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"Salute, compadres. You were young and
you died, and it's all over now...
Forest has nothing to do with trees, as of course
you know: it means an open hunting area, as opposed to park, an enclosed
hunting area. For the atavistic importance of hunting, (ie killing things)
as a Royal perquisite see (eg), John
King Fairbanks, China, A New History In C14 The Woodmote Court (a
mote court is like a pin number, mediaevals did it too) was held three
weeks after the first Tuesday in November, to judge serious offences.
Bit early here. The Ashdown Forest Online Guide provided some of the intriguing
facts in this chapter, the rest is from personal experience and Exploring
the Ashdown Forest, David Harrison.
SOFTWARE
RADIO
(the blurring of the boundaries
continued)
 "Since
Ax has the tranceiver, I will now knock-up my fake software digital radio
station again, and barewire it to the Aspidistra Mast..."
 We
who are about to die salute thee. Joanna Russ's last sf novel, a twisted
remake of her first, Picnic On Paradise. Anti-heroine you'll love to be
appalled by offs the rest of the few survivors of a transgalactic plane
crash, so she can starve to death in peace. Mad and compelling sf, oddly
this is not as popular as The Cold Equations, tho' it was John W Campbell
himself who insisted on the realist, downbeat ending that time.
FRANCIS SPUFFORD:
Hi Francis! Note the Hundred Acre Wood  feature,
dedicated to you.
 IPHIGENIA.
Was the daughter of Agamemnon. He believed
he had to sacrifice her, to get a fair wind for the Trojan War, &
there was hell to pay...
"Before we left, Fred told me that if he had advance
warning he'd get word to me, personally, not the English government, using
the codename that means, sadly, we're going to have to let the Soviets
rape Poland...."
One More Shakesperian Moment: From this nettle danger,
we will pluck the flower, safety.
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Some Day
For I dipt into the future far as human
eyes could see
Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that would be
Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies
of magic sails
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales
Heard the heavens filled with shouting and there rained a
ghastly
dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind rushing warm
With the standards of the people plunging through the thunderstorm
Til the wardrums throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furled
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World...
Alfred,
Lord Tennyson
Tennyson poem from "Arthur Mee's
Book Of One Thousand Beautiful Things" 1939
 Imaging
Memory Retrieval? Not quite yet, but how long will it be before we can
be strapped down (one of those random checks at the boarding gate, maybe)
and have the contents of a brainstate forcibly extracted? Is there a
logical problem, a Heisenberg
dilemma? I really hope so. It annoys me enough to have to take my
shoes off.
 HOW
TO BUILD A BENDER:
You don't need the tarp. It takes longer but you can make a bendy shelter
weatherproof by layering bracken, reeds, branches. But you'll have to
peg the material down some way (ie thatch it) or it will never be windproof,
or gravityproof. ed.
JONI MITCHELL AND WOODSTOCK
 In
1969 Joni Mitchell was booked for a tv date called The Dick Cavett Show,
(you may well ask) so David Geffen, then her manager, convinced her
that events at Bethel NY would be boring and no-account. She ended up
watching Woodstock in a hotel room, in tears, and writing an anthem.Why
not Joni Mitchell? Why is the great songwriter, consummate musician,
not a bigger deal? Is it a gender thing? Is it because she's Canadian?
(I don't think so).
"....to
be young, and to have missed that, even though it was that close, it
was everything to me..."
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