The Gate of the Year : The King’s Speech, Academy Awards, and the bookies’ odds #film #poetry

This post was originally published on The Trad Pad on  2 January 2011.  Happy New Year everyone ... particularly to those who did it tough this year.  Please take on board the thoughts of Minnie Louise Haskins

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Happy New Year! May the year be kind to you and bring you blessings, wisdom, peace, and prosperity!  The last day or two has exhibited some coincidence. Firstly, Hay Quaker published, in toto, the poem The Gate of the Year by Minnie Louise Haskins.

 Minnie Louise Haskins

Picture from here

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year,
"Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown."
And he replied, "Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!"
So I went forth and finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night.
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone east.
So heart be still!
What need our human life to know
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife of things
Both high and low,
God hideth his intention.

Perhaps readers have heard this poem, or part of it, before.  It was made famous by the Christmas Speech of King George VI delivered in 1939.  You can hear the actual speech – it is quite moving given it is made at the time of the first Christmas of World War II – here.

Picture from here

Secondly, I decided to get out of the house for the first time since  Christmas Midnight Carols and Eucharist at All Saints, Mitcham and go to see the much lauded movie, The King’s Speech. It is the story of the relationship between the Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue, and King George VI.

The movie is being tipped as a frontline contender for an Oscar. In spite of competition from The Social Network in the bookies’ odds as set out here, it is hard to see how this movie could lose with its high proportion of former Academy Award winning actors.  The UK still produces the best actors – particularly in ensemble work as demonstrated in The King’s Speech – in the English speaking world.  However, it does an Australian heart good – particularly one coming from Queensland – to see and hear Geoffrey Rush mixing it admirably with such a talented cast. To think, this great man of Australian movies was growing up across Brisbane from me in the 1950s!
Those sitting around me in the packed movie theatre were clearly as impressed as I. 
I was however surprised at the ending. I don’t think, in such an historical movie, it is giving away much to describe the ending of this movie.  I thought the movie somehow would finish with the 1939 Christmas Speech. This is arguably the most famous, most remembered, and most quoted of all the King George VI’s speeches.  This doesn’t happen.  The movie concludes with the King’s Speech at the beginning of World War II.

Listen to the original speech here.

The story of Meetup

Those of you who have your own blogs may know about meetup. It is a wonderful net tool for organising people to get together for meetings, a drink, whatever.  And while bloggers may love to communicate on their blogs, many of them like to meet up with similarly interested bloggers in their neighbourhood...so there's a tendency to use meetup.  In my mail box to-day dropped the wonderful and somewhat emotional story of how it all started............

Fellow Meetuppers,

I don't write to our whole community often, but this week is special because it's the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and many people don't know that Meetup is a 9/11 baby.

Let me tell you the Meetup story. I was living a couple miles from the Twin Towers, and I was the kind of person who thought local community doesn't matter much if we've got the internet and tv. The only time I thought about my neighbors was when I hoped they wouldn't bother me.

When the towers fell, I found myself talking to more neighbors in the days after 9/11 than ever before. People said hello to neighbors (next-door and across the city) who they'd normally ignore. People were looking after each other, helping each other, and meeting up with each other. You know, being neighborly.

A lot of people were thinking that maybe 9/11 could bring people together in a lasting way. So the idea for Meetup was born: Could we use the internet to get off the internet -- and grow local communities?

We didn't know if it would work. Most people thought it was a crazy idea -- especially because terrorism is designed to make people distrust one another.

A small team came together, and we launched Meetup 9 months after 9/11.

Today, almost 10 years and 10 million Meetuppers later, it's working. Every day, thousands of Meetups happen. Moms Meetups, Small Business Meetups, Fitness Meetups... a wild variety of 100,000 Meetup Groups with not much in common -- except one thing.

Every Meetup starts with people simply saying hello to neighbors. And what often happens next is still amazing to me. They grow businesses and bands together, they teach and motivate each other, they babysit each other's kids and find other ways to work together. They have fun and find solace together. They make friends and form powerful community. It's powerful stuff.

It's a wonderful revolution in local community, and it's thanks to everyone who shows up.

Meetups aren't about 9/11, but they may not be happening if it weren't for 9/11.

9/11 didn't make us too scared to go outside or talk to strangers. 9/11 didn't rip us apart. No, we're building new community together!!!!

The towers fell, but we rise up. And we're just getting started with these Meetups.

Scott Heiferman (on behalf of 80 people at Meetup HQ)
Co-Founder & CEO, Meetup
New York City
September 2011

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Add info@meetup.com to your address book to receive all Meetup
emails

To manage your email settings, go to:
http://www.meetup.com/account/comm/

Meetup, PO Box 4668 #37895
New York, New York 10163-4668

It's only words, and words are all I have.....

Stephen Fry - language and fonts
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From our beloved BeeGees:
It's only words ...
...and words are all I have to take your heart away.

These words, found in the classic BeeGees song Words, are at the heart of this blog. I'm not influential, even in the Blogosphere, but if I have anything it is language, words...and a few photographs of doubtful quality.  But words can make all the difference can't they...when babies go from gurgles and coos to whole sentences; I love you; I'm sorry; what a great idea!

Indeed, words are all most of us - 

but, sadly, not all of us - 

have to take a heart away.

Stephen Fry commends Hugh Bonneville to the Twitterverse

The inestimable Mr Fry has informed one and all on the Twitter that the Beautiful Bonneville is now tweetable.

By popular Facebook and Twitter demand: Stephen Fry is coming to Melbourne

Don't know if Trad Padders have caught up with this story

of the power of Facebook.

The wonderful Mr Fry was headed for Sydney,

merely Sydney!!

Up sprung a Facebook Cause

(which Miss Eagle duly joined)

Dear Stephen Fry please come to Melbourne in July, not just Sydney.

to bring Stephen to the cultural capital of Australia,

namely Melbourne!!

Many thx to one Ronan McEwan.

Anyway tickets go on sale

this Thursday 24 June

for the 31 July event at the Regent.

The inimitable Mr Fry's conversation

will range across

  travel, art, TV, the internet and Twitter over 90 minutes.

Miss Eagle would suggest an additional topic:

Alan Davies.

Related Reading and Viewing:

Stephen Fry in America: Fifty States and the Man Who Set Out to See Them All

Jeeves & Wooster: Complete Series (8pc)

QI: Advanced Banter

Making History