Friday, May 16, 02003
Cool job of the day: cigar factory lector:
Later, upon inquiring, I came to know that the man up on the platform, was responsible for the clear, strong voice. He was called "El Lector" - the Reader. His job was to read to the cigarmakers while they were rolling cigars. The workers paid fifteen to twenty-five cents per week each to the reader. In the morning, the reader used to read the daily paper and some working class weeklies or monthlies that were published or received from abroad. In the afternoon he would read from a novel by Zola, Balzac, Hugo, or from a book by Kropotkin, Malatesta or Karl Marx, Famous speeches like Castelar's or Spanish classical novels like Cervantes' Don Quixote were also read aloud by 'El Lector.'"
This student film about radio knocking off the lectors sounds interesting. The year's winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama, "Anna in the Tropics" also deals with lectoring.
Posted at 08:46 AM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
Thursday, May 15, 02003
Yeh, you probably heard it on The Writer's Almanac this morning, but still, it tickled my fancy bone that Oz was a socialist utopia:
"There were no poor people in the land of Oz, because there was no such thing as money, and all property of every sort belonged to the Ruler. Each person was given freely by his neighbours whatever he required for his use, which is as much as anyone may reasonably desire. Every one worked half the time and played half the time, and the people enjoyed the work as much as they did the play, because it is good to be occupied and to have something to do. There were no cruel overseers set to watch them, and no one to rebuke them or to find fault with them. So each one was proud to do all he could for his friends and neighbors, and was glad when they would accept the things he produced."
Posted at 08:09 AM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
Tuesday, May 13, 02003
... a fresh sign police are cracking down on scuttlebutt to keep a lid on the panic....
Posted at 07:30 AM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
Monday, May 12, 02003
Apologies to anyone on my sidebar who's been getting clobbered by Pappa Corp's webcaching software. I've turned off my polling script, and will be porting it to the home machine over the next couple days.
The Heathcote weekend was pretty nice, and didn't get that wet. The community is already pretty small: 12 adults and 8 children, I think, and most of them were away for the weekend, so it seemed pretty cozy. There were also no work projects going on, so after the rather long tour, I hung out with buddy, and then had a really good dinner, crashed there, and came back the next day.
I didn't learn as much about permaculture as I was hoping, but I did learn about humanure. Thankfully I spent the night in a building which had plumbing, so I didn't have to use their "bucket and sawdust" system !
(Don't miss the cartoon in section 4.4 of that handbook)
The goats didn't look quite so demonic on the farm...
Posted at 10:36 AM EST [Link][Karma] [Comment]
