by Carmel Bird
ANGEL CAKE
THE SONG
When you’re gazing out the window
And you’re feeling kinda blue
And you’re standing in the kitchen
And you don’t know what to do
You get no joy from cups of tea
The missing thing’s a recipe
So you can have your angel cake
And eat it too.
Everybody’s got to have
Those dry ingredients
The secret is to sift eleven times
You’ve got to sift through little bits
Of nitty-gritty grit
Sifting through the grit of life
Will help you quite a bit.
You can be a drifter
Or choose to be a sifter
For happiness will come swifter
If you sift.
You’ve got to pinch the salt
And beat the egg whites till they’re stiff
The key is to be gentle but be firm
You’ve got to get a balance
Between discipline and lovin’
From the mixing of the batter
To the heating of the oven.
If you put it in and bake it
You’ll be sure to make it
Every body needs an angel
Everybody needs an angel
Everybody needs an angel cake.
RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
4 oz plain flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
10 oz castor sugar
11 egg whites
1 teaspoon pure vanilla essence good pinch of salt
METHOD
(The dry ingredients will be sifted eleven times.)
Sift the flour four times.
Add cream of tartar and sift.
Sift sugar four times.
Combine dry ingredients and sift twice.
Beat egg whites until stiff.
Using the sifter, gently add the dry ingredients to the whites while the whites are still beating.
Add vanilla and salt to the mixture.
Flour but do not grease the cake tin.
Bake in a moderate oven for 40 minutes.
Leave cake in the tin until it is cold, then turn it out and ice it completely with rough white vanilla frosting.
The cake should not be cut with a knife, but gently pulled apart with two forks placed back to back, as the wings of an angel.
ARCHILOCHUS (710–676 BC)
Greek poet best known for his statement: ‘The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one great thing.’
B
BEAUFORT WIND FORCE SCALE
This is a system for estimating the strength of the wind without the use of instruments. In 1805 Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort of the British navy detailed the Scale to describe the effects of different wind strengths on a fully-rigged man-of-war. The Scale was later broadened to include descriptions of the effects of the winds on land features as well, to obtain a more unified evaluation of the weather.
The Scale is divided into values from 0 to 12, 0 being the strength of calm and 12 being the strength of a hurricane. Each force is accompanied by wind speeds in miles per hour and in knots, and by descriptions of the effects of the wind on the sea and on things such as smoke and trees. Where the wind speed is between 25 and 31 miles per hour, or between 22 and 27 knots, the waves will be large, between 8 and 13 feet high, and there will be many whitecaps and much spray. The large branches of trees will be seen to be in motion, and there will be heard whistling along the telegraph wires. This is a ‘strong breeze’, and the number on the Scale is 6.
BEE
Hobart Town Gazette, 7 April, 1821: A hive of bees in the best possible state of health and condition has been brought by the ship Mary from Liverpool and has been presented by Mr Kermode, owner of that vessel, to the Lieutenant-Governor. The bee has not before been imported into Van Diemen’s Land.
BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE, JACQUES-HENRI (1737–1814)
A French naturalist and author, and a friend of Rousseau, by whom he was strongly influenced. His chief work was his Etudes de la Nature, in which he sought to prove the existence of God through the study of the wonders of nature. A section of this work was the sentimental prose idyll, ‘Paul et Virginie’, which was very popular in its time and had a strong influence on the French Romantic poets.
BLUE BIRD
The play, The Blue Bird, was written by Maurice Maeterlinck in 1908.
‘It is not in the actions but in the words that are found the beauty and greatness of tragedies that are truly beautiful and great; and this not solely in the words that accompany and explain the action, for there must perforce be another dialogue besides the one which is superficially necessary. And indeed the only words that count in the play are those that at first seemed useless, for it is therein that the essence lies. Side by side with the necessary dialogue will you almost always find another dialogue that seems superfluous; but examine it carefully, and it will be borne home to you that this is the only one that the soul can listen to profoundly, for here alone is it the soul that is being addressed.’ (From ‘The Tragical in Daily Life’ by Maurice Maeterlinck in The Treasure of the Humble, 1916.)
BUNDY, TED
Born 1946 to Eleanor Louise Cowell in the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont. He confessed to the murders of twenty-eight women in twelve states of the USA, although it is believed he killed many more than that. After escaping from custody he lived for three months on the run in Tallahassee, Florida, and was executed in the Florida State Prison on 24 January 1989.
C
CALEB
The name means ‘dog’ in Hebrew. In the Old Testament this was the name of one of the twelve spies sent by Moses into Israel. Of the Israelites who left Egypt with Moses, Caleb and Joshua were the only ones who lived to see the promised land.
CALENDULA FISH SOUP
RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
4 heads of snapper
2 onions
teaspoon olive oil
milk
plain flour
2 tablespoons sweet sherry
salt
thyme, bay leaf, garlic, black pepper, marjoram, nutmeg
petals of calendula (fresh or dry)
METHOD
Cook the chopped garlic and onion in oil until transparent. Add heads of snapper, salt, herbs and cover with water.
Poach slowly until fish flesh falls from bones.
Put flesh aside.
Strain liquid and add sherry to make fish stock.
Make a white sauce from the milk and flour.
Gradually add the fish stock to this while the sauce is hot.
Stir in fish meat.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Add a handful of calendula petals and a sprinkle of nutmeg to each serving bowl.
CARRILLO, CAMILO (1839–1901)
Uncle of Minerva Mean. He was a Peruvian sea captain who, using information he obtained from fishermen about the apparent relationship between warm currents and the dramatic fluctuations in the seasonal size of the catch, publicised the name ‘El Niño counter-current’. Warm waters appear off the coast of Peru around Christmas time, temporarily replacing the cold waters which provide the nutrients for the fish upon which the fishing industry depends. At roughly seven-year intervals the warm current lingers on well into the new year, and the result is disastrous for the fishermen. Carrillo wrote his paper on the subject in 1892, and the name ‘El Niño’ is now widely applied to the dramatic and disastrous cyclical climate changes and associated events that include tornadoes, droughts, famines, floods.
CHRISTMAS ISLAND
This remote limestone atoll is part of the Commonwealth of Australia. It lies 300 kilometres southwest of Java in the Indian Ocean, and was one of the last of the large tropical islands to be settled by humans, an event which occurred in 1886 when phosphate mines were established
there. With the humans came the black rat, and with the rat a disease that attacked the local Bulldog and MaClear’s rats, both of which are recorded as being extinct by 1903. It is probable that the native rats kept in check the red crabs, which since the beginning of the twentieth century have multiplied to such an extent that they are now one of the most precious species on the island because they attract tourists. The red crabs are in turn being threatened by the crazy ant. Christmas Island is the location of the Australian Federal Government’s detention centre for people seeking political asylum in Australia, and was the destination of the boat known as the SIEV-X, which sank in the waters off the island.
CLAUDINA
The Claudina butterfly (Agrias Claudina) depends for food on the wild relations of the coca plant. It is close to becoming an endangered species and the Sunshine Project aims to ensure that it does not become extinct (www. sunshine-project.org). The US project of war on narcotics plans to test and apply a microbal fungus to attack all plants (wild and cultivated) that produce coca, opium and marijuana. Consequently the Claudina is likely to become extinct.
D
DREAMING
Sophie Goddard’s doctoral thesis, A Glimpse Within the Labyrinth—a neurobiological and psychobiological study of the dreaming and the dreamless brain, published in California in 1990, is a ground-breaking work in the ongoing research into the nature and importance of dreams. It follows on from the 1950s’ work in Rome of Dr Santo de Santis, whose research suggested that the more hardened a criminal was, the less likely he or she was to dream. De Santis proposed that this lack of dream life was caused by a general anaesthesia of sensibility in the conscious life. Goddard’s thesis naturally takes account of the advances in technology and research over the intervening period, but does not make reference to the 1968 monograph of Carrillo Mean, Platypus-Hedgehog Dreaming, in which Mean, in his examination of the unconscious of the monotreme, foreshadows some of Goddard’s material. The ant-eating echidna has been one of Goddard’s key areas of interest. In the late 1980s she worked on a performance piece with the Tasmanian company, Tasdance, called When Echidnas Dream.
E
ECHIDNAS
Related to the platypus, Tasmanian echidnas or spiny anteaters are small egg-laying mammals whose backs are covered in honey-coloured or red-black spines, resembling a hedgehog. They are part of a wider Mammal group which is found throughout Australia and New Guinea. They are nocturnal, although they are sometimes seen foraging in daylight. They are shy and slow-moving, sheltering in hollow logs or burrows. When they are disturbed or frightened they dig rapidly with powerful claws and disappear into the earth. They are good swimmers, will amble across the beach to swim and groom in the sea, and are infested with the world’s largest flea. They feed on insects caught by the long and rapidly-moving tongue which is covered with sticky mucus. They are prey for the Tasmanian devil. (See entry on Monotremes.)
EL NIÑO
El Niño is a global climatic perturbation first recognised in Peru, publicly named by Camilo Carrillo in 1898, and now known to affect weather and to alter climate throughout the world.
El Niño is the Spanish name for the holy child Jesus. One of the most popular invocations of El Niño in the Spanish-speaking world takes the image of the child as pilgrim. It is known as the Prayer to El Niño of Atocha, and is addressed to the Blessed Virgin, asking for her intercession with her son. A faded and framed copy of this prayer, with a nineteenth-century English translation, was one of the Mean family’s treasured possessions, along with the memorabilia regarding Camilo Carrillo.
‘Purísima Madre del Santo Niño de Atocha, amorosísima Esposa del Espíritu Santo, abogada de los pecadores y bondadosa Madre mía, espero de tu amor y generosidad que intercederás poi mi con tu Hijo para que me conceda lo que tanto deseo. Ruégale que venga en mi amparo y que me asista con su santísimo poder, porque Él es quien todo lo puede y de Él depende toda mi felicidad. Amén.’
‘O most pure Mother of the Holy Infant of Atocha, most loving Spouse of the Holy Spirit, bountiful Mother, advocate for sinners, in your love and abundance I trust, that you may intercede for me with your Son, that He grant my heart’s desire. Beseech him that he come to my aid with His most holy power, and that he watch over me, for it is He in whom all things are possible, and on Him rests all my happiness. Amen.’ (Translated by Alonzo Crucero, SJ, in Dedicaciones, Lima, 1852.)
ELISABETH
Saint Elisabeth of Hungary (1207–31) was the wife of Louis IV of Hungary and was known for her humility, compassion and good works. In 1227 Louis died of plague while away on a Crusade and his brother drove Elisabeth from the court. She became a Franciscan tertiary and built a hospital for the poor near her house in Marburg, Hesse. She lived by an austere regime, serving the poor by spinning, weaving, fishing. A story is told of her being stopped by her brother-in-law as she was carrying bread to the poor. When asked to reveal what she was carrying under her cloak, she opened the cloak to reveal a basket of roses. Her feast day is 17 (formerly 19) November. The floods in Holland in the early fifteenth century are named for her as they occurred three times on her name day.
F
FIBONACCI (1170–1250)
The pen name of Leonardo of Pisa, the author of Liber Abaci, which introduced Arabic numbers into Western culture. He was the first person to record the numbers that generate the golden proportion (section or mean), which centuries earlier Plato described as being the key to the physics of the cosmos. Fibonacci was a contemporary of Francis of Assisi.
www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/
www.vashti.net/mceine/golden.htm/
FIELD, CYRUS (1815–1896)
A wealthy New York businessman, with interests mainly in the paper industry. In 1854 he developed a plan to lay a telegraph cable from America to Newfoundland. Then he established another cable between America and Europe. In 1858 he invited Queen Victoria to send the first cable, a message to the American President, James Buchanan. Cyrus Field was the great-great-uncle of Victoria Field, who died in Melbourne, Australia in 1967. Victoria Field was murdered in the grounds of the Mandala Clinic for the Mentally Ill by one of the inmates. Dr Ambrose Goddard, father of Dr Sophie Goddard, was the director of Mandala (see entry below).
FINGAL
Site of the first discovery of gold in Van Diemen’s Land, in February 1852.
FOX
Mary and Kate Fox, having moved to a new home in Hydesville, New York, in 1848, heard rapping noises in the house. They discovered that if they clapped their hands in a rapping code they devised, they could ask questions and elicit responses from the spirits. In this way they discovered that the rapper was a peddler who had been murdered and then buried under the house. A skeleton and a peddler’s tin were later uncovered beneath the cellar. Mary and Kate, accompanied by another sister, went on to conduct seances that set the fashion for mediums throughout the United States and Europe for many years. Their uncle Silas Fox emigrated to Van Diemen’s Land, taking up land at Lower Snug, where he became active in the humane treatment of local indigenous people, and where he set up a series of inconclusive seances in an attempt to clarify events that had occurred at Risdon Cove in 1804. One of his descendants, Father Benedict Fox, became a Jesuit.
FRANKLIN, JANE, NÉE GRIFFIN (1791–1875)
The energetic daughter of a silk-weaver, she accompanied her father on journeys to Russia, Scandinavia and Spain, writing descriptions of her travels in her journals. She married John Franklin in 1828 and, with his niece Sophia Cracroft as companion, she continued to travel, joining her husband on board the Rainbow in the Mediterranean whenever possible. She was very active in the cultural, social, educational and political life of Van Diemen’s Land, where Sir John was Governor from 1837–43. She organised a campaign to rid the island of its many deadly snakes, and was generally a patron of the arts and sciences, as well as a determined social reformer, setting up the ‘Ladies’ Society for the Reformation of Female Prisoners’ in 1841. In the
bush outside Hobart Town she built a small museum, Ancanthe, in the style of a Greek temple. She adopted and then abandoned an indigenous child, Mathinna, who later died most tragically at the age of twenty-one. During Sir John’s arctic expedition of 1854 Jane travelled with Sophia in America and the West Indies. Between 1850 and 1857 she organised five search expeditions to look for Sir John, seeking the assistance of Napoleon, the President of the United States and Lord Palmerston. Sir John had died on the ice in 1847, and this was established by the 1857 expedition led by Francis McClintock in the yacht Fox. McClintock clarified the fact that John Franklin had discovered the Northwest Passage. In recognition of her contribution to Arctic research Jane was the first woman ever to be honoured with the Royal Geographic Society’s Gold Medal, in 1860. Jane Franklin died in 1875.
