Found on film: the last survivor of the final slave ship from Africa to the US https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/slave-redoshi-sally-smith-...

Her name was Redoshi. They took her from Africa, and probably forced her to become a child bride so she would fetch a higher price in the US as one half of a “breeding couple”.

The overseers beat her if she failed to understand English. She passed on the language of her African homeland to her children and grandchildren anyway.

Even as an old woman, she kept the memory of home alive, decorating her Alabama yard as they did in west Africa, keeping the old spiritual beliefs beneath her Christianity.

Through hazy years and memories faded, I see a glimmer of your smile,
how I wish I'd changed my plans and stayed with you a while,

will you be ok I asked, as we parted ways that day,
you told me not to worry, that all would be ok

I wish I'd held you longer, I wish there'd been a sign,
I wish I'd known as we said goodbye that this was the last time

last time I'd hear your voice, last time our eyes would meet,
the last time I'd feel whole again, the last time I'd be free

Free to laugh without constraint, that lightness now diminished,
the joy in every moment curbed, the day your story finished

Free from the torment of things unsaid, of leaving you behind,
of every way I hurt you, of wasting so much time

Time I took for granted, time I thought we had,
time to do all the crazy things that we'd always planned

Farewell, poor world, I must be gone.
Thou art no home, no rest to me.
I take my ship and travel on till I a better world do see.
Into the ocean, where there's rest, I go, I leave, I part with speed.
The way is long, the end is sweet.
Once more, poor world, farewell, indeed.
In leaving thee, the sea I meet.

"It's good for the soul to be responsible for something or someone. Like, when our Aboriginal boys have their initiation, they're circummsied and then given a stone - it's called a tjurunga - and on it is a special marking showing them what they need to look after in the Bush.  Could be a water-hole or a sacred cave, or maybe a plant or an animal. Whatever it is it is their responsibility to protect and care for it.

There used to be a human chain all the way across the Outback that had a responsibility to look after the necessitites. The system kept our tribes alive as they crossed the desert."

The Pearl Sister p357

Lucinda Riley

also:

“Remember that panic stifles your instincts and makes you blind.”

? Lucinda Riley, The Pearl Sister

and

POINT ME TO HEAVEN WHEN THE FINAL CHAPTER COMES
Mail on Sunday, 2 August 2009



I’m all for assisted death. Of course there are people who are against
it, but they come up with the wrong reasons, such as “God doesn’t like
it” and so on. Personally, I really don’t think God is all that
bothered, but I would like to think that my god would be more concerned
about unnecessary suffering. Who knows.

We are being stupid.
We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living
longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we
learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age,
their lesson will be harsher still. At least, that is what I thought
until last week.

Now, however, I live in hope—hope that before
the disease in my brain finally wipes it clean, I can jump before I am
pushed and drag my evil Nemesis to its doom, like Sherlock Holmes and
Moriarty locked in combat as they go over the waterfall.

In any case, such thinking bestows a wonderful feeling of power; the enemy might win but it won’t triumph.

The BBC series of Quatermass and the Pit is up on the iPlayer for the next few months. I thought I'd tweet a little about why you should give it a try if you're fond of genre storytelling and you don't know much about it. pic.twitter.com/zk74FZMOgD

— Tom de Ville (@Devilligan) August 15, 2018

The whole thing is beautifully lit and shot, capturing the tone of a London looking to the future, but still confronting the horrors of the blitz. This was big, bold storytelling, with production values that easily match the quality of feature films being made at the time.

Science Notes and News.

COAL CONSUMPTION AFFECT-
ING CLIMATE.

The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.

This article’s authenticity is supported by the fact it can be found in the digital archives of the National Library of New Zealand.