Sacramento Rugby Link……..

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In the UK, the Easter Holidays are normally a chance for school pupils to re-charge their batteries ahead of the final school term of their academic year. However for fourteen year old Sam Maggs, from Brecon, Wales, relaxation will be the last thing on his mind!

Sam, who is a student at Christ College Brecon, one of the UK’s oldest and most prestigious private schools, is spending two weeks this Easter on a rugby exchange programme with an up-and-coming California rugby club, Land Park RFC in Sacramento, CA.

 The teenager, who has already represented his town and county at Under 11s, the Independent Schools Barbarians team at Under 13s, has guested for Bath RFC U13s and is just finishing a 10 week assessment programme with the Cardiff Blues/Welsh Rugby Union, will be guesting for Land Park RFC U14s in fixtures in nearby San Francisco and Dixon, as well as playing a full part in the club’s twice weekly training sessions.

 Sam said: “This is an amazing opportunity for me. I’m really looking forward to sharing some of my rugby experiences with the members of Land Park RFC and being a part of their community.

 “Even at my relatively young age, the game of rugby has already given me some memorable experiences and has enabled me to form what I think will be life-long friendships. I have no doubt that my visit to Sacramento will provide more of the same!”

 His host, Land Park RFC’s Matthew Eason, said: “Our youth rugby program here at Land Park RFC is taking off in a big way.  In five years, we’ve already expanded to over 110 kids, and expecting even more next season. Our kids are from the ages of 8-14, and are in grades 2-8.  

 “While we don’t have an “academy” system over here, Land Park has become a major feeding ground for the elite high school programs, and we are now starting to have an impact into the college ranks.

 He added: “We’re really looking forward to welcoming Sam into our community. Sam is coming with impeccable credentials; he is a pupil at one of the UK’s top schools and is already getting exposure to an elite rugby environment. It’s going to be a fantastic couple of weeks for all concerned!”

 Discussions are being held to arrange a reciprocal exchange visit in 2013 when it is anticipated that a Land Park RFC player will travel to Wales. Whilst there, it is hoped that the player will be able to shadow Sam at his school at Christ College, experiencing the timetable and atmosphere at the 470 year old educational institution, with rugby playing opportunities being provided by Brecon RFC, a club that was a founder member of the Welsh Rugby Union in 1881.

Christ College Brecon was founded by Royal Charter in 1541 by King Henry VIII. In 2016 it will celebrate its 475th anniversary. Christ College is an independent boarding and day school for boys and girls aged 11 to 18 years.  The Land Park Motley, one of Northern California’s most established youth rugby programs, fields Under 10, Under 12 and Middle School teams. As a founding member of the Northern California Youth Rugby Association, their commitment is to preserve the history and tradition of a sport that creates friendships for life.

 

Movie News ……….

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The Endangered Language film project, hosted by Bob Holman and produced by David Grubin, has received a grant of $600,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Bob has just returned from a trip to Wales to study and experience Welsh language and culture, which will be one of three areas that will constitute a 90-minute film that they will produce as part of the project.

Bob Holman is a well-known New York poet, teacher, film-maker, and founder and proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, where numerous Welsh cultural events have been held. Grubin has made over 100 films, from historical to scientific to poetic, and has won ten Emmys for his documentaries; he most recently produced The Buddha for PBS.

In preparation for filming, Bob has been learning Welsh in New York with Cynthia Davies and claims that he can now write cynghanedd!. (cynghanedd is an extremely old and complex form of Welsh language poetry )

“This is an extraordinary vote of confidence,” Bob said of the grant, “But David and I are still looking for support to make the project a reality.”

In Bob’s own words, he wants to cover ‘how Welsh is unique in having been on the Endangered list  and then come off; the spirit of the people; the depth of the culture; the living traditions; the sound and magic of the language itself; the support that Welsh language writers receive; the demonstrations leading to the Language Acts; Welsh schools, street signs, TV and much more’

 
In other news, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts has nominated the Welsh-language movie “Patagonia” as the U.K.’s submission for the foreign-language Oscar.  PATAGONIA narrates the journeys of two women – one looking for her past, the other for her future. The movie inter-cuts between their stories, in which one of them travels south to north through the Welsh springtime and the other east to west through the Argentine autumn.  A road movie for romantics, Patagonia is a film of intimate moments that play out against the sweeping panoramic landscapes, complemented by a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack.

 
Directed by Marc Evans, and with dialogue in Welsh and Spanish, the movie stars Matthew Rhys (ABC’s Brothers and Sisters, Edge of Love), Nia Roberts,  and rock star Duffy in the story of two parallel journeys, one by a Welsh couple who take a trip to Argentina to work on their relationship, and another by an elderly Patagonian woman and her nephew who travel to Wales in search of their family roots.

Two other Welsh-language movies have been Oscar-nominated in the past – “Hedd Wyn” in 1993 and “Solomon and Gaenor” in 1999.

“Patagonia” premiered at the Seattle Film Festival in 2010. It will be released in the US in 2012 by Rocket Releasing.

Wales Coastal Path

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As many may know, Wales is that part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with England and is surrounded on the other sides by the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea.  The coastline of wales is roughly 1317 miles (2120 kms) and adding the islands of Anglesy and Holyhead the figure is 1680 miles (2740 kms), derived from 1:10,000 maps and  the length of the mean high water mark.

Now, Coastal Wales has been named the “best region on Earth” to visit by the Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2012 guide to the best places to go over the next 12 months.
Published today, the book highlights 10 countries, 10 regions and 10 cities handpicked by the publisher’s travel experts as the best places to visit and from May 2012, Wales will become the first country in the world to offer tourists a formal trail right around its coast.
“How better to truly appreciate the shape – and soul – of a nation?” the annual guide asks of the coastal path. The guide goes on to state:  “What a wonderful thing: to walk the entire length of a country’s coastline, to trace its every nook, cranny, cliff-face, indent and estuary.

In 2012 Wales will become the only country in the world where you can do just that.

The 2011 University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize

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The 2011 University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize will be awarded on Nov 9th in an exclusive ceremony in Dylan Thomas’ hometown of Swansea, Wales.  This year’s shortlist include three young writers from North America.

The Dylan Thomas Prize, named in honor of the Welsh writer and poet Dylan Thomas,is the world’s top cash prize for young writers. The annual prize brings international prestige and a cash award of $47,000. It is open to published writers in the English language under the age of thirty and honors its shortlist finalists and annual winner for published work in the broad range of literary forms in which Dylan Thomas excelled, including poetry, prose, fictional drama, short story collections, novels, novellas, stage plays and screenplays.

A Dylan Thomas literary prize was first awarded during the 1980s, known as the Dylan Thomas Award, following the campaign to have a plaque in the poet’s memory placed in Westminster Abbey. Surplus income from a fund-raising concert sponsored by the television company HTV were donated to allow a prize of £1000 to be awarded annually.

Tea Obreht, Jacob McArthur Mooney and Benjamin Hale have made it onto the shortlist for The University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize, which is an annual global award for young writers in the English language with a $47,000 prize.

Benjamin Hale lives in New York but grew up in Colorado. He is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. He’s been a night shift baker, a trompe l’oeil painter and a cartoonist. His The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore is a story narrated by a chimpanzee born and raised in Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. A highly unusual love story.

 Tea Obreht now lives in New York. She won the Orange Prize for fiction with The Tiger’s Wife, which has also been recently nominated for The National Book Award. She was the youngest author on The New Yorker’s Top 20 writers under 40 list.

Jacob McArthur Mooney is a poet. His two part work Folk links two areas of Canada. First a plane crash off the coast of Nova Scotia and then conflict in inner city Toronto.

The prize is open to all published authors aged 18 – 30. Unusually it is open to a variety of genres including short stories, novels, poetry and plays reflecting the fact that the young Dylan Thomas as astonishingly versatile.

Bacon, Bacon… Where for art thou?

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IF you are a member of PETA, please do not read on, unless of course you are a member of the other PETA.  Confused? No, it’s really simple.  This post is for those who belong to People Eating Tasty Animals and not those who belong to PETA.  Oh, and the emphasis is on Tasty.

As some of you may already be aware, I have lived on both sides of that small piece of water called the Atlantic and I am not going say which side I prefer, with one exception: I miss bacon from the UK.  The thick, sizzling kind cut from the loin and I am not talking about the “cured belly of a swine carcass” (as the US Department of Agriculture’s Policy Book lists it), cut so thin that you can put it over your eyes and still be able to see well enough to thread a needle.  Nor am I talking about Canadian Bacon, which again the USDA’s Policy book defines as “Product … made from a trimmed boneless pork loin. The dorsal and ventral side on each end shall not be more than 1.0 inch different in Length …. The tenderloin and the flesh overlying the blade bone are excluded. The surface fat (and false lean when necessary) shall be trimmed to 0.3 inches thick at any point.”

No.  I am talking about the thick, juicy back bacon that stares back from the pan and clogs your arteries just thinking about it.  The same kind that researchers at Newcastle University says cures a hangover, the kind that another set of researchers at Leeds University says you need to make the perfect bacon sandwich ( if you are interested, the formula is N = C + {fb(cm) • fb(tc)} + fb(Ts) + fc • ta.) (don’t ask me to interpret that, I was in the Principals office when we did math because Heather was chasing Jason Dean, but that is another story)

I’m talking about the type of bacon that goes into the sandwiches served at “Bob’s Big Bite” on the St John’s Ring Road in Stourbridge, that according to the UK’s Automobile Association is the Best in Britain.  The kind of bacon you put in a piece of Wonder bread (Wonder loaf in the UK), say to hell with examining the cholesterol, carbohydrates or calories and just sit and eat for the sheer pleasure of tasting the meat and the rasher (that’s a slice) isn’t as thin and crisp as a potato chip.  The kind of bacon that every self-respecting greasy spoon café serves by the crate load every day.  The same kind of bacon that every piglet wants to grow up to be. 

One month a chain of restaurants were running a promotion on Bacon and their commercials actually made me drive to the nearest one and order from their ‘baconalia’ menu, with a side serving of bacon for good measure.  I was as disappointed as the vegetarian who ordered rocky mountain oysters in a restaurant hoping for shellfish.  My side serving was four 2 inch by half inch strips, one hundredth of an inch thick.  Yes I know I was stupid to think that in a land where the Department of Agriculture actually states that bacon must lose 60% of its volume during cooking that I was in for a treat, but ……  I would have more fun ordering a packet of Walkers Smoky Bacon Crisps (that’s potato chips guys) and more than likely they would have tasted more like bacon than the apology for the – things – served on my plate.

Various US states can do meat well  – For example, California has a tritip, a cow’s best kept secret that is a tender and tasty steak cut from the bottom sirloin.  I have been lucky enough to have a steak at the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, probably the best I have ever had, and an In and Out burger animal style has got to be right up there on the scale. (Although, the Steak and Shake burger I had in Greenwood, Indiana, was pretty special….)  We can do some great things with meat in over in the US,  we can fly a man to the moon and, when we put our minds to it, even catch a terrorist living  a couple of hundred yards from a military base in Pakistan.  We can build most of the world’s airplanes, develop most of the world’s software and computers and produce some of the biggest movies of all time.  Yet we cannot produce bacon.
 
A quick search on the interwebs will reveal all the recipes you need, any farmer’s grandmother will show you how it’s done.  But as I write this with some Pavlovian reflex to the thought of that juicy, fried rasher, with it’s salty aroma, the sizzling in the pan, the craving just gets worse.  If I was some rich rock-star, I would be sending my personal jet to the UK to fly me back some bacon – although I would have to bribe the customs officer as you are not allowed to bring meat into the country.  But I not a rock-star and I cannot just jet off to the UK for a bacon butty (Sandwich).  So it’s no good.  I’m going to have to persuade the Danish Bacon Company or the UK’s Defra agency that there is a vast untapped market just ready for the picking.

In the interim, perhaps the best bacon I can find in the States just happens to come on a burger in Chilli’s Restaurants.  Now as they have over a 1400 premises across 50 states, perhaps I can persuade them to start selling it.  Failing that, I will have to start smuggling packets of bacon through customs just to get a fix………… 

 This article by Cryptothinker first appeared on the blog www.cryptothinking.wordpress.com

News from Welsh Government in New York

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Oct 7 through Oct 31, Lincoln, NE: Welsh Government’s ‘Welsh in America’ exhibition at the Welsh Heritage Festival at The Great Plains Welsh Heritage Project in Lincoln, Nebraska
Oct 7 for 1 week:: San Francisco Sleep Furiously ‘ documentary art film by Welsh director Gideon Koppel set in Trefeurig, Wales, at Roxie Theater in the Mission, San Francisco
Oct 8: Michael Jackson ‘Michael Forever’ Tribute Concert at the Wales Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, and streamed on Facebook worldwide
Oct 8 : Rugby World Cup 2011 Quarter Finals– Wales v Ireland. Showing in many Irish and Welsh pubs throught the USA
Oct 17-20: San Rafael Sleep Furiously ‘ documentary art film by Welsh director Gideon Koppel set in Trefeurig, Wales, at Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth Street, San Rafael, CA 94902
October 22: Dr Nathan Abrams, Author and Professor of Media Studies at Bangor University, visit to USA.
October 24: New York – Language Rights: Why do they matter? Joint seminar in New York with Welsh Government NY, Quebec, Flanders, the Basque Country, Catalonia. At The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York. Invitation attached. Free event. All welcome. 
October 27/ November 1 and 5; New York  – Bryn Terfel in Siegfried at Metropolitan Opera.  Welsh Government press group to attend on Oct 27. International satellite ‘Live in HD’ screenings of November 5 performance to go out to over 150,000 people worldwide.
Oct 28; Rhys Ifans stars as Edward de Vere in ‘Anonymous’ released in the US on Oct 28

News from the Office of the First Minister, Welsh Government

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Welshman has building named for him

 

On Wednesday Sep 7, the Chicago Building was renamed ‘Jones Hall’ in honor of Professor Anthony Jones from Wales. Tony Jones was president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) for twenty years, retiring recently in July.  He is an internationally-renowned arts administrator, educator, broadcaster, writer, historian of art, architecture and design. SAIC writes: ‘As Tony retires from SAIC this year, he leaves and unparalleled legacy of vision, passion, and commitment. Through Tony’s leadership, SAIC has flourished, building programmatic initiatives, increasing awareness and enrolment, connecting with the world in unforeseen ways, and graduating the art and design leaders who will shape our culture in the years to come.’

 

Jones Hall was designed by the architects Holabird and Roche and built in 1904. Historically known as the Chicago Building, this landmark structure was converted into a SAIC residence hall in 1997. It is located at the zero-zero point of Chicago and is the geographical nexus of the city and home to many artists, designers and scholars.

 

Congratulations Tony!

 

Karl Jenkins concert on 9/11 to feature opera star Jessye Norman

 

One of the most celebrated opera stars of our time will now be part of the Karl Jenkins Memorial Concert at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, New York on September 11. Ms Norman will read the special message from Mayor Bloomberg and will also be the narrator for Karl Jenkins’ ‘For the Fallen: In Memoriam Alfryn Jenkins’ which will have its US premiere on the day. Karl’s most famous work ‘The Armed Man: a Mass for Peace’ will be the main concert piece – both works will be conducted by Karl himself. A choir of 300 voices from the UK will perform and the concert also includes ‘Memorial’ by US composer Rene Clausen. The concert will begin at 2.00 pm and a few seats are still available. The concert is presented by Distinguished Concerts International New York in association with EMI, Boosey and Hawkes, and the Welsh Government.

 

‘Talking Pictures’ by Cambridge Jones now open in Chicago

‘Talking Pictures’ by Cambridge Jones  – a multimedia collection of over 30 photographs of well-known people from Wales or inspired by Wales– was commissioned by the Welsh Government in 2010 and has already visited Cardiff, London, New York and Los Angeles. It can now be seen in Chicago at 23 E Madison Wednesdays-Saturdays, 11:30 AM – 5:30 PM. Sep 1 – October 7. ‘Talking Pictures’ is presented in Chicago by the Welsh Government in association with the Chicago Art Loop Alliance.