Announcing Leander

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Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Home; Category: News; Published: 17 May 2014; Hits: 9244

(Born Wednesday 14 May 2014 at 5:23 AM, 3.3 kg 53 cm)

Marvellous. Emily, my eldest daughter, has given birth to my first natural Grandchild (I have three step-grandchildren). She and Guido have named him Leander. Mother and child are well.

According to Wikipedia, the original most famous Leander is the central character the the Greek Myth of Hero and Leander.

In the myth, Leander (Ancient Greek: Λέανδρος, Léandros), a young man from Abydos on the Asian side of the Dardanelles fell in love with Hero a priestess of Aphrodite (Roman equivalent: Venus the goddess of love) who dwelt in a tower in Sestos on the European side of the Hellespont.

His soft words, and his argument that Aphrodite would scorn the worship of a virgin, persuaded the beautiful Hero to take Leander as her lover. Every night he would swim across the Hellespont to be with her. Hero would light a lamp at the top of her tower to guide his way. These trysts lasted through the warm summer.

On Hellespont, guilty of true love's blood,
In view and opposite two cities stood,
Sea-borderers, disjoin'd by Neptune's might:
The one Abydos, the other Sestos hight.
At Sestos Hero dwelt; Hero the fair,
Whom young Apollo courted for her hair.

from Christopher Marlowe's poem Hero and Leander

But one stormy winter night, the waves tossed Leander in the sea and the breezes blew out Hero's light. Leander lost his way and was drowned. When Hero saw his dead body, she threw herself over the edge of the tower to her death to be with him.

The Last Watch of Hero by Frederic Leighton,
depicting Hero anxiously waiting for Leander during the storm.

According to Wikipedia, people named Leander include:

Leander of Seville (c. 534-600 or 601), Catholic saint and bishop who converted the son of the Visigothic king from Arianism
Leander Clark (1823-1910), American businessman, politician and Union Army officer during the American Civil War
Leander Czerny (1859-1944), Czech entomologist
Leander Ditscheiner (1839–1905), Austrian physicist and mathematician
Leander Haußmann (born 1959), German theatre and film director
Leander Starr Jameson (1853-1917), British colonial statesman best known for the Jameson Raid on the Transvaal Republic in Africa
Leander Kahney (born 1965), American journalist and author
Leander J. McCormick 1819–1900), American inventor, manufacturer, philanthropist and businessman
L. Hamilton McCormick (1859–1934), American author, inventor, art collector and sculptor, son of the above
Leander Richardson (1856-1918), American journalist, playwright and theatrical writer
Leander Watts, author of young adult literature

A number of warships and warship classes of the Royal Navy have been given this famous name:

HMS Leander, various Royal Navy ships
- Leander class, three ship classes
HMNZS Leander, a Royal New Zealand Navy light cruiser of World War II, originally HMS Leander of the British Royal Navy
SS Leander, a number of ships with this name
Leander (clipper), a clipper built in 1867

I like the Myth of Hero and Leander.

When we were in Turkey in 2005 we crossed the Hellespont twice in a rented car. It didn't float on water but there was a convenient ferry. We were there principally to visit the battle site at Gallipoli but the whole region is interesting. The Hellespont (Dardanelles) has been famous in history, myth and religion since the invention of writing; and maybe earlier. The ancient city of Troy was nearby.

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Travel

Israel

2024 Addendum

It's shocking that another Addendum to this article is necessary.

Yet, we are no nearer to a peaceful resolution like the, internationally called for, 'Two state solution', or some workable version thereof.

Indeed, the situation, particularly for Palestinians, has gone from bad to worse.

At the same time, Israeli losses are mounting as the war drags on. Yet, Hamas remains undefeated and Bibi remains recalcitrant.

Comments:

On Wed, 4 Sep 2024, at 1:23 PM, Barry Cross wrote:
> There seems to be no resolution to the problem of the disputed land of Israel. You consider Gaza to have been put under siege, but I wonder if that and the other Israeli acts you mention are themselves responses to a response by them of being under siege, or at least being seriously threatened, by hostile forces who do not recognise the legitimacy of the state of Israel? Hamas’s claim and stated intention of establishing a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” and periodic acts of aggression need to be taken into account I suggest, when judging the actions of the Israeli’s. In addition, there is the menace coming from Iranian proxies in Southern Lebanon and Yemen, and from Iran itself.
>
> Whatever the merits of the respective claims to the contended territory might be, it seems reasonable to accept that Israeli’s to consider they are a constant threat to their very survival. Naturally, this must influence their actions, particularly in response to the many acts of aggression they have been subjected to over many decades. By way of contrast, how lucky are we!
>
> These are my off the cuff comments for what they are worth.
>
> Regards
> Barry Cross
>
> Sent from my iPhone

2023 Addendum

It's a decade since this visit to Israel in September 2014.

From July until just a month before we arrived, Israeli troops had been conducting an 'operation' against Hamas in the Gaza strip, in the course of which 469 Israeli soldiers lost their lives. The country was still reeling.

17,200 Garzan homes were totally destroyed and three times that number were seriously damaged. An estimated 2,000 (who keeps count) civilians died in the destruction. 'Bibi' Netanyahu, who had ordered the Operation, declared it a victory.

This time it's on a grander scale: a 'War', and Bibi has vowed to wipe-out Hamas.

Pundits have been moved to speculate on the Hamas strategy, that was obviously premeditated. In addition to taking hostages, it involving sickening brutality against obvious innocents, with many of the worst images made and published by themselves.

It seemed to be deliberate provocation, with a highly predictable outcome.

Martyrdom?

Historically, Hamas have done Bibi no harm. See: 'For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces' in the Israel Times.

Thinking about our visit, I've been moved to wonder how many of today's terrorists were children a decade ago? How many saw their loved ones: buried alive; blown apart; maimed for life; then dismissed by Bibi as: 'collateral damage'?

And how many of the children, now stumbling in the rubble, will, in their turn, become terrorists against the hated oppressor across the barrier?

Is Bibi's present purge a good strategy for assuring future harmony?

I commend my decade old analysis to you: A Brief Modern History and Is there a solution?

Comments:
Since posting the above I've been sent the following article, implicating religious belief, with which I substantially agree, save for its disregarding the Jewish fundamentalists'/extremists' complicity; amplifying the present horrors: The Bright Line Between Good and Evil

Another reader has provided a link to a perspective similar to my own by Australian 'Elder Statesman' John Menadue: Hamas, Gaza and the continuing Zionist project. His Pearls and Irritations site provides a number of articles relating to the current Gaza situation. Worth a read.

The Economist has since reported and unusual spate of short-selling immediately preceding the attacks: Who made millions trading the October 7th attacks?

Money-making by someone in the know? If so, it's beyond evil.

A Little Background

The land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea, known as Palestine, is one of the most fought over in human history. Anthropologists believe that the first humans to leave Africa lived in and around this region and that all non-African humans are related to these common ancestors who lived perhaps 70,000 years ago. At first glance this interest seems odd, because as bits of territory go it's nothing special. These days it's mostly desert and semi-desert. Somewhere back-o-Bourke might look similar, if a bit redder.

Yet since humans have kept written records, Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, Ancient Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, early Muslims, Christian Crusaders, Ottomans (and other later Muslims), British and Zionists, have all fought to control this land. This has sometimes been for strategic reasons alone but often partly for affairs of the heart, because this land is steeped in history and myth.

Fiction, Recollections & News

We hired a Jeep

In Sicily we hired a Jeep to get from Palermo around the island.

I had my doubts about this steed. Our two big bags wouldn't fit in the boot. One had to be strapped in on the back seat - a bit disappointing.

At above 130, the speed limit, there's something odd about the steering – so much so that I stopped quite soon to check the tyre pressures. I was regretting my choice.

Reassured about the tyres we set off again.

On the plus side the fuel consumption seemed OK and the zoned climate control worked well.

Opinions and Philosophy

Climate Emergency

emergency
/uh'merrjuhnsee, ee-/.
noun, plural emergencies.
1. an unforeseen occurrence; a sudden and urgent occasion for action.

Recent calls for action on climate change have taken to declaring that we are facing a 'Climate Emergency'.

This concerns me on a couple of levels.

The first seems obvious. There's nothing unforseen or sudden about our present predicament.

My second concern is that 'emergency' implies something short lived. It gives the impression that by 'fire fighting against carbon dioxide' or revolutionary action against governments, or commuters, activists can resolve the climate crisis and go back to 'normal' - whatever that is. Would it not be better to press for considered, incremental changes that might avoid the catastrophic collapse of civilisation and our collective 'human project' or at least give it a few more years sometime in the future?

Back in 1990, concluding my paper: Issues Arising from the Greenhouse Hypothesis I wrote:

We need to focus on the possible.

An appropriate response is to ensure that resource and transport efficiency is optimised and energy waste is reduced. Another is to explore less polluting energy sources. This needs to be explored more critically. Each so-called green power option should be carefully analysed for whole of life energy and greenhouse gas production, against the benchmark of present technology, before going beyond the demonstration or experimental stage.

Much more important are the cultural and technological changes needed to minimise World overpopulation. We desperately need to remove the socio-economic drivers to larger families, young motherhood and excessive personal consumption (from resource inefficiencies to long journeys to work).

Climate change may be inevitable. We should be working to climate “harden” the production of food, ensure that public infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, hospitals, utilities and so) on are designed to accommodate change and that the places people live are not excessively vulnerable to drought, flood or storm. [I didn't mention fire]

Only by solving these problems will we have any hope of finding solutions to the other pressures human expansion is imposing on the planet. It is time to start looking for creative answers for NSW and Australia now.

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