Jane Goodall | Muriel Murch

Written and Read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

The Salon Season is here.

Storm Amy came and went, whipping the wind high and hard through London bringing down the first autumn leaves, but walking our mile canal loop the water was dark, clear, the overhanging trees holding their gold and russet leaves hidden for a little while longer. But other great trees have fallen. The quiet passing of Jane Goodall while still working was as if she left on a broomstick, while telling us to get on with it. Jillie Copper, an author known as the queen of the bonk-buster, gathered up her skirts as she swirled out the door. Diane Keaton quickly followed after them. These women, so dissimilar in work, all shared their passionate love of dogs. Surely a light example to find that which unites us.

Another woman has been called forward. Sarah Mullally has been voted as the new Archbishop of Canterbury in a church that still is allowed to teach that men should have authority over women. It has been six months since the Right Reverend Justin Welby resigned over not paying due-diligence to the problems of the church. Due-diligence to problems; something that all heads of church, state, and police struggle to maintain. But Sarah Mullally is also a nurse, and as she moved to further embrace her faith, taking up the role of priest, then bishop, she is mindful of the division her appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury and head the World Anglican Church will bring. As devout a feminist as she is a Christian, Bishop Mullally has a hard row to hoe and many priests and bishops under her care will resist her as she struggles to unite this wide-bodied church, weaving a bobbin through its warp, joining the threads of communication. Maybe between a woman like Bishop Mullally and the Venezuelan María Corina Machado, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, some world shift can occur towards peace in our time.

This past weekend the Israeli attacks on Gaza have halted but there is no end to the dying. While trucks have begun to roll into the bombed streets, cleared only enough to allow them through, they move slowly, allowing the near starving to seize whatever sacks they can off the flat beds. Stalls are set up and, even in this mayhem, sellers are trading to those with money while those that don’t must resort to theft. Medical supplies and nowhere close to sufficient.

Driven in Toyota trucks, 20 living Israeli hostages were returned to Tel Aviv while 2000 Palestinian captives were bussed from Israel into and released in Gaza. While the Israeli hostages mostly had families and homes to return to the Palestinians returned to bombed homes and decimated families. Their return must be soaked in deep grief pouring into anger.

The American President flew into Tel Aviv to address the Israeli parliament. He was greeted with a standing ovation which guaranteed to feed his hunger for a while. At the peace summit held in Egypt with his counterparts lined up behind him he declared “The prayers of millions have finally been answered. At long last, we have peace in the Middle East.”

At the photo shoot a back drop of European and Arab leaders stood behind him. Sir Keir Starmer looked puzzled, Emanuel Macron stoic, and the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, completely bemused. Later that day, perched on a suitably serious chair in a ‘for the press’ moment, the King of Jordan blinked furiously and frantically into the hot lights as he tried to be diplomatic, positive, and truthful with his thoughts and concerns for future peace in the Middle East. It was not easy. Can the American President stay focused enough to go through with meetings to implement the 20 point Peace plan?

During these last two years of this conflict, peaceful rallies for Palestine to be recognized as a sovereign State have been held throughout Europe and the Western world. Beyond thousands have gathered in the major capitals of Italy, France, Spain, The Netherlands and more. And here in the United Kingdom, London, Manchester and other big cities have been holding huge gatherings of silent, peaceful protests for the freedom of Palestine. But in the United Kingdom is it considered a crime, the government having designated the Palestine Action organization a terrorist organization. Last week in Manchester a single terrorist attacked a Jewish Synagogue. Amidst a mess of gunfire three people are dead and Manchester is wounded. Despite the Prime ministers pleas – never a good sound bite – for the weekend Pro-Palestinian demonstration at Parliament Square in London to stop – it didn’t – and the police moved steadily through arresting nearly 500 silent protesters aged between 18 and 89. England seems too small, in geography and spirit to allow its people to protest in peace for peace.

As Michaelmas passes and the autumn evenings shorten and lower its lights, the London salon season begins. Friends gather together for evenings of art and friendship. A dear friend, a Chinese artist, who has lived and performed her life and work mostly in England and Europe hosts the first: a music and poetry Salon at her home tucked away at the top of the Heath. We are in London but not – at this moment – of it. There are no tall ceilings with giant chandeliers hovering over us, nor gilt-edged velvet chairs as in a castle. But there is soft lighting, a comfortable sofa, mixed chairs and the floor to sit on. The rooms fold away from each other, one behind the grand piano and the others concertinaing back into the warmth of the kitchen. Old and new friends come together – catching up on the year past – no time for future dreams before the poetry and music about to be shared. Everyone is nervous. The friends she has gathered are for the most part just that – friends – most are artists with a small a. As the evening unfolds, poetry mingles with music. The grand piano gets its longed-for work out, Tang poems from the 1700s are read in Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian, Latin, Japanese, French, German, Esperanto, Polish, Italian, Danish and Spanish. A poem translated from its original Italian prose into English poetry captures a brief moment in China. All are blended between theatre, mime and the music.

Poetry read by Walter Murch

The evening lifts us and for a few hours we are gathered together in the womb of art and beauty that sustain us, giving us strength to walk back into the dark night and return to the world.

Calligraphy of the character “Chan” (zen) by David Su Liqun

This has been A Letter From A. Broad. Written and read for you by Muriel Murch

As always supported by https://www.murchstudio.com

Extracts of Xi’an of Eight Rivers written by Curzo Malaparte and read by Walter Murch. Music from Keith Hammond and Katrine M. Lehmann

Correction in the audio. Tang poetry is from the 700s not 1700s.

Recorded and knit together by WSM

Winter. The turning of, the date between, winter solstice and spring equinox. February 1st is celebrated with St. Brigid who moved into Christianity from the Celtic feast of Imbolc. St. Brigid’s Day is still observed as a Gaelic seasonal festival in parts of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. To make sure we don’t get too complacent, last weekend’s snowstorm arrived in England and in London managed to bring snowmen and slides to the parks and on the hill. Through the week the snow faded, the water-logged grass turned to mud and the dogs let off their leads were in heaven. Barbour Jackets and Hunter Wellington Boots are made for days like these – even in the city.

The Dutch named it Storm Darcy, and then as he crossed the North Sea he was nicknamed by the British Met office as the Beast from the East 2, as he is set to repeat – or exceed – the winter storms of 2018. Storm Darcy has come across North-Eastern Europe from Russia and one is mindful of the geography of the meteorology.

And also of politics. The harshness of the winter has played out in the harshness of the political regimes of Belarus and Russia with their clamp-downs and imprisonment of opposition political leaders. We hear very little from Belarus and only minimal news of Alexey Navalny’s court appearances and continued imprisonment. The Kremlin has now expelled three European diplomats: from Germany, Sweden, and Poland. The United Kingdom, France, and the European Union have joined together to shake their fingers at Russia. But Russia doesn’t care, even as more of the Russian people join the protesters against Putin’s authoritarianism and begin to look at Navalny as the moral compass of their country.

Navalny is seen – however briefly – more than the protesters in Myanmar.

Aung San Suu Kyi remains in house-arrest along with several of her ministers and when she can, urges her supporters to protest against the coup. And protest they do, coming onto the streets in the cities and towns in their thousands. Currently, the military commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing is holding the power of Myanmar’s military over the government – even as the country transitioned towards democracy. But not much news comes out of Myanmar. Social media has been shut down with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all closed. Information to journalists is spooled out through phone videos, just as it was shot on film before we had phones. What is clear is that the military has sent out the police to subdue the protestors and they – the police – don’t look too happy about it. The Burmese are slighter in build than their Russian counterparts in Moscow. Where the Russian police have the look of plated armadillos, these police officers move with a skittish hesitancy as they retreat behind their rubber-bullet guns and inside water-cannon tanks. For at the end of their day, they have to go home to mothers and fathers and be berated for turning against their aunts and sisters. Memories of military suppression are still strong among their parents’ generation. While the protesters are mostly young people, both men, and women, who have begun to find their voice in the emerging democracy, medical staff are also leaving the hospitals, and professors their universities, to march – while arthritic grannies are banging pots and pans from their windows and the curbsides.

Meanwhile, throughout England, the snow keeps falling, though in London it is unsure how to land – as snowflakes or raindrops. The wind chill is keeping the temperatures low, the snow in flurries, and ministers hurrying from their cars to Westminster or their Zoom-rooms where attention is all turned inward to the Covid virus, its variants, and the vaccines. And there is news, and rumors and charts and people trying to keep a lid on it and a Prime Minister wearing a paper hat and lab coat, out and about at vaccine factories, while muttering and mumbling “We’re doing jolly well, the number of people getting the vaccines are the highest” – then what, I wonder? Covid infection and death rates are finally coming down but the relentless level of exhaustion among hospital personnel is not. Staff morale is at a low ebb as patients keep being admitted to Intensive Care Units and there is no time to grieve over patients who have died before there is another to take that bed.

Meanwhile, at last night’s government briefing, Professor Jonathan Van Tam’s casual mention that ‘by the way, if you are over 70 and haven’t had your jab, give us a call and we’ll sort something out,’ just isn’t cutting it. Variants of the COVID-19 virus skip from country to country, turning and changing along the way as it travels throughout the world. This morning Health Minister Matt Hancock outlined the strong travel restrictions coming into force for those traveling from the Red-List Countries. But looking at the list of countries, I’m wondering how accurate this is, in terms of virus mutations and economic impact. What vaccine for which variant is now becoming a shell game that I can’t follow and there are muddles and finger-pointing and people to blame all though Whitehall, Westminster, and even the home counties. A quote from Jane Goodall might be worth reminding our government at this time.