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Images from the Silk Road: 1- Rainbow Silk

30/4/2012

The Silk Road
I have made two trips along the Silk Road, and other visits to countries along its path - Syria, Turkey and Uzbekistan. I became fascinated by the mystique and history of this ancient trade route, and enchanted by its vibrancy today. In my book for children, Stories from the Silk Road, I told some of the legends recounted by travellers, and wrote about their colourful context. I also began giving illustrated talks about the Silk Road to arts societies and on cruises. From the many photos I took and pictures I gathered, I’d like to create a few little themed galleries and slide shows to share with you on this blog, starting with:

The Legend of Rainbow Silk
Silk patterned in rainbow shades is still the national material of Uzbekistan, and legends suggest how it first came into being. One is that the wavering, iridescent ripples of the design were inspired by gazing into a running stream. Another is that an irritable Khan or ruler commanded one of his courtiers, on pain of death, to provide some new novelty to please him. The desperate old adviser had resigned himself to execution, when on the last morning he woke with tears in his eyes – and saw a rainbow through his wet lashes!

In these images, you can also see silk in production by traditional methods in Uzbekistan.

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Choosing your Ancestors

9/4/2012

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How do you choose your ancestors?
How do you map out your family history? Do you go up one line of the family, or do you try to discover the whole circle of direct line ancestors whose DNA has influenced yours? What you choose, the heritage which you lay claim to, will affect not just the research you do, but your whole concept of your ancestry. I’ve written about this fascinating challenge in my book Growing Your Family Tree (Chapter Two), but I’ll give a brief outline here. This vital topic is given scant attention, apart from practical considerations of managing your research, but it has a rich significance which everyone involved with family history can explore for themselves.

Circle of Ancestors – This approach means that you set out to trace as many direct-line ancestors as you can. The circle doubles in size at each generation, from 4 grandparents, to 32 at your 3x gt grandparents, and 64 for your 4x gt grandparents. Stop right there, for a moment…the numbers go rapidly off the scale after this point. If you want to lay claim to your ancestry, to get to ‘know’ your forbears, and to sense them in their entirety as a group, then clearly you’ll need to set a limit. For me, 32 is about right. I’ve got just about all of them in place, and each one has a distinct identity, and often a lot more too in terms of personality and life events. I’m happy to take some back to 4x gts or even further if it’s an easy line to follow, or there’s some riddle that I want to solve such as ‘How did this branch of the family end up in this particular place?’

A Direct Line – The traditional method of genealogy was to trace a direct line of descent, usually through the family name. As most of us come from a patrilineal culture, where taking the father’s name is standard, this tends to reinforce the concept of a male line as equating with ancestry. There are no rights or wrongs here; every society in the world devises its own kinship system, and where the line of descent is perceived as coming through the father, it tends to strengthen the family identity along those lines. And, of course, it’s easier to research as a rule, in these societies. But it’s by no means universal, and there’s no overriding reason to take either the name or the father’s line as the given.

You might also, for instance, choose to research the female line, and if you can cope with the successive name changes that are likely to occur with each generation, you may find it rewarding to trace this very physical and genuine line of descent. After all, it’s said that as many as a third of children have a different father to the one listed on the birth certificate! I have a treasured pair of photographs showing five generations of my female line, from my maternal great grandmother to my daughters’ daughters. And I can trace it back another three generations to my 3 x gt grandmother, Maria Adie of Bedworth, in a family of ribbon weavers and miners. There, so far, the trail runs out – unless you know different?

The Family Tree – It’s great to have a goal to start with, such as following one line, or establishing your circle of ancestors. But as I’ve indicated, you’ll probably want to compromise here and expand there, so the ‘Tree’ form allows you to do just that. Its branches grow vertically and stretch out laterally as well. The Tree itself is a powerful symbol of the family, and in many traditions it’s seen as representing the source of individual human lives, and the spirit of an individual family as well. Modern software makes it easy to ‘grow’ your tree, and to view it in different ways.

Tree, circle, line: our family history is not just about gathering data; the forms we draw it in are powerful and have a psychological impact too. These are ancient and potent symbols, and go beyond their use in pragmatic diagrams. By contemplating and drawing up family patterns this way, my sense of connection with my family history has deepened, and become full of meaning. And although you will probably use one of these primarily, you’re likely to find that each has value, and that you can move from one to another as your interest develops.

Five generations of my female line, from gt grandmother Sarah Lee to granddaughters Eva & Martha

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Isle of Wight Festival, 1969

6/4/2012

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My only surviving photo of the Isle of Wight Festival, 1969

Isle of Wight Festival 1969
Or: The Rainbow Years
Were you there? If so, I probably didn’t see you. It was a seething scrum, after all. Did you watch Bob Dylan? Oh, was he that dot on the stage, almost out of sight, literally, even in the days when I didn’t need glasses? And did you enjoy hanging out with the love crowd of ’69? Hmm – in between the hunt to find food and an unpolluted toilet, I can’t say it was my most blissful experience.

But, hey, I do love to remember the festival that I hated! It was a journey of self-discovery, after all. The one where I discovered I didn’t like crowds, rock music and being stuck on small islands. And quite genuinely, my 60s memories are precious to me. I was there – I saw, I did. I am entitled to reminisce, with a groan.

It looked promising, on arrival. A pleasant green field to put up our tiny two-man tent, lots of space around. That didn’t last. My then-boyfriend, later- husband and I relaxed, allowed ourselves to become chilled out, probably spaced out too. Then tents began to spring up all around us, liberally sprinkled with lager-swilling inhabitants. Not the dope-smoking, happy hippies we were used to, or the students of our own normal habitat, but rough tough guys out to make a weekend of it using traditional methods of booze and fighting to enhance the experience. Nearby copses and ditches soon became unusable as green loos, and the excited chattering became a continuous twenty-four hour uproar. Despite my long hair and generally dishevelled appearance, I was actually an early-to-bed, prefers folk to-rock kind of wimp.

I only have short memory clips of the weekend but those that remain are certainly connected with moments of self-awakening. We started to go hungry. The organisers hadn’t expected such huge crowds, around 150,000 it’s estimated. They hadn’t provided enough toilets (‘nuff said already) or food. First basic insight: I don't like to live without loos or sustenance - why pay for the privilege of doing that? Once the local village shop had run dry of groceries, we watched as festival vendors hiked their prices higher and higher. The equivalent of £10 for a slice of fruit pie, for instance. I saw and noted how exploitation and greed flourishes even when the message is freedom, peace and love. That’s two revelations, and the third was more of a confirmation. I couldn’t really be bothered with the speck of Dylan on a faraway stage, droning out music I’d heard already and didn’t particularly like. I should have known that; I had queued overnight on a Birmingham pavement with friends a few years earlier just for the fun of it, to buy Dylan tickets which I didn’t then want to use. (And no, I didn’t sell them on at a profit!) Hmm – so I was a dead loss at a festival then, wasn’t I?

Fourth revelation: I couldn’t leave when I wanted to. When the crowds built up, it became impossible to get where you wanted, even just walking around, let alone trying to get off the island. Besides, my boyfriend was all for staying and he seemed to be enjoying himself. After the festival finished, we had to join a shuffling throng of refugees trying to make their way to the port and onto a ferry boat back to Southampton. It took hours. I remember then driving through Winchester (probably, we’d hitched a lift – though how we managed that with so many others around, I don’t know) and silently intoning the words of the song ‘Winchester Cathedral, you’re bringing me down’ to myself.

I’ve tried the Isle of Wight, festivals and camping since, though separately, never all together again, and have to say that my illuminations on that occasion proved to be correct. I don’t like any of them. I blurted out my antipathy for the Isle recently at a family get-together, only to discover that a certain tribe of in-laws hail from there. We managed to make a joke of it – just. My daughter has done the correct thing though and rebelled against her mother’s preferences. She’s a professional festival organiser. She cut her teeth on illicit entries to Glastonbury – once in a drum box, in a roadie’s van – and has organised music events across Europe and Australia. I’m very proud of her, just as long as I don’t have to go too.

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Images from the Silk Road: 1- Rainbow Silk

Choosing your Ancestors

Isle of Wight Festival, 1969

Cherry Gilchrist

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