across the east coast of Africa. This year’s prize also offers a special award designed to promote and popularise a Kiswahili vocabulary for technology and digital rights. We spoke to the prize founders – literary academic Lizzy Attree, also of Short Story Day Africa, and literature professor and celebrated author Mukoma Wa Ngugi – on the challenges of growing literature in African languages.
What’s the idea behind the special Nyabola prize?
Lizzy Attree: The Nyabola prize gives us the opportunity to work in a new area that is really exciting for us. Nanjala Nyabola, the Kenyan writer and activist, approached us with the idea and the funding to target vocabulary for technology and digital rights. This was particularly interesting to us for two reasons. Firstly, we have long wanted to offer a short story prize, but have stuck with longer works because of the opportunity it gives us to focus on Kiswahili literature as a fully mastered form. But we are aware that a short story prize is a good place to start for those who are only beginning to write. Secondly, Kiswahili is often considered to be steeped in archaic, or historically poetic technical words and forms. These must be updated to accommodate the modern language of science and technology. It has been an interesting adventure to find out which words can be adapted or amended to fit with modern digital and technological advancement.
Mukoma Wa Ngugi: There is also the idea that African languages are social languages, emotive and cannot carry science. Most definitely not true. All languages can convey the most complex ideas but we have to let them. There is something beautiful about African languages carrying science, fictionalised of course, into imagined futures.
Mukoma, you also write speculative fiction; what is its power?
Mukoma Wa Ngugi: At the height of dictatorship in Kenya under president Daniel arap Moi, when writers and intellectuals were being detained and exiled, and their books banned, it was the genre writers who kept the politics alive. In fact I dedicated my detective novel Nairobi Heat to two such Kenyan writers, David Mailu and Meja Mwangi. We inherited a hierarchy of what counts as serious literature from colonialism, the division between minor and major literatures. It is important for us to blur the lines between literary and genre fiction – they are both doing serious work but in different styles. And the same goes between written literature and orature (spoken literature). Orature is seen lesser-than but, as writers and scholars have argued, orature has its own discipline and aesthetics.
How has African language publishing changed since the prize began?
Lizzy Attree: Sadly I don’t think African language publishing has advanced very much in the last seven years or that there are enough academic studies focusing on this area. The demise of the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa was part of the decline, or indicative of it. However, book festivals are growing, and we hope that in time this will lead to more awards and more publishing in African languages. Mukoma’s father, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, is a pioneer in this area, and it’s been wonderful to see his novel shortlisted for the International Booker Prize recently. Although there are many other good examples of where changes are happening, considering the size of the continent and the number of languages, there is still a huge gap.
Mukoma Wa Ngugi:Jalada Journal is a good example of how attitudes to writing in African languages have changed for the better. In 2015 Jalada took a short story written by Ngugi in Gikuyu and self-translated into English and had it translated to close to 100 languages. This made it the most translated African short story. But the genius of their initiative was that most of the translations were between African languages. The Jalada example is important for two reasons – it shows that innovation can happen when African languages talk to each other. And that for the younger writers, African languages do not carry the same sense of inferiority – English is just another language. All in all I don’t think the Nyabola prize, for example, would have been possible 10 years ago. A lot has changed where it matters the most; the ideology around African languages is shifting.
Do awards work and why are there so few major literary prizes in Africa?
Lizzy Attree: I think awards certainly work in raising the profile of writers and their work, but it is difficult to find funding for these kinds of projects.
Mukoma Wa Ngugi: It is all about setting up a viable and thriving literary ecosystem for writing in African languages. Literary agents, publishers, readership, critics, literary prizes and so on. Prizes are just one aspect. We realised that from the onset so our winners, in addition to the monetary awards, have also been published by Mkuki na Nyota Press in Tanzania. We have been trying to get them translated into English but as Lizzy points out, funding is a huge problem. We were lucky to partner with Mabati Rolling Mills and the Safal Group. We have a de facto slogan: African philanthropy for African cultural development. But all the living parts of the African literary ecosystem have to be thriving. In this, we all have work to do.
Why is African language literature so important?
Lizzy Attree: It’s been clearly demonstrated that learning in one’s mother tongue brings huge advantages to students. And where else must we find ourselves reflected if not in our own literature, in our own languages?
Mukoma Wa Ngugi: You can think of language as the sum total of a people’s history and knowledge. We store history and knowledge in language. To speak only English is to be alienated from your past, present and future. It is a pain we should all feel deeply. In my book, The Rise of the African Novel: Language, Identity and Ownership, I give the example of how early writing in South African languages remains outside our literary tradition. I talk about how that leads to truncated imaginations. We write within literary traditions, but what happens to your imagination when you cannot access your literary tradition?
The shortlist will be announced in October/November 2021, with the winners announced in Dar es Salaam in December 2021.
In May 1803 a group of enslaved Africans from present-day Nigeria, of Ebo or Igbo descent, leaped from a single-masted ship into Dunbar Creek off St. Simons Island in Georgia. A slave agent concluded that the Africans drowned and died in an apparent mass suicide. But oral traditions would go on to claim that the Eboes either flew or walked over water back to Africa.
For generations, island residents, known as the Gullah-Geechee people, passed down the tale. When folklorists arrived in the 1930s, Igbo Landing and the story of the flying African assumed a mythological place in African American culture.
Though the site carries no bronze plaque and remains unmarked on tourist maps, it has become a symbol of the traumatizing legacy of trans-Atlantic slavery. Poets, artists, filmmakers, jazz musicians, griots, novelists such as Toni Morrison and pop stars like Beyoncé have all told versions of the tale.
They’ll often switch up the story’s details to reflect different times and places. Yet the heart of the original tale, one of longing for freedom, beats through each of these retellings. The stories continue to resonate because those yearnings – whether they’re from the cargo hold of a sloop or the confines of a prison cell – remain just as intense today.
Sourcing the story
As an academic trained in literary history, I always look for the reasons behind a story’s origins, and how stories travel or change over time. Variations of the flying African myth have been recorded from Arkansas to Canada, Cuba and Brazil.
Yet even as the many versions cut across the Black diaspora, the legend has coalesced around a single place: St. Simons. An entry in the Georgia Encyclopedia makes a direct correlation between the 1803 rebellion mass suicide and the later, literary folkloric tradition.
Why? One reason is geographic.
St. Simons, part of the archipelago that stretches from Florida to North Carolina, long remained separate from the mainland United States. This isolation allowed African customs to survive, where elsewhere they were assimilated or vanished. Historian Melissa L. Cooper describes the Gullah-Geechee people as cultural conservators, tasked in popular culture with the duties of preservation.
Serendipity also played a role in siting the story. When a causeway from mainland Brunswick to St. Simons was built in 1924, folklorists literally followed a paved route into the past. During the New Deal, the Works Project Administration funded an oral history project that involved interviewing formerly enslaved people, and the flying African story was recorded in “Drums and Shadows,” the classic volume that published interviews from the project.
One Works Project Administration interviewer recorded St. Simons raconteur Floyd White asking, “Heahd about Ibo’s Landing. Das duh place weah dey bring duh Ibos obuh in a slabe ship.”
They “staht singing and de mahch right down in duh ribbuh” – Dunbar Creek – and “mahch back tuh Africa.” But they never get home, White adds: “Dey gits drown.”
Floyd White is a key source on the flying African, though as the hackneyed written transcription of his interview suggests, questions linger. The Ebos, by his account, walk, rather than fly, across the water. White allows that he does not personally believe the myth; he says they drowned.
Stories change, song remains the same
The flying African, despite a genealogy rooted in St. Simons, has no single point of origin. A shifting present continues to rewrite the past. These differences across versions only underscore the strength of the myth’s central core.
Take how music is used. In almost every account of Igbo Landing, the Africans sing before they fly. They chant in a dialect of Bantu, one of Africa’s 500 languages: “Kum buba yali kum buba tambe, / Kum kunka yalki kum kunka tambe.” Those words don’t have a direct translation; the words, more often, get described as secret, magical or lost.
But since the 1960s, in many retellings, the Bantu has been updated to the hymn “Oh Freedom,” an anthem first recorded after the Civil War and later popularized during the civil rights movement.
The storyteller Auntie Zya recounts the Igbo Landing legend in a YouTube post. To make the tale more relevant to children today, she launches into the familiar refrain, “And before I’d be a slave,” using the hymn to bridge the myth and a long struggle for civil rights.
And then there’s Toni Morrison’s novel “Song of Solomon,” the very title of which links music and flight. In the story, the novel’s main character, Milkman Dead, pieces together mysterious lyrics to recover a hidden past. Once he understands the song, he leaps from a Virginia cliff and flies away. Or is it suicide? The ending is famously ambiguous.
Healing through flight
Like all powerful myths, Igbo Landing and the flying African transcend boundaries of time and space.
Experimental filmmaker Sophia Nahli Allison perceives memories from Dunbar Creek as an “ancestral map.” In a poetic narrative she lays over a dance montage, she muses: “Dreams are reality, time is relative, and the past, present, and future are melding together.” Allison suggests that the cross-generational continuity of the myth nurtures her, sustaining her voice through centuries of violence.
Children’s author Virginia Hamilton, likewise, offers the flying African as a script for healing. Her most famous story, “The People Could Fly,” broaches the difficult subject of the Middle Passage, the leg of the slave trade in which Africans, tightly packed in slave ships, were transported across the Atlantic Ocean.
Hamilton explains why some Africans had to leave their wings behind when forced to America. “They couldn’t take their wings across the water on the slave ships,” she writes. “Too crowded, don’t you know.”
How does a culture get those wings back?
Where some storytellers linger over haunting images, such as the chains supposedly still heard in Dunbar Creek, artists such as Morrison, Allison and Hamilton look forward. Their stories lay the groundwork for recovery.
Hamilton presents “The People Could Fly” as a direct form of hope. In a preface to her collection of that title, she explains how tales “created out of sorrow” carry Black America forward. She reminds readers: “Keep close all the past that was good, and that remains full of promise.” A painful past must be summoned in order to be redeemed.
Igbo Landing starkly illustrated, in 1803, how the choice between slavery and death was not a choice at all. Slavery, sociologist Orlando Patterson wrote, was also social death.
But it’s important to remember that joy doubles as a form of decolonization. Music threads through every version of the flying African legend. Magic words propel fieldworkers into the sky, “Kum yali kum buba tambe.” In song, our spirits lift.
In 1952 The Palm-wine Drinkard became the first West African novel written in English to be published internationally. That it was written by Amos Tutuola, an unknown Nigerian clerk who took to writing to alleviate boredom, meant the book caused a stir. To this day, it’s celebrated as a key example of African fantasy.
But more recent analysis suggests that the Western view of Tutuola as a fantasy writer is slightly patronising, because it overlooks how seriously his work engages with African reality on its own terms.
Similarly, my reading of the novel explores how it is more suitably classified as a pioneering work of African science fiction than of fantasy. And a lot of that has to do with the way Tutuola uses language. Fantasy deals in the mythic and supernatural. Science fiction is an invention more grounded in reality. I suggest that the lazy appeal to African fantasy and folklore is in line with a longstanding dismissal of Africans as technological beings and, by extension, writers of science fiction.
What the book’s about
The Palm-wine Drinkard introduces us to the Drinkard, who passes his time drinking palm wine with his friends. The alcoholic drink is made from the sap of palm trees, collected by a tapster.
Then his beloved tapster dies after falling from a tree. No longer able to access palm wine, the Drinkard soon loses favour with his friends.
He resolves to bring the tapster back from the place where all dead souls go – Deads’ Town. He passes through many strange towns, meeting bizarre creatures on his journey before finally reuniting with his tapster. Only to learn that a dead person cannot leave Deads’ Town.
Bereft, the Drinkard returns home. Having matured on his journey, he is no longer a nonchalant drunkard and demonstrates his newfound sense of civic duty by bringing an end to a famine in his village.
Western critics hailed The Palm-wine Drinkard as inventive and avant-garde. But Nigerian critics were puzzled and even embarrassed by Tutuola’s use of English. They argued no such English existed, even in a purely spoken form.
Putting the debate of literary quality aside, Tutuola’s striking use of language is undoubtedly sublime, able to transport the reader in ways that are necessary and expected for science fiction. He takes great pains to place his narrative within lived and believable African experience that is more in line with science fiction than fantasy.
Creating a sci-fi world
Samuel R. Delany is a luminary African-American science fiction writer and critic. For him, science fiction is able to “generate the infantile wonder” of the reader through language.
In his hallmark essay About 5,750 Words, he gives an insightful explanation of how science fiction is distinct from other types of fiction. Where realism tells what “could have happened” and fantasy explores what “could not have happened”, science fiction opens up space for events “that have not happened” yet.
Fantasy can travel anywhere, but science fiction approaches the world with an inventive attitude rather than a fanciful one. Science fiction can stretch outside our current world, but never to the extent of fantasy. As Delany explains, science fiction writers very carefully use language as part of a process that helps the imagination make the leap from our world into an alternative one.
Tutuola is invested in this balancing act: he stretches the limits of realism but also reins in the unlimited possibilities of fantasy. For example, the Drinkard explains that he and his wife became immortal because they “had ‘sold our death’ to somebody at the door for the sum of £70: 18: 6d and ‘lent our fear’ to somebody at the door as well on interest of £3: 10: 0d per month, so we did not care about death and we did not fear again”.
Tutuola imagines a refreshing option where states of existence like death and anxiety – much like everything else in our consumerist culture – can be traded or rented and “worn” like clothing. Giving the exact amounts in British pounds marries something as familiar as shopping with the wondrous potential that we may one day discard existential inconveniences as easily.
For every fantastic suggestion, Tutuola provides a real-world equivalent. He places the most bizarre creatures within the limits of our current experience.
In the forest the Drinkard meets a creature whose two large eyes “were as big as bowls” and feet as “long and thick as a pillar of a house”. This reliance on similes or mundane comparisons is part of an effort to weave the fanciful into the reader’s reality.
The Palm-wine Drinkard uses language in ways that critics like Delany insist are universally crucial to science fiction.
African sci-fi and fable
Some contemporary appraisals of science fiction in Africa argue that the genre is rooted in indigenous fable and folklore and should be read on unique – exceptionalist – terms.
Yet reading African science fiction as an exclusive – and even resistant – form of science fiction, we lose sight of the globalising spirit that’s central to understandings of popular culture in Africa.
Wielding language as the ultimate form of technology, Tutuola has reassembled it and built a vocabulary for his pioneering work of African science fiction that can easily be read as a worthy participant on the global stage of popular genre fiction.
This article is based on Moonsamy’s chapter in the new book Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century from The Ohio State University Press.
Crime and detective fiction continues to top bestseller lists across the world, spawning TV series and films. In the hands of African writers, though, the genre offers a particularly textured world view.
That Ever-blurry Line Between Us and the Criminals: Re-Visioning Justice in African Noir is a colloquium paper by Sam Naidu. It focuses on African crime and detective fiction as a complex and disruptive variety of classic, Western crime and detective fiction.
Aretha Phiri: Your paper addresses classic noir and African noir, sub-genres of crime and detective fiction?
Sam Naidu: African crime fiction builds on and extends classic crime fiction to explore philosophical questions about identity, knowledge and power. Referencing the same dark aesthetic of classic noir – characterised by themes of alienation, pessimism, moral ambivalence and disorientation – African crime fiction amplifies political awareness. And, occasionally, it destabilises the conventions of classic crime fiction, which arose during the aftermath of the two world wars when the world was in the grip of the Cold War.
Aretha Phiri: What is the ‘political’ relationship between classic and African crime fiction?
Sam Naidu: African crime fiction builds on and extends classic crime fiction’s exploration of philosophical questions about identity, knowledge and power in the modern world.
Politically, there is a deliberate shift to consider fundamental questions about Africa and its specific requirements. The novels I have read demonstrate a preoccupation with the ambiguity of justice. They express a poignant, Afro-pessimistic lament for a continent and its injustices.
They provide this focus in terms of colonialism and the power differentials of neo-colonialism in Africa. So, you find that economic exploitation and inequalities, race, war, genocide, corruption and state capture are common subject matter.
Aretha Phiri: You read Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ’s novel Black Star Nairobi (2013) as a valuable way of demonstrating the disruption of the classical by the African? What’s it about?
Sam Naidu: It’s set mainly in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2007. It’s the eve of Barack Obama’s election as the first black US president and presidential elections in Kenya. O (short for Odihambo), a Kenyan former policeman who still works part-time for the police, has teamed up with Ishmael from the US, a former cop. Together they’ve formed a detective agency, Black Star, which is given a lucky break when O’s former boss hires them to investigate the murder of an unidentified person whose corpse is found gruesomely disfigured in the Ngong Forest outside Nairobi.
Aretha Phiri: You conclude in your paper that the predominant effect of African crime fiction is not so much a ‘dark’ sensibility as it is one of obscurity and poignant Afro-pessimism?
Sam Naidu: I reach this conclusion based on the literary texts. This is not my opinion of the state of the continent. The novels are very dark. They overwhelm the reader, with the mess, tragedy, garbage, cruelty, indignity and inhumanity that Africans face in reality. Due, of course, to historical and ongoing systemic oppression and corruption. For characters – and for readers – this can lead to muddledness and despair.
But the novels also offer a counterpoint – in the form of fearless detectives on the quest for justice. In the midst of the disquiet there is a faint flicker … It is this murkiness, taken to new depths, which makes African crime fiction particularly effective and significant. For example, the novel closes with a highly lyrical and metaphorical scene of African musicians in a market. Ishmael describes the competing rhythms of African music – a metaphor for the strife and power struggles of the continent. Despite the discord he detects a harmony –- “a tense harmony”.
Aretha Phiri: How does Black Star Nairobi manage to disrupt classic crime fiction?
Sam Naidu: For example, through its innovative use of setting, characterisation, pace and conclusion to comment on ontological, existential and ethical themes to do with justice, it’s an exemplary African noir text. It explicitly extends classic noir into the realms of neo-noir.
Its blend of previous influences, use of setting, and its specific thematic concern with Afro-pessimism prompt the observation that African crime fiction extends classic noir into new literary, geo-political, and moral territories.
Murkiness, so characteristic of classic noir sensibility, mutates, at times, in African crime texts such as Black Star Nairobi and Leye Adenle’s When Trouble Sleeps, to a deliberate generic nebulousness. And thematically, to a moral blurriness so obscure as to disorient the reader and dismantle the basic binaries on which classic detective and crime fiction were predicated.
In classic noir or classic crime fiction there are clear detective heroes set up against indisputable villains (think of Sherlock Holmes) but in African crime fiction the heroes and villains often exchange roles or are complicit in some way.
Aretha Phiri: You describe this evolving genre as occupying a kind of borderland. How does this connect to your research in migration and diaspora?
Sam Naidu: In my work on literature of migration and diaspora I am mainly concerned with the experience of migrants. I am, however, also interested in how literary genres migrate. What processes of cross-pollination occur as a result of diaspora?
Aretha Phiri: What do you see African crime fiction contributing to Black Atlantic scholarship?
Sam Naidu: As a form of postcolonial, transnational writing, African crime fiction points to the relations between Africa and America. Gilroy’s Black Atlantic puts forward that race is fluid and ever-changing, rather than static. That it is transnational and intercultural, rather than national. I am arguing that African crime fiction represents race as a transnational or diasporic phenomenon while at the same time engaging with the notion that race is closely bound up with both nationality and ethnicity.
So, look at the detective hero figure Ishmael. He is an African-American who returns to Africa, gesturing, of course, to transatlantic slavery and colonialism. He’s neither African nor American – he is both. The novel explores his hybridity. At the same time, the novel presents Kenya as nation marred by ethnic clashes and wide-scale civil unrest.
African crime fiction, being the second most popular literary genre on the continent after romance, is worthy of study because of its accessibility, wide-spread, diverse readership and also its capacity for socio-political analysis. It is the ideal vehicle for such pertinent ‘detection’.
For those looking from the global North, African literature is often marketed in a narrow way, comprising worthy stories of resistance, written in an uplifting and sober realist mode. Seen from the continent itself, this view has long been brushed aside by the effervescence and animation of ongoing literary experimentation and creativity. I approached literary academic colleagues from South Africa, Kenya and Uganda to choose – and share their thoughts on – one of their favourite books of African fiction. The resulting finger-on-the-pulse list offers a bookshelf that speaks to the vibrancy of both contemporary and older African literature. – Isabel Hofmeyr
Waiting by Goretti Kyomuhendo
Susan Kiguli, Makerere University
The 2007 novel is set in the time of the war to get rid of the dictator Idi Amin. The main character, the adolescent Alinda, and her family have to hide from fleeing soldiers. It is an atmosphere of great angst and fear tinged with hope for the arrival of the liberators, who are a merged force of Ugandan exiles and Tanzanian soldiers. This short novel ingeniously handles the matter of the Lendu woman, the Indians and the Tanzanian soldiers with a blend of suspicion and optimism for the unknown and mystique suggested by foreigners.
The narrative thinks through the gaps and anxiety created by war, where ordinary citizens do not know what to expect. It describes the violence, victims and loss that come with lying in the path of fleeing soldiers and pursuing liberators. The setting is a village near Lake Albert at the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This is a novel depicting a situation of post-independence internal and cross-border conflict. It is a worthy read particularly because it resonates with this time when the world is tense under the weight of a marauding pandemic.
I used to think war meant violent clashes between human beings, but since the arrival of the coronavirus I think it includes human beings confronting disease.
The Wormwood Trilogy by Tade Thompson
Nedine Moonsamy, University of Pretoria
Tade Thompson’s The Wormwood Trilogy (Rosewater, The Rosewater Insurrection, The Rosewater Redemption) has been widely acclaimed. It was recently nominated for the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Series. For African readers, it is a watershed moment, marking the arrival of an African science fiction trilogy that we so needed and deserve. Set in the near future, these novels capture the interaction between an invading alien population, the Homians, and the citizens of Nigeria.
All three books hit the sweet spot between exploring what science fiction means to us – who, as the characters often point out, have been historically subjected to alien invasions – and the pleasure of simply imbibing well-written and pacy genre fiction.
Teeming with alien life, Wormwood is an extra-terrestrial biodome that embeds itself in Nigerian soil. Its sprawling tentacles provide organic power and, contrary to what one might imagine, people flock to the surrounding community of Rosewood because Wormwood also performs ritualistic acts of healing on sick human bodies.
In contrast to greater Nigeria, where power outages are still frequent and homosexuality illegal, Rosewood has all the makings of an African techno-utopia. Yet at the heart of the trilogy is the niggling question about whether it is ever possible for humans and aliens to co-exist with symbiotic ease.
The novels make use of sharp-witted, hard-boiled detectives to probe further into alien motives; Thompson’s female characters, in particular, are a testament to his talent as they bristle with an unsentimental brand of Nigerian humour. Getting to know these characters makes reading the trilogy rewarding in itself, but Thompson’s world building is a force to be reckoned with. The interweaving of chaotic Nigerian streets, alongside organic extra-terrestrialism and imagined human technologies, is handled skilfully, allowing readers to delve into a seamless African biopunk universe that makes us marvel at the potential of what is to come.
A General Theory of Oblivion by Jose Eduardo Agualusa
Grace A Musila, University of the Witwatersrand
On the eve of Angola’s independence in 1975, Portuguese expatriate Ludovica Fernandes Mano goes into isolation in her penthouse apartment in the city of Luanda, out of fear of the post-independence future. She seals off her apartment with bricks, withdrawing into a new life with her dog and her garden on the terrace, which keeps her fed. Her only connection to the outside world – which soon descends to a 27-year civil war – is her radio.
Angolan novelist Jose Eduardo Agualusa’s A General Theory of Oblivion is a riveting tapestry of history, detective fiction and poetic interludes, interwoven with poignant turns of phrase and absurdities delivered with a straight-faced candour. It is a perfect lockdown read, not because it is about isolation, but because Ludo’s self-isolation is filled with hilariously narrated encounters and adventures, including a trained messenger pigeon that keeps two young lovers in contact. Ludo uses small pieces of diamond to trap pigeons for food; but when her trap delivers a messenger pigeon with a note attached to its leg, Ludo decides to set it free so the lovers might receive their message – and with it, her swallowed diamonds.
Ludo spends her time writing out her reflections initially in notebooks, and later the walls of her apartment, using charcoal. We get to read excerpts of her poetic reflections; from whose philosophical musings the novel draws its title.
Her encounter with the messenger pigeon draws an intricate network of the world she has withdrawn from, into her sanctuary, eventually ending her 30-year isolation when a young burglar accidentally discovers her and forms a bond with the now elderly lady.
The novel is a patchwork of short, interconnected stories. They weave a web of connected lives which lend it an expansive and colourful range, through short, pacy, thriller-style chapters, interspersed with Ludo’s poetic reflections. This is a book you read when you want to be surprised, and to have your imagination stretched by startling turns of phrase, odd logic and lyrical philosophical observations about life.
Warm, occasionally absurd, humour renders the inevitable tropes of war-time – torture, executions and profiteering – bearable. Part of the novel’s charm lies in its eccentric characters, like the self-fashioned “collector of disappearances” who tracks disappearances of planes off air spaces, as well as more ordinary disappearances, such as the journalist who apparently vanished right before people’s eyes.
This 2015 novel is a stunning canvas of the historical devastation of the Angolan civil war and richly imagined textures of ordinary people’s everyday worlds told with great warmth and inventiveness.
Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
Sam Naidu, Rhodes University
At a time when the world is experiencing unprecedented restrictions to mobility, Freshwater offers a searing and illuminating narrative about various kinds of border-crossing and about being multiply-located. In this unusual, at times shocking, bildungsroman, Emezi’s protagonist, Ada, is the child of a Nigerian father and a Malaysian mother. From early childhood, and then increasingly as she approaches adulthood, it is clear that Ada exists in a liminal zone: between spirit and human worlds; between cultures and nations; and between sexualities and genders. In retrospect, the novel’s dedication, to
… those of us with one foot on the other side,
that is, to those who do not claim one single affiliation, but both or many, is economically apposite. This liminality is portrayed with astonishing vividness and through varying perspectives, often drawing on traditional Igbo mythology and cosmology to create imagery which is unsettling and challenging.
As an “African” novel, 2018’s Freshwater is innovative and irreverent in the way it marries African religious and cultural beliefs with “Western” geography, religious iconography and cultural symbols, ultimately defying literary categorisation, just as its protagonist repudiates predetermined categories of identity. (The novel is set in Nigeria and the US, and it deliberately presents Ada as a hybrid, transnational character.)
It also contains a rare combination of sensuous, brute physicality with the spiritual. By the end, it is clear that Ada cannot be claimed by her homeland or her diasporic home as she transcends even the human-spirit border to become something which is indefinable, “as liminal as is possible – spirit and human, both and neither”. This bold, contemporary novel captures the porousness of borders, which may prove disquieting for the reader, but also very liberating. In these times of lockdown, Freshwater transports the reader boldly to unexplored, uncanny territory.
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell
Sarah Nuttall, University of the Witwatersrand
I recommend Namwali Serpell’s 2019 Zambian tour de force The Old Drift. This is a long book – all 563 pages of it – by a writer whose prose and outsize imagination will hold you spellbound throughout. It’s a postcolonial family saga across three families and three generations. It is also the story of the great Zambezi river, and its capaciousness, capriciousness and capacity for revenge in the face of human-centred attempts to control it.
Serpell unfolds her canvas along two trace-lines of Zambian modernity: the building of the Kariba Dam, the biggest man-made dam in the world at the time of its construction; and Edward Nkoloso’s Zambian National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy and his attempts to send the first Afronauts to the moon. The novel is grounded in precisely rendered historical events but also has a partially speculative sweep. Its final scenes take place in 2023, with a smart techno-twist. The story is narrated not just from a human perspective but from that of a mosquito swarm, a “bare ruinous choir, a chorus of gossipy mites”.
This is a book that asks for your time – and now you’ve got it. Read. And be riotously rewarded.
Hunger Eats a Man by Nkosinathi Sithole
Manosa Nthunya, University of Pretoria
It may as well be the case that at this very trying historical time, it may be difficult to appreciate the offerings of fiction. After all, on a daily basis, we are being asked to read and reread the world, asking ourselves if the catastrophe that has befallen us will pass. What comfort, then, can fiction offer when the very future is at stake? But read on we must – and we do – because it remains an activity that allows us to see how large the world is, despite seeming very small at the moment.
A book that could be worthy of consideration is Nkosinathi Sithole’s Hunger Eats a Man (2014), a novel that examines the devastating effects of poverty in the rural areas of South Africa.
Much of the literature that is being produced in contemporary South Africa has a bias towards the city, with often very little reflection on the experiences of people who live in rural communities.
In this award-winning novel, Sithole opens a world that is marked by deep adversities, exploitation and an increasing disillusionment with a nation still learning how to crawl. It is a book worth reading, and reflecting upon, as we start counting down the inevitable costs of this catastrophic moment.
Broken Glass, by Alain Mabanckou
Tom Odhiambo, University of Nairobi
Alain Mabanckou’s fiction may not be known in much of Anglophone Africa but translation is making it easily available. Mabanckou’s 2005 Broken Glass, set in a bar, Credit Gone West, is a good read for times likes these – easy enough for someone interested in light reading; deep enough for someone looking for a nuanced depiction of African modernity. For those who can no longer access their beloved pub, it will remind you of the sounds, smells, sights, that only a bar can produce, from the beginning to the end.
The tragic life of Broken Glass, the narrator, who appears “self-quarantined” in the bar, mirrors those of the different characters in the society, whose stories we hear in the many anecdotes he tells. The dark humour, satirical tone, endless allusions, and lack of conventional punctuation (sometimes making it tedious to follow the tale), all build up to a dystopic story. But, in the end, the bizarre story in Broken Glass should surely lead you to search for more of Mabanckou’s novels.
Life and Times of Michael K by JM Coetzee
Aretha Phiri, Rhodes University
The oldie on the list, from 1983. An award-winning novel by JM Coetzee, Life and Times of Michael K evokes a desperately depressing sense of subjective fragility and existential nothingness – concerns for which the author is well known.
Set during a period analogous to civil war, it’s a story about a seemingly insipid and largely enigmatic character whose journeys across and encounters with inhospitable landscapes and unwelcoming communities from the Western Cape province to the Karoo see him, at the novel’s end, gathering water from a well with “a teaspoon and a long roll of string”.
And yet Michael K’s vacuous itinerancy also suggests something pathetically hopeful about the existential journey and signals something ironically prescient about the will to endure. Michael K is a sobering read for these testing times.
Literary prizes do more than offer recognition and cash to writers and help readers decide what book to choose. They shape the literary canon, a country’s body of highly regarded writing. They help shape what the future classics might be.
But what if Africa’s biggest prizes are awarded by foreign territories; former colonial masters? Or what if African-born writers in the diaspora are routinely chosen as winners over writers living and working in Africa?
Debates have been raging over these issues in recent years, especially relating to the lucrative Caine Prize for African Writing.
The words ‘award’ or ‘prize’ imply that there was a selection process and the best emerged as winner. The awarding of value to a text through the literary prize industry involves selection and exclusion in which some texts and authors are foregrounded, becoming the canon.
reconstruct a historical picture of how literary works are produced, disseminated, reproduced, reread, and retaught over successive generations and eras.
The issues are complex and the landscape is changing. My research covers how prizes create taste and canon – but also the increasing role played by literary organisations to shape those prizes and hence the canon.
Writers’ organisations mainly provide a social space for writers. There are dozens across the continent. Sometimes they include a publishing avenue, workshops, fellowships and competitions. In general, they have aimed to fill gaps left by mainstream literary bodies such as publishers, universities and schools, and book marketers.
To understand the process of creative writing on the African continent it’s useful to focus on the interrelationship between prize bodies and writers’ organisations in contemporary literary production.
The Caine, the Commonwealth and writers’ organisations
The Commonwealth, an initiative of the Commonwealth’s agency for civil society, awards unpublished fiction. The Caine, a charity set up in the name of the late literary organiser Sir Michael Caine, only accepts already published work. The cash reward that comes with winning these prizes is a major factor in their popularity on the continent.
But they are also significant in the growth of the short story genre. This is why I am interested in the partnerships that have emerged between prize bodies and writers’ organisations. Together they are influencing literary production structures from creative writing training to publishing and marketing texts.
Both the Caine and the Commonwealth prizes have partnered with African based writing organisations – like Uganda’s FEMRITE and Kenya’s Kwani? – to organise joint creative writing workshops.
The Caine holds annual workshops for its longlisted writers. These mostly take place in Africa, working with local writers’ organisations. Sometimes the resulting writing is entered into competitions and in this way, the prize body both produces and awards literary value.
Many of these writers’ organisations are headed by people who were canonised through the international prize, and sometimes the writing trainers and competition judges are also previous winners.
With such links it then becomes important to analyse the literary texts produced within these networks with the awareness of the importance of a text’s social, cultural and political context. The literary product becomes a reflection of the different systems of power at play.
Power at play
A good illustration of this power play can be found in best-selling Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story Jumping Monkey Hill. It tells of a fictional creative writing programme for African writers run by the British Council. The story, set in South Africa, narrates the experiences of the writers, who are all expected to write about African realities in order to have their stories published internationally. The writers come to the workshop ready to learn how to improve their skills but encounter setbacks mainly because the trainer has a preconceived idea of what ‘plausible’ African stories should be. These writers have to understand the power play in place and then make a choice.
Jumping Monkey Hill acknowledges the role played by the creative writing institution in the production of literature as a commodity that must fit market demands. For this reason, the increasing investment of African based writers’ organisations in the literary production scene can also be understood as a political move. It is also an effort to influence the literature coming out of the continent and shape the canon.
Why writers’ organisations matter
Contemporary African writers’ organisations are deliberately involved in canon formation by taking an active role in the production and distribution of literature. They understand that the uneven distribution of economic and cultural capital results in misrepresentations, or lack of representation, within the canon.
Writers’ organisations such as FEMRITE, Kwani?, Farafina, Writivism, Storymoja and Short Story Day Africa, among others, are active in the literary industry through publishing, creative writing programmes and providing access to major award organisations and international publishers.
They are, in the process, contributing to canon formation.
Short Story Day Africa, for instance, pegs its yearly competitions on the promise that the winning stories will be automatically submitted for the Caine Prize. In fact, the 2014 Caine winning story and one other shortlisted story were initially published in its anthology Feast, Famine and Potluck (2013).
In the African academy, creative writing is usually offered as a single course within a larger programme or is available only at selected universities. This has resulted in a market gap that has been quickly ﬁlled by writers’ organisations. They fill this gap by offering short term courses on various aspects of creative writing. This is in part because the local literary organisation possesses the cultural capital necessary to link writers to prize organisations and publishers, and therefore to global visibility.
In 2007 the then President of China, Hu Jintao, delivered a speech to South Africans acknowledging the benefits of a strategic partnership. He also stressed that the connection is not merely pragmatic. It must, he argued, serve to honour and deepen the countries’ long abiding friendship in the future.
The idea of friendship has undoubtedly informed the nature of Sino-African engagement. But if we use contemporary science fiction as a barometer, African sentiment towards China appears more inclined towards dystopian forecasts.
Science fiction writing often serves as a thought experiment that explores shared and hidden beliefs whose material and political reverberations lie further in the future. Various short stories portray how China’s economic ascension, operating under the guise of African development, uses technology as a means to invade and control Africa.
Narratives of this kind surface neo-colonial fears that a “new scramble for Africa” seems imminent. But they also provide a speculative arena to interrogate how we ultimately perceive the value, use and future of Sino-African political friendship.
As I’ve explored in my research, this means that science fiction can serve as an imaginative production of political theory. It intercedes in ways that international relations cannot because of the confines of diplomacy.
My research focused on three short science fiction stories from Africa.
In the first, Tendai Huchu’s “The Sale”, China has taken control of Zimbabwe through the production of a corporatised state called CorpGov. It’s a surveillance state that leaves no room for political dissension. Zimbabwe has been purchased by China in a piecemeal fashion. It is now set to lose its last free portion of land in a final sale. When a young Zimbabwean man fails to prevent the sale of this remaining plot of land, he succumbs to despair and puts himself in the path of a Chinese bulldozer.
His suicide evokes a sense of profound helplessness and warns that China will need to be vehemently counteracted in the near future to protect Zimbabwe’s already breached borders. Huchu’s narrative provides a sharp sense of clarity that makes the story incredibly impactful.
The pathos of “The Sale” holds a mirror up to China. It communicates an earnest appeal for more humane engagement. Yet the heaviness of its dystopian narrative also breeds a spirit of nihilism or Afropessimism. This overrides any sense of African accountability in the degenerative state of future Sino-Zimbabwean relations.
Abigail Godsell’s “Taal” (an Afrikaans word meaning “language”) is self-conscious in this regard. It’s set in the year 2050, after a nuclear war between China and America has left the entire globe in a state of desolation. As a result, the South African government willingly signed over ownership of the country to China in exchange for protection.
The central protagonist, an especially resentful young woman named Callie, has joined a militant rebel group in a covert attempt to overthrow the Chinese. But after injuring a soldier, she pulls off his helmet and is surprised that he converses in Afrikaans because, to all other appearances, he is Chinese. The fact that he speaks Afrikaans implies he is a South African. She is stupefied by the exchange: it highlights her simplistic understanding of what the enemy should look like.
This uncanny revelation undoubtedly draws attention to the spectral presence of Chinese-South Africans who have not received due recognition as bona fide citizens.
Callie, who is initially critical of Chinese propaganda, begins to read her positionality as a South African freedom fighter on equally problematic terms. Her defensiveness drops and she confesses that South Africa was caught off-guard amid a global crisis. The country did not have a sufficient national security plan; China has offered significantly more protection than the South African government was capable of at the time.
Godsell’s introspective narrative shift focus away from Chinese agitation. It allows the reader to consider the nature of South African apathy by conveying that the country may not lack a fighting spirit but, unlike China, lacks the necessary foresight and organisation to bolster the nation.
Negative representations of China in the African imaginary gesture at the idea that a certain amount of envy informs the continent’s responses to China. They also suggest that African countries can benefit from emulating China’s uncompromising nationalistic and commercial drive. This possibility is more fully explored in Mandisi Nkomo’s “Heresy”.
Nkomo’s narrative is set in the year 2040. South-South interactions challenge the global status quo. China has risen in global economic rankings. But South Africa has not fallen under its sway: the nations are caught up in a highly competitive space race. South Africa is determined to not be outdone by the Chinese and channels its resources in meeting this goal.
“Heresy” conveys how Africans can construct an invisible enemy out of China by exponentially accelerating South African development. This light-hearted narrative assumes the challenge of imagining the current tension of Sino-African relations otherwise. It shows how friendly rivalry can inadvertently lead to African progress.
In their book Friendship and International Relations, academics Andrea Oelsner and Simon Koschut write that it is:
necessary to think of international friendship not as something that is merely being performed at the intergovernmental level but as something that is being enacted in the day-to-day activities and imaginations at all levels of society.
This certainly includes science fiction narratives that present us with a “succession of literary experiments, each one examining a small part of a much larger image and each equally necessary to the greater vision”.
Through these short stories, it immediately becomes possible to consider how China-Africa relations need not result in Chinese neocolonialism and African exploitation. They offer us more creative approaches to political friendship by reinventing and reinterpreting the roles of both parties in their narratives.
Similarly, pursued in this way, the future of China-Africa relations need not be seen as a singular act of solidarity that demands repeating. Instead it could be viewed as a more fluid encounter that allows for mutual investment in world-building projects while also providing enough objective distance to nurture difference and autonomy.


6 Best Dog Drying Towels (2019 Review) – TreeHousePuppies
As a professional 6 Best Dog Drying Towels (2019 Review) – TreeHousePuppies product manufacturer in China, we can provide high quality product and sevice.In order to meet your diverse requirements for products, we continue to improve product design and production capacityIn the following article, we list the specific parameters and manufacturing details of dog bath towel microfiber so that you can understand.It is a pleasure for our factory that our products can help your business.It's easy to do a good job of a product, but to do a good job of all products depends on high quality service.Thank you for making us acquainted.
As many pet owners know, a superb dog towel is helpful for loads of factors. They’re effortless in the motor vehicle, to retain fur and pet hair off the upholstery. They’re excellent to have handy after a day on the seaside or a protracted hike. They’re oh-so useful stashed within the mudroom to wipe down your pet’s legs and paws after a wet walk. And even after a pretty good ancient original bath (and your pet’s necessary shake), they’re staggering for slicing down on the dreaded wet dog odor.
unlike human towels that come in plenty of distinctive fabrics, dog towels are sometimes product of microfiber, a cloth that’s greater absorbent than cotton, if just a little much less delicate. Microfiber dog towels are widely used for being purposeful, light-weight, and short-drying. They’re also less likely to lure fur than commonplace cotton bathtub towels, a huge plus on account that pets are inclined to shed a good deal of hair when they develop into moist.
Take a look below on the ten most suitable dog towels that we’ve discovered for tackling wet fur, muddy paws, and the wide selection of messes a pet could make.


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Introducing C365’s Slip Catcher
When the powers that be at Cricket365 contacted my people about the possibility of contributing a regular betting column, I didn’t need asking twice. Granted I’ll never be mistaken for David effing Gower but I like to think of myself as something of a scholar of the game.
My credentials? I once made an unbeaten 177 in a Teesbrooke Avenue street game using a set of aluminium step ladders as a wicket on a very lively tarmac surface age just 13. Alas puberty, fast women and MD 20/20 soon came into my life and I essentially chose the path of Oliver Reed rather than Sunil Gavaskar.
To business then. India took an unassailable 2-0 lead in their Test series against England after an eight-wicket win inside four days in Mohali. It was a Test match to forget for the tourists, who along with being well and truly spanked also lost one of their top performers of the series.
The gritty Haseeb Hameed headed home for surgery on a broken finger. The Lancashire teenager exits India with a dodgy digit but head held high after grinding 219 runs at an average of 43.80.
With Hameed out of the equation and England reeling, India have rather unsurprisingly been chalked up as heavy betting jolly’s for the fourth Test starting on December 8 and they are as short as 4/11 in places to win a third Test match on the spin.
Speaking of spin, for me England seem to have got it wrong in this series in their pig-headed persistence to play three spinners. Zafar Ansari and latterly Gareth Batty have been used yet brought so little to the party it’s almost been laughable.
It’s certainly affected the balance of this England team and surely in Mumbai England will look to play to their strengths and play a fourth seamer?
India are deserving favourites here but it’s not all doom and gloom for Alastair Cook’s men, who won in Mumbai in 2012 with Cook himself scoring a brilliant first innings ton in that one.
It looks a decent batting track and if recent call up Keaton Jennings can replicate his red hot county form then England will surely make a better fist of it than they did in Mohali?
The draw is available at 5/1 and looks a fair price under the circumstances, especially given that my source tells me it’s going to be a decent batting track. No matter that my ‘source’ is a geezer called Big Dave from Islington who sells moody Sky boxes.
Before all that, Australia face New Zealand in what’s sure to be a keenly contested Chappell – Hadlee one day series, starting on December 4. The Aussies will be keen to switch focus to the white ball following their recent demoralising Test series loss to South Africa.
They’ve seen a fairly significant overhaul of their Test team but they remain the best ODI outfit in the world and will be looking forward to renewing hostilities with the Black Caps, a team who’ve they’ve had in their pocket for years now.
Indeed, since beating Australia in Adelaide on their first visit back in 1980, New Zealand have won only 17 of 60 matches contested in this format, and 37 of their 130 overall. That’s by far and away the Aussies’ best record against any of the top eight ODI nations.
With the outrageously gifted Glenn Maxwell back in the side, Australia start as 2/5 shots to win the series, and they are 4/9 to win this first game at the SCG. However those prices look a little short when you consider the Floppy Gold lost a ODI series 5-0 in South Africa for the first time in their history not so long ago.
Furthermore, when these teams contested the last Chappell – Hadlee series back in 2015 it was NZ who won 2-1. There’s also the Lockie Ferguson factor. The Auckland speedster is raw but has been clocked at 150kph and snared an impressive 77 first-class victims in just 22 matches.
He will be pumped to get at Australia here and the word is he could start in Sydney. He’s a 5/1 chance to finish the series as top New Zealand bowler and that looks a decent shout given there are fitness doubts surrounding Trent Boult.
The Aussies showed against South Africa they are not the force of old but NZ make the short trip across the ditch without retired Kiwi legends Brendan McCullum and Daniel Vettori. This Black Caps squad is short on experience but not ambition, talent or bottle.
In short they are plenty good enough to take this series to the wire.
Bilko’s Banker: Australia to win ODI series v New Zealand 2-1 at 11/8 (Sky Bet)
Next Best: India v England fourth Test draw at 5/1 (bet365)
Outside Edge: Lockie Ferguson to be top NZ bowler v Australia at 5/1 (Coral)
By Derek Bilton
De Villiers names all-time IPL XI, names Dhoni as captain
Ahead of the start of the new IPL season, Royal Challengers Bangalore star AB de Villiers has named his all-time XI of the competition.
Feroze Khushi keen to move on from Essex celebrations incident
Khushi, a practicing Muslim, had alcohol poured over him as Essex players celebrated winning the Bob Willis Trophy at Lord’s last September.
Ollie Pope recalls moment England knew success in India would be uphill struggle
Pope revealed he was told by India’s captain Virat Kohli: “This is the last of the flat wickets.”
Chennai Super Kings: Hazlewood withdraws from IPL 2021
Jos Hazlewood became the third Australia international to withdraw from the 2021 edition of the Indian Premier League.
Ollie Robinson grateful for ‘invaluable’ time spent with two of England’s finest
The 27-year-old spent last summer travelling, netting, chatting and watching two all-time greats in James Anderson and Stuart Broad.
Tammy Beaumont believes the new season heralds 10 years of growth for the sport
The 29-year-old had an impressive winter series in New Zealand and topped the ICC ODI batting rankings.
Sir Alastair Cook open to keeping county cricket career going past this season
The former England captain’s three-year contract with Essex expires after the 2021 campaign.
Jason Roy can renew partnership with Jonny Bairstow after signing for Sunrisers
England stars Roy and Bairstow will be reunited at the franchise.
Dan Lawrence happy with first England steps on ‘challenging’ subcontinent tour
The 23-year-old made his long-awaited Test debut in Sri Lanka in January.

domain: sports


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For research at various archives of science and astronomy and at Jain religious archives in India leading to a multi-part art project titled The Weather Inside Me. The project will trace the history of science, weather and solar observations in India from pre-colonial to post-colonial times. The religious archives will be referenced to investigate the centrality of the sun in Jainism and its resulting impact on time and memory in our lives.
For the sturdy of vintage educational film footage the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) archives, produced as part of the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) programme. This programme was established by NASA and ISRO in 1975-76 to impart a ‘modern and scientific outlook to rural India’. The fellowship outcome will be a symposium and, subject to availability of further funding from other sources, a film using the found footage.
For research and documentation of the visual cultures of Northeast India, focusing on contemporary arts practices in Shillong, Guwahati and Silchar. The research will recalibrate the centre-periphery dichotomy that comes into play when engaging with the art history and practices of the Northeast, by looking at the ‘regional modernisms’ in the context of the North-East geographical and cultural affinities with South Asia and South East Asia. The project will result in an online archive, which will function as an alternative resource to supplement currently available pedagogies of art history and criticism.
For research and the making of a film on the satirical poetic tradition in Dakhani known as Mizahiya Shairi. A vibrant form in the 1940s, this tradition is now in decline, not only due to the fading syncretic socio-cultural fabric of the city of Hyderabad but also because of the erosion of the Hyderabadi style of literary Urdu and the arts associated with it. The film will explore the complex relationship between Dakhani as a regional linguistic form and the socio-political factors shaping its contemporary use.
For the translation of a three-volume book, Marathi Natkachya Tees Ratri: Ek Samajik Rajkiya Itihas from Marathi to English. The book chronicles the socio-political history of modern Marathi theatre and has the potential to inform and enrich the more mainstream, but sometimes blinkered English language discourse on the arts. An earlier IFA grant had supported the research and writing of the book.
For the creation of a multi-channel video installation titled ‘Between the Waves’, which uses text and dance choreography to explore contemporary conceptual understandings of the relationship between Animal – Human – Machine – Divine. Drawing upon Donna Haraway and Virginia Woolf, along with theories of evolution and existing religiocultural practices, the project will highlight the inevitability of interstitial existence and challenge received notions of gender, race, evolution and consciousness.
For a storytelling and visual arts workshop for children from Chizami in Nagaland. In the absence of any encouragement for the visual arts in Nagaland, this project will give the children the opportunity to explore their creativity by engaging with various styles of narration, visualization and illustration. The workshop will result in a book of stories illustrated by the children as well as exhibitions of their artworks.
For research into the Drupad tradition and its transmission within the Dagar gharana. They study will examine how notions of tradition, authenticity and the gharan are constructed through the processes of teaching and learning at the Dagar gurukul in Panvel. The project will result in a monograph and audio-visual documentation.
For research towards a book on Clearing House, a publishing collective started by four poets in Bombay in the mid 1970s. The book will also look at the emergence of Bombay’s small press movement and the city’s cultural and political ambiance during that period. The primary source for the book will be the archive of poet Adil Jussawala, the first publisher of Clearing House, which consists of hundreds of letters exchanged between the poets of the collective, reviews of the books they published and their responses to these reviews, among other material.
For collaboration between four young directors to devise a Marathi stage adaptation of Attempts on Her Life, a play by Martin Crimp. The production will use mobile scenic design and multimedia images to explore the social and psychological complexities of the central character and examine the crisis of identity in contemporary society in Maharashtra.

domain: library


Designed for simple wall-hung installation.
Philips has been producing some cracking LCD TVs recently (the brilliant 42in Cineos 42PFL9703/10 for example) and it doesn’t look set to stop its quest to have a TV for everyone. Take the Essence TV 42PES0001 for instance, a 42in set specifically designed for wall-hung installation.
While most TVs can, of course, be hung from a wall, most users wouldn’t ever do such a thing. According to Philips’ over half of LCD buyers would like a wall-mounted installation but only 10 per cent actually follow through on that desire, citing complexity and weight as the main preventing factors. At 16Kg, the Essence definitely can’t be classed as heavy and at 38mm thick, it’s hardly fat either. And, to help with wall-mounting the TV, it is supplied with a ‘smart’ self-levelling bracket which will ensure the TV sits straight, even if the bracket itself isn’t attached to the wall perfectly horizontally.
Installation-helping tomfoolery aside, the TV also boasts some pretty decent image quality-centric specs. A dynamic contrast ratio of 60,000:1 should mean good blacks and Philips’ Perfect Pixel HD Engine will doubtless take care of everything else – especially if past performance is anything to go by. A 2ms panel offering 100Hz processing should ensure smooth pictures, too, input via three HDMI ports and a variety of other inputs – although quite what those are isn’t specified.
Available this month with an MSRP of £1,999 the Essence is hardly cheap, but with Philips’ at the top of the LCD game right now, it will almost certainly be a justified price. A late addendum sent to Santa may be in order.


Pro Bono News
Legal Help Coming to Domestic Violence Victims (NY)
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
- The Oneida Daily Dispatch
Legal Help Coming to Domestic Violence Victims
"PENN YAN — Safe Harbors of the Finger Lakes will be getting more than $100,000 to provide legal services to crime victims, especially victims of domestic violence.
The Penn Yan-based agency, which serves Ontario, Seneca and Yates counties, will be getting a $104,572 grant through the state Office of Victim Services. State officials announced several area grants in October, which is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Marisa Rubé, Safe Harbors’ executive director, said the grant will fund a three-year contract with Geneva-based Legal Assistance of Western New York. A full-time attorney and part-time paralegal will handle the civil court needs of Safe Harbors clients, which could include matrimonial, custody, immigration and financial issues.
“Crime victims, especially domestic violence victims, have a myriad of legal needs that need to be addressed,” Rubé said. “Lack of affordable legal counsel in our area is a huge roadblock for victims, who often end up appearing in court with no representation if they do not qualify for assigned counsel.
“We are excited to be partnering with LawNY on this project, as their attorneys are incredibly knowledgeable about these types of cases.”
Six victim assistance programs in the Rochester/Finger Lakes region are getting $1.7 million in federally funded grants through the state Office of Victim Services..."


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Food additives, particularly Red40, is being discussed now with its potential ties to hyperactivity in children and adolescents. Many families are trying elimination diets, where they completely eliminate foods with Red40 from their children’s diet. This can be quite challenging, as a simple Google search pulled up the following foods (and many more…)
– pre-made frostings to make the golden, vanilla color.
– Pillsbury crescent rolls, frostings, supreme cake mix, and pie crust
– candy: red, dark brown, chocolate/coffee flavored, cinnamon, Altoids Cinnamon mints, M&Ms, Skittles, pink or cinnamon flavored chewing gum
– Diary: yogurt and ice cream – strawberry, raspberry, cherry flavors
– Drinks: Strawberry Kiwi V8 Splash, Hi-C, Ginger Ale, Gatorade, Crystal Light mix, Kool-Aid mix, Ocean Spray Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice, Lipton Brisk Iced Tea
– Sauces: Kraft BBQ Sauce, red tomato sauces, beef-flavored seasonings
– Snacks: Doritos, Toaster Strudel, Maraschino cherries, Hershey’s Syrup, Twinkies, Nutri-Grain bars, Pop-Tarts, Jello: mix, pre-made, and sugar-free-instant cups, Quaker Chewy Granola bars and fruit & oatmeal bars
Once again, this is just a sample of the more popular foods and brands.
When looking at this list, it made me think – an elimination diet of Red40 is primarily an elimination diet of processed foods in general. Is the focus of Red40 taking away from the bigger picture – a lifestyle of more wholesome, natural foods for your children and family?
If a child or anyone in your family suffers from ADHD or other forms of hyperactivity, an elimination diet of Red40 and food additives may be worth a shot. BUT, it may be time that we look at the bigger picture: teaching children about healthy, wholesome foods, why we eat them, what they do, and why they are important both for now and their health in the future. This could be a vital turning point where return to the theory that food is fuel, not a reward, and not a way to just “give the kids what they want” – which is exactly what the major brand’s marketing team wants.
This is by no means an easy process and is definitely easier said than done. Meeting with a Registered Dietitian can help give you meal, snack, and meal planning ideas for you and your family. Involving the whole family is also very important so that everyone is being supportive of the process and no one is being “singled out” or feeling like they have to eat “special foods.”
Lastly – decreasing processed foods and trying to incorporate a more wholesome diet and lifestyle does NOT happen overnight… or in a week… or in a month. You must allow yourself time to see what works for you and your family, what routines you can develop, what recipes work, etc. Having support from your family and the counseling of a Registered Dietitian can make this process successful!
The holiday season is almost upon us and this time

domain: food


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I had a catch-up with some old work colleagues last week in a part of the city that I rarely visit. On the walk back down Flinders Lane to get to the train station, I noticed some decent street art on a Laneway wall. Flinders Ct is a narrow laneway between Flinders Lane and Flinders St and runs parallel to Elizabeth St. I recognised one of the old factory/warehouse buildings in the middle of the lane and realised that this laneway was one I had explored before when looking for old architecture but at that time there hadn’t been any art work. The work looks fairly fresh and is mostly complete murals. I went back earlier this week and photographed the various walls…I will be adding this new site to my regular survey walks.
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domain: artistic


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The migrants are from Central America .
I wonder if that may be the reason why I posted the helicopter ride pic…
really activates your almonds
“What’s a pinochet a kind of wine?”
Nah, I’m good.
If you think celebrating torture and assassination is fine well…that’s your problem.
One day it just might be you. Your kid.
You guys need to visit Chile. The cost of “development” and “being teh best in the region” is rather high. Lost of people trampled to pave teh road, to make way for large conglomerates and large land ownes to take control. Bad work conditions ignored…sounds familiar, right? Communism Chinese style in practice, but under a different banner, with less profits, but still the same ticking bomb below.
Ask venezuela how rich they were. And why they embraced the pied piper Chaves.
If they’re proud enough of their country to march with the Honduran flag, aren’t they marching in the wrong direction?
Chile has Lithium in huge quantities. Potential to be rich …if they don’t steal the money.
only MSM show people marching every time. Would take months. Lot of trucks helping people move faster.
over 1000 miles at the shortest. infantry can maybe march 25 miles a day. do the math.
25 miles a day, 100 miles in 4 days, 1000 miles in…day before midterms! yay.
so, did they bring machetes for the coastal route or water for the desert route?
maybe there’s watering stations like in a marathon race.
…which ia being depleted by China…And you do not want to know what the cost of getting lithium is.
Because the US supported the banana barons, the drug barons, the civil war…There is a pattern here. If there is a fire, do not add gasoline.
France not long ago was occupied by Germany, they’re doing ok now.
Italy had the dictator hung in a public square while his wife was raped by the mob, they’re doing ok now.
Germany lost two wars and got rekt by international sanctions for decades, they’re doing ok now.
Japan lost a war and was nuked twice, they’re doing ok now.
The Ussr became a failed state not long ago, they’re doing ok now (maybe less so than others, but still)
I know the definition of “doing ok” isn’t the same for everyone and some countries are doing more ok than others, but I don’t see the validity of the argument :“country X would be doing ok but the cia did something bad 40 years ago”.
Regarding the caravan, I’ve seen many photos of injured Mexican officials, looks like the caravan of peace is doing good.
40, 20, 10, 5 … who´s counting.
There shouldn´t be any complains from the current administration, as they have risen in polls by drawing the proverbial sacrificial lamb. Or dead horse.
Again, caravans have been going up North since the wars. There were special provisions set. The first time they kicked people out we got the maras. I fear for what we will get this time.
Honestly idk what is the best solution. I just know they have to do the leg work. If they aren’t willing to the leg work for fixing their problems, another country coming in to do it won’t solve the problem. They’ll just go stright back to where they were or worse. Countries that figured it out take pride even if it’s not their generation that made that sacrifice. Americans, Italians, French, even Taiwan all take pride in forming republics and democratizing and such. They will never feel this and make their countries better if they don’t do it themselves. The best the US or another country can do is offer support.
Yep Look at Singapore 60 years ago… Poorer than most of these countries in Latin America. They had almost no land, No Fresh Water(needed to import from Malaysia) No natural resources. A mosquito/malaria ridden swamp thats war torn from Japanese occupation following British Colonial rule. Enemies on all saide and then Malaysia kicked them out. It took a lot of hard work and cleaning up corruption/educating the population and getting rid of Tribal mentality. Then had to integrate a very diverse population in a fair way for an ethnically/religious diverse country. They had every right to blame the British Colonizers and just play victum and if Singapore remained a poor backwaters country that just blamed the Japanese and Brits it would have made some sense. But they worked hard and turned the country around to one of the richest, safest, among the least corrupt govts in the world using no natural resources other than their population.

domain: geography


text:
If there’s any kind of warning I would have to give you before you watch “Lungs” and “Every Brilliant Thing,” it’s to come with open ears and open hearts.
This is because both plays by Duncan Macmillan require utmost and rapt attention if you truly want to allow yourself to be moved by both pieces.
Presented under the banner of Sandbox Fest 2023, the two plays form a twin-bill experience, meaning you can watch the two Macmillan plays on the same day, with just one ticket.
“Lungs” follows conversations and moments between M and W, played alternately by Reb Atadero and Sab Jose, and Justine Peña and Brian Sy. It starts off with the young adult couple deciding (or “having a conversation!”) whether to have a child. Amid various circumstances like the worsening climate crisis, the ailing economy, and the troubling, messed-up side of society, is it really right and good to bring forth another human into this world?
It is this loaded and complex question—er, conversation—that kicks off the show’s first act. The audience, seated in the round, witnesses all of the couple’s interactions. From their back and forth in Ikea, to their morning niceties, even to the most intimate moment preceding their love-making. Like a fly on the wall, the audience is privy to every word, every hushed sentence—from calming whispers to long, overthought tirades.
These conversations are familiar: either one had personally with loved ones, or thoughts we may have pondered on some sleepless nights. It’s all too relatable, too real; knowing how hard it is to live on this planet as it is now, we can only imagine how much worse it might get for future generations (or how much better, if we’re being hopeful). And knowing what we know now about how adults and the environment shape a child as they grow… it begs the question: Are we good enough adults to raise a good human being?
I watched Jose and Atadero bring this story to life on Sandbox Fest’s opening weekend, and it was both a ride and a treat seeing them give a voice to the questions and scenarios I (and many of us adults) have.
Jose’s and Atadero’s characters are seemingly a case of opposites attract: W is a post-graduate student, smart, a voracious reader, and more socially aware. Meanwhile, M is a freelancer, a musician, whose reading habits have only been developed by his relationship with W. He’s creative, quite charming, and has an energy and vibe that just matches up to W’s even if they appear to come from worlds apart. Atadero’s M is also able to balance out, even pacify the oftentimes erratic overthinker in Jose’s W. Definitely the kind of couple with a fascinating and compelling story—and the play shows us exactly what that is.
“Lungs” shows us all the very real problems and situations we encounter not just in our relationships, but throughout life, adulthood, too. How do we compromise when we decide we want something so life-changing as wanting and raising a child? How do we deal with loss, and how do we comfort each other amidst this? Do we give each other space? Do we need to say anything, or should this all be obvious? How do you manage when someone you thought you’d build a life with breaks your trust? What do you do when they find themselves back in your life?
True to the show’s title, you’ll really need to make use of your lungs to catch your breath by the end of it. Partly because of how the material is paced—it’s packed with dialogue, and there are no distinct transitions between the changing of the scenes. We jump through moments and milestones in M and W’s lives, almost as if we’re trying to catch up with them. And that’s what makes it so important to listen. (Much like real life, which passes by us in a flash if we don’t pay attention.) But you’d probably also need to steady your breathing by the end of it, if, like me, you’re likely to be moved to tears.
But for all the weighty questions and conversations ”Lungs” has put forth, it ends in what I’d like to think of as a softness of breath. One of a life fully lived, and one that despite all the odds, ends with hope that it all turns out for the better.
The second act is the more interactive “Every Brilliant Thing,” featuring Kakki Teodoro, Teresa Herrera, and Jon Santos alternating for the role of narrator. (Santos is set to perform the Filipino translation of the play entitled “Bawat Bonggang Bagay.”)[READ: 5 brilliant things about the one-woman play ‘Every Brilliant Thing’]
The one-(wo)man show follows the narrator as they share details of their life, changed and influenced greatly by their mother’s struggle with her mental health.
The narrator, as a young child, comes up with a list of “every brilliant thing” as a way to inspire their mother to find reasons to keep living. The list continues to evolve and expand throughout their life, and soon becomes an inspiring tool for more people—the audience included. It’s not surprising that many show-goers find themselves inspired to list down their own brilliant things—reminders for gratitude and a life worth living.
But what truly makes the show interactive is how the narrator actively involves almost each and every member of the audience, be it by assigning them one brilliant thing (slips of paper with numbered items are handed out randomly, and are to be read out loud when the narrator calls out specific numbers), or actually asking them to play the roles of certain key people in the narrator’s life—from their father, their school counselor, college professor, and even lover.
This time around, I watched Teodoro’s take on the story, and what really stood out for me was how totally engaging and welcoming she was.
Even before the play began, amid intermission, she was already making her rounds through the small theater space, trying to get to know the audience of the day. Her disposition has been so warm that it’s easy to relax and allow yourself to be vulnerable. Although the material has its serious points, especially as it talks about depression, suicide, and the proper way to talk about it, Teodoro was able to delicately steer the show, taking the entire audience through high and low points—laughter and tears—with much care.
I also appreciated how even if she was essentially performing the original English version of the play, the production this time around was able to insert more local references (think Katinko, iconic OPM diva songs!). Teodoro also didn’t shy away from responding to her audience co-actors in Filipino when it seemed natural to do so.
The brilliant thing about this play is that even if its story doesn’t change, each show is still guaranteed to be different and fresh. A more forthright co-actor in the role of the narrator’s lover may induce a more kilig-filled show, while a more empathetic co-actor for the school counselor could very well be as capable of bringing the rest of the room to tears as well as the narrator could. (That’s exactly what happened during the show I watched.)
It takes great improvisation and a lot of openness for the actors like Teodoro to still navigate the show towards its intended flow and message, despite half of the show basically being left to the air, at the hands of the audience for the hour.
But more than its technical aspects, what I truly appreciate about “Every Brilliant Thing” are the messages at its core. It was already gut-wrenching when I saw it for the first time in 2020. But seeing it again three years later after so much has changed in the world and in my personal life was just wholeheartedly cathartic.
Allow me to be a little vulnerable in this review (after all that is what the play requires): Coming into the theater, I knew my heart was going to be up for a bit of a beating. But I didn’t think I’d be a sobbing mess by the end. And all for a simple, almost so simply obvious message: Sometimes we’re happy, sometimes we’re sad, and that’s okay. If at some point in your life, you feel depressed, don’t give up. It gets better. There’s still going to be a brilliant thing—or a million brilliant things!—to live for.
There are so many shows I’d label as “necessary theater,” mostly for its social importance, but for “Every Brilliant Thing,” I’d say it’s necessary for your soul. Watch it. For yourself, more than anything else.
Sandbox Fest 2023 featuring “Lungs” and “Every Brilliant Thing”/“Bawat Bonggang Bagay” runs until July … at the BGC Arts Center. “Lungs” is directed by Caisa Borromeo, starring Sab Jose and Reb Atadero, and Justine Peña and Brian Sy. “Every Brilliant Thing” is directed by Jenny Jamora, featuring Kakki Teodoro, Teresa Herrera, and Jon Santos.

domain: entertainment


WASHINGTON — Six MLB greats spoke Sunday to an estimated crowd of 50,000 as they were inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
The players were Chipper Jones, James Thome, Vladimir Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman, Jack Morris and Alan Trammell.
Each gave speeches during an induction ceremony at the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown, New York.
The six played for several Major league teams. Jones played his entire carer, 19 seasons, for the Atlanta Braves.
Guerrero was in the outfield for the Montreal Expos from 1996 to 2003. The Expos moved to Washington and became the Nationals in 2004.
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text:
Intel Buys IIoT Firm Yogitech To Boost Functional Safety
Wed, 10 Apr 2024
- Intel have acquired semiconductor firm Yogitech in a bid to bolster their development of IIoT functional safety
- Yogitech specialise in assisted driver systems, robotics and autonomous machines – areas where functional safety is paramount.
- This acquisition will focus on developing chips for more IIoT devices in robotics and autonomous system situations, bolstered by Yogitech’s functional security capabilities
- Functional security is a hot topic in technology industry as there are serious concerns about protecting IIoT technology from security breaches.
Thu, 12 Jul 2018
Fri, 21 Sep 2018
Fri, 8 Jul 2016

domain: news


text:
This perennial weed can be cultivated in border plantings because they grow fast and are easy to care for. Within a short time, they can grow out of control and take over your garden or even creep into your lawn.
Now that you know what the weeds with purple flowers are called, you can decide what’s next.
In some cases, gardeners see the value of these weed flowers attracting bees, being edible, and having a medicinal effect. However, in some cases, if the purple flower weeds are a threat to the crops, you may eliminate them.

domain: agronomy


text:
Elton John performs Candle in the Wind at Diana's funeral
Sir Elton John’s remarkable music career has spanned nearly 60 years. From Your Song to Rocket Man and Can You Feel The Love Tonight, Elton, born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, has sold over 300 million records across more than 30 albums. But his touring career is coming to an end, and his London swansong has been confirmed for next year. The singer’s ‘Farewell Yellow Brick Road’ tour, featuring nearly 300 concerts worldwide, was put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic, but will resume later this year.
An estimated 65,000 people will flock to London Hyde Park for the British Summer Time festival to dance the night away to Crocodile Rock for one last time.
His encounter with Prince Philip, however, only confirms everything we knew about the late royal.
Writing in 2019, Elton opened up about his passion for football and Watford Football Club, for whom he became chairman in 1976.
He bought an Aston Martin painted in Watford colours ‒ yellow, with a red and black stripe.
Elton didn’t quite realise just how much attention the car attracted when driving near his house in Old Windsor.
Prince Philip gave Sir Elton John a piece of his mind over the singer's Aston Martin.
It turned out the vehicle had caught the Duke of Edinburgh’s eye, and made such an impression that he was searching for the driver to give them a piece of his mind.
Elton wrote in the Daily Mail: “I didn’t realise how much attention it had attracted until I was introduced to Prince Philip.
“‘You live near Windsor Castle, don’t you?’ he asked.
“‘Have you seen the bloody idiot who drives around that area in his ghastly car?
“It’s bright yellow with a ridiculous stripe on it. Do you know him?’”
Elton had to confess that he was the owner of the car.
The singer recalled sheepishly responding: “Yes, Your Highness. It’s actually me.”
He explained the Duke didn’t seem shocked or embarrassed by Elton’s confession, in fact quite the opposite.
Elton wrote “he seemed quite pleased to have found the idiot in question”, so he could make his feelings known.
It is worth noting this was the first time Elton had ever met the Duke, so his response must have taken the singer aback.
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The Duke said: “What the hell are you thinking?
“Ridiculous. Makes you look like a bloody fool. Get rid of it.”
Elton was no stranger to the Royal Family, a connection which first began in the Seventies when he was invited to dinner with Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong Jones, the Earl of Snowdon.
He later formed a close friendship with Princess Diana.
The pair first met at Prince Andrew’s birthday party in 1981 at Windsor Castle, before they “unexpectedly” fell out, Elton wrote in his 2019 autobiography.
Diana had promised to write the foreword for the book ‘Rock and Royalty’ put together by their mutual friend, Gianni Versace.
Elton wrote: “I think Buckingham Palace didn’t like the idea of a member of the Royal Family having anything to do with a book that featured shots of naked guys with towels draped around them.”
According to royal author Howard Hodgson, in his 2007 biography ‘Charles — The Man Who Will Be King’, Diana knew “it would not appeal to the more old-fashioned sensibilities of Prince Charles or his mother”.
She was “keen to build bridges” with the Firm at this point, despite no longer being a working royal.
Her statement at the time read: “I am extremely concerned that the book may cause offence to members of the Royal Family.
“For this reason I have asked for my foreword to be withdrawn from the book and I will not attend the dinner on February 18, which is intended to mark the book’s launch.”
More than £300,000 worth of tickets had been sold for the book launch, which Mr Hodgson said was “doomed” once she had released the statement.
Elton and the Princess of Wales’ feud later came to a close when Versace was assassinated. The singer claimed she phoned him and immediately apologised for their fallout.
Elton later rewrote his single ‘Candle in the Wind 1997’ in tribute to the princess, which sold over 33million copies worldwide and is the best-selling chart single of all time.
He performed the song live for the only time at the princess’ funeral in Westminster Abbey.
To this day, Sir Elton remains close with Diana’s two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry.

domain: celebrity


text:
Summary of Most Recent Meeting
April 17, 2017
1. SWEAR IN THOMAS PRATER TO THE CITY COUNCIL - ZONE 2.
2. ROLL CALL.
3. ELECTION OF MAYOR PRO TEMPORE.
4. SWEAR IN MAYOR PRO TEMPORE. (Councilwoman jan fisk was sworn in AS mAYOR PRO TEM)
5. APPROVAL OF MINUTES. April 11, 2017 (APPROVED AS PRESENTED)
6. FINALIZATION AND APPROVAL OF CONSENT AGENDAS. CITIZENS WISHING TO SPEAK TO OR REMOVE ITEMS FROM THE CONSENT AGENDAS MUST DO SO AT THIS TIME.
7. CEREMONIAL MATTERS. (SWORN IN)
Swear in Brittany O’Brien to the Mayor’s Commission for Human Rights and Community Relations.
Swear in Heather Hardinger to the Mayor’s Commission for Human Rights and Community Relations.
8. CITY MANAGER REPORT AND RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS RAISED AT THE PREVIOUS CITY COUNCIL MEETING.
Police Crime Stats
Police Chief Paul Williams has provided you with the March crime stats. You will notice that a big reason for a continued increase in property crimes is stolen vehicles. In March 2016, we saw a 50% increase in the number of stolen vehicles. In 2016, 40% of the vehicles stolen had the keys in them – including 15% of which the vehicle’s engine was running.
The PIO and Police Departments have teamed up for an awareness campaign that has started with radio spots. Here’s a couple of examples voiced by two of our officers: Nelson Kibby and Chris Laughlin.
Springfield-Greene County Park Board Director Bob Belote has provided a Parks update. Last Friday, Mayor Ken McClure was among those on hand for the grand opening ceremony for the news boardwalk at Dickerson Park Zoo. Thank you, Mayor.
Just a reminder that the very popular Cherry Blossom Kite and Piñata Festival will take place 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. this Saturday, April 22 at Nathanael Greene/Close Memorial Park. It will be followed by the Peace Through People Pavilion Dedication Concert and new statue unveiling.
We will begin our annual budget workshops May 2 and continue those each Tuesday through the month of May.
As you know, trying to meet a growth in service demand that outpaces the growth of revenue is a difficult balance. We take a conservative approach to revenue projections, (most of our revenues come from a volatile source: sales tax revenue) and we budget expenditures to make sure we live within our means. As you know from managing your personal household or business budgets, living within your means is a difficult task. It requires fiscal discipline and making tough decisions.
Congratulations to Mercy physician Dr. James T. Rogers, for being awarded the inaugural Harold K. Bengsch award. As a surprise, Bengsch was also awarded an honorary Bengsch Award in recognition of his significant public health legacy.
Dr. Rogers has had a career marked by self-described stubborn advocacy for public health and its importance for our community. He was known for convincing sometimes-doubtful businesses of the value and importance of flu vaccine, in particular. He helped lead Mercy’s smoking ban and then later supported the citywide ban.
9. SECOND READING AND FINAL PASSAGE.
10. RESOLUTIONS. Citizens May Speak. May Be Voted On.
11. Council Bill 2017-090. (McClure) (APPROVED 7-0 with Hosmer and fulnecky absent)
A resolution honoring Harold Bengsch on the occasion of the first Annual Harold K. Bengsch Award for Public Health Collaboration.
12. Council Bill 2017-091. (Ferguson) (removed from the agenda per the applicant’s request)
A resolution declaring the intent of the City of Springfield to annex approximately 2 acres of private property and approximately 0.27 acres of Greene County right-of-way, which annexation has been petitioned by the property owners, generally located at 4409 and 4413 South Kansas Avenue, generally referenced as Annexation A-1-17.
13. Council Bill 2017-092. (Prater) (APPROVED 7-0 with Hosmer and fulnecky absent)
A resolution declaring it necessary to construct sanitary sewers in Sanitary Sewer District No. 17 of Section No. 26 in the City, located in the general vicinity of Kearney Street and Lurvey Road; provide for payment therefore in the amount of $427,564.98; and provide for publications and notices.
14. Possible Addition To City Council Agenda; However, A Determination Of Whether It Will Be Added Will Be Made By City Council At The Meeting.
Council Bill 2017-096. (Ferguson) (added to the agenda - APPROVED 7-0 with Hosmer and fulnecky absent)
A resolution recognizing that cruising Kearney Street is a community tradition that brings neighborhoods together while promoting civic engagement and encouraging tourism.
15. EMERGENCY BILLS. Citizens May Speak. May Be Voted On.
16. Council Bill 2017-093. (Prater) (APPROVED 7-0 with Hosmer and fulnecky absent)
A special ordinance authorizing the City Manager, or his designee, to enter into a cost share agreement with BNSF Railway Company for coordinating participation by the City in the cost of a new concrete crossing surface at the existing crossing on Bennett Street; the City’s cost is estimated to be $63,044.00 to be funded from 1/8-Cent Transportation Sales Tax Intermodal Program funds; and declaring an emergency pursuant to City Charter Section 2.12.
17. PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS.
19. AMENDED BILLS.
20. PUBLIC HEARING.
21. FIRST READING BILLS. Citizens May Speak. Not Anticipated To Be Voted On.
22. Council Bill 2017-094. (McClure)
A general ordinance amending Chapter 2, Section 2‑92 of the Springfield City Code, known as the Salary Ordinance, relating to the salary rate and pay grade for certain job titles within the Golf Division and the Special Facilities Division of the Springfield-Greene County Parks Department, as contained in the Professional, Administrative and Technical (PAT) salary schedules, by reclassifying the position of Golf Course Supervisor (PAT 7) and Golf Course Superintendent (PAT 6), which will result in the addition of two new job titles, Golf Course Supervisor (PAT 8) and Golf Course Superintendent (PAT 7), and the deletion of two job titles, Golf Course Supervisor (PAT 7) and Golf Course Superintendent (PAT 6); and by also adding one new job title, Livestock Herdsman (PAT 5).
23. Council Bill 2017-095. (Prater)
A special ordinance authorizing the City Manager, or his designee, to enter into a cost share agreement with Hickory Valley, LLC for the purpose of upsizing sewer infrastructure in Hickory Valley Phase I and Phase II; and utilizing $62,956.10 of funds from the FY 2016-2017 Clean Water Services Fund. (Environmental Services staff recommends approval).
24. PETITIONS, REMONSTRANCES, AND COMMUNICATIONS.
25. NEW BUSINESS.
Confirm the following reappointment for Chief Municipal Court Judge: Todd M. Thornhill with a term to expire April 26, 2021. (CONFIRMED)
As per RSMo. 109.230 (4), City records that are on file in the City Clerk’s office and have met the retention schedule will be destroyed in compliance with the guidelines established by the Secretary of State’s office.
26. UNFINISHED BUSINESS.
28. CONSENT AGENDA – FIRST READING BILLS.
29. CONSENT AGENDA – ONE READING BILLS.
30. CONSENT AGENDA – SECOND READING BILLS.
31. END OF CONSENT AGENDA.

domain: law