text-EN.txt

 The last weeks of the year are a festive time in most countries; but while Europeans just celebrate Christmas and the New Year, Americans begin their festive season about a month earlier. The feast of Thanksgiving, celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, is second only in importance to Christmas in the American calendar of feast days.
    Thanksgiving is the oldest non-Indian tradition in the United States, and was first celebrated in the year 1621. It was in this year that the men and women in Plymouth, one of the first New England colonies, decided to establish a feast day to mark the end of the farming year.
    As devout Protestants, they called their feast day "Thanksgiving", a day on which people could celebrate and give thanks to God for the crops that they had managed to grow and harvest. This was not in fact an original idea, but was based on the English "Harvest Festival", an old custom whereby people gave thanks to God once the crops were all in.
    In America however, a successful harvest was more significant than in England, for any failure to bring in an adequate supply of crops could be fatal for a new colony, struggling to set itself up in an alien continent. Several early North Americans colonies failed because the colonists were killed off by disease or fighting, and others perished because they did not have time to prepare enough land and grow enough food for their needs during the long cold winter months. The year 1621 was a particularly bountiful one for the Plymouth colonists, so they  "gave thanks" for their good fortunes.
    In the years that followed, other colonies introduced their own Thanksgiving festivals, each one at first choosing its own date, and many varying the date according to the state of the harvests. In 1789, President George Washington gave an official Thanksgiving Day address in honor of the new Constitution; and Thanksgiving Day, like Independence Day (July 4th) became one of America's great days.
    Nevertheless, at first the date was not fixed nationally; indeed, it was not until 1863 that President Abraham Lincoln declared that Thanksgiving Day should be celebrated on the last Thursday of November. Other presidents made similar proclamations, and the date of Thanksgiving tended to move around until the year 1941, when Congress and the President jointly declared that it should henceforth be fixed on the fourth Thursday of November. Since then, Thanksgiving Day has remained fixed.




    THANKSGIVING RITES
    Once a communal festival, where whole communities celebrated together, Thanksgiving is today the great family festival; but apart from that, it has not changed greatly.
    The heart of Thanksgiving is still the fruit of the land; and the Thanksgiving feast is based, essentially, on the native American foods that allowed the early settlers to survive: turkey, corn, potatoes and squash.
    The wild turkeys, large birds that lived in the forests of North America, were like a miracle for the early colonists who could trap them with ease; and turkey has always been the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving feast.
    Potatoes were unknown to Europeans before the discovery of North America, and it was Indians who taught the early colonists how to grow them and eat them.
    Maize, the great native North American cereal, is another ingredient of the Thanksgiving meal, eaten in the form of sweet corn.
    Finally, for dessert, no Thanksgiving meal is complete without "pumpkin pie", the traditional  tart made from pumpkins, enormous round orange types of squash.





The electric car revolution: is it realistic or optimistic?
Governments and motor manufacturers around the world are throwing money and resources into the development of electric vehicles. But can electric power really replace the internal combustion engine before the middle of the century? Maybe it can, but this is by no means certain.
Electric car batteries
Electric car batteries - big, heavy and hard to exchange

and other  good bookshops     Electric vehicles have arrived. With technology led by Tesla, and all of the world's major car manufacturers following along behind, electric vehicles are now a common sight on the roads of most developed countries.  Yet the situation in less developed countries is rather different; the only African country to have started the change to electric vehicles is South Africa and even there, electric vehicles still account for less than 0.01% of the total number of cars on the roads. In South America, the situation is better, with all Latin American countries beginning the move towards electric vehicles, particularly Columbia which, in 2020, had a third of the continent's total electric car fleet. In Russia, the wealthy are investing in imported electric cars, but no electric cars are yet manufactured locally, while in India the government is promoting the purchase of electric vehicles with tax exemptions and other incentives. So electric cars have arrived, and their share of the market is increasing almost  worldwide.
  Does this mean, therefore, that the world is on track to phase out the use of petrol-driven vehicles in less than thirty years? And does it mean that electric vehicles are the sustainable solution to our transport needs for the second half of the century? Unfortunately, to the disappointment of some people, the answer to both of these questions has to be "no".
  The massive development of electric vehicles can only be possible if two conditions are met. Firstly the expansion of electric vehicle manufacturing is dependent on the fragile ability of manufacturers to source vastly increased quantities of  vital components and elements without which electric vehicles cannot operate; these include lithium, cobalt and "rare earths" such as neodymium and tantalum, as well as silicon chips which have already been in short supply since 2020.  Secondly, few countries currently have electricity grids that are anywhere near being able to cope with the huge increase in demand for electricity that will accompany any rapid growth in electric vehicle ownership.  Without adequate supplies of all the vital ingredients of electric motors and batteries, or without power supplies that are able to provide the electricity needed to recharge millions of electric batteries every day (as well as supplying the current we need for everything else, such as lighting, heating, trains and electric devices), the electric car revolution will run up against insoluble problems.

   Governments and vehicle manufacturers are fully aware of these issues, but the consensus among policy-makers seems to be that somehow technology will come up with the answers, as it often has in the past. Analysts also predict that changing social attitudes and environmental awareness will lead to a reduction in private vehicle use and a fall in the numbers of vehicles on the roads. This prediction is likely to be right, though not necessarily for those reasons alone; any shortage of  essential components will force up the cost of electric vehicles, and any shortage of battery recharging facilities or capacity will discourage people from buying electric vehicles, leading to a fall in the number of vehicles on the roads.
 Ultimately the success of the transition to electric powered vehicles will depend on advances in technology in three fields; the weight of batteries, the amount of power that they can produce, and the speed at which they can be recharged... or exchanged.
  It may surprise you to learn that electric vehicles are not a new idea; indeed, at the start of the automobile age in the late 19th century, America had as many electric cars as gas-driven cars, and New York's biggest taxi company used electric vehicles. In order to keep their taxis on the road when the batteries ran low, they set up battery points at strategic locations where instead of recharging their batteries, drivers would just exchange them for fully recharged ones, a process that took no longer than refilling with gasolene.
  Thus battery exchange stations, rather than battery recharging points, may perhaps solve the problem of slow recharging times which currently prevents owners taking their electric vehicles on long trips. Yet battery exchange is not an option with today's large heavy batteries. While the latest generation of Lithium-ion batteries are almost twice as efficient as the batteries being used just five years ago, they remain big and heavy.  Before batteries can become easy to exchange, a quantum leap in battery technology is needed, one which will allow batteries to store much larger amounts of electricity in much smaller and lighter units. Teams of top electrical engineers  in universities and private laboratories worldwide are working on battery technology, and progress has been rapid.... New types of lithium batteries are being developed, but the radical discovery that will revolutionise battery design is still to be made.
  As for the availability of clean renewable electricity in sufficient quantities to cope with demand from all the world's electric vehicles, progress in this direction is already underway. Ideally, notably in hot countries and outside cities, recharging points will be autonomous, generating their own electricity from solar panels and wind or water turbines and storing it either mechanically or in high-powered batteries. The technology already exists, and a California company, Beam Global, recently installed 30 solar-powered recharging stations in sunny parts of the state.
  So are people who believe in the ability of technology to solve all our problems being realistic, or over-optimistic? And will other problems such as environmental issues and the availability of vital materials throw a spanner in the works? Will all the world's countries be able to complete the electric vehicle revolution, or will the world's poorer nations get left behind.... yet again? For the time being, progress is upwards, but can it continue? In terms of volume, the electric vehicle revolution has only just got underway..




From Magna Carta to American democracy 
Though Britain is a monarchy and the USA is a republic, the two nations share a common constitutional heritage that guarantees political and human rights.
THE HERITAGE OF MAGNA CARTA
Signing the US ConstitutionSigning the US Constitution in 1787. The Founding Fathers were mostly of British descent, and were very familiar with the origins of the constitutional rights enjoyed by people in Britain. A British flag can be seen on the wall in this painting, by Howard Christy.
In his address to the nation in September 2022 US President Joe Biden warned Americans not to take their democracy and their human rights for granted. "We told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed," he said, "But it's not. We have to defend it. Protect it. Stand up for it. Each and every one of us."
   At a time when civil liberties and acquired human rights are are being questioned and even threatened in many countries, including the USA and the UK, it is interesting to look back at how these rights were acquired in the first place.

When the Founding Fathers of the United States drew up their Constitution in September 1787, part of what they wrote down was directly inspired by one of the most important documents in the history of England: Magna Carta.

As gentlemen who were familiar with the culture of the British Isles, from where their ancestors had mostly come,  the Founding Fathers knew their English history well; they saw what was right and what was wrong with the political and administrative system of power in the country of their ancestors; and they decided that as far as its effects on American colonies were concerned, Britain was not applying the basic principles of just and responsible government. To American eyes, the principles of Magna Carta were no longer being respected. The Founding Fathers  were determined that in the new United States of America, these rights would be enshrined in the Constitution.

Magna Carta is certainly one of the most influential documents to have been written in the last 1,000 years. It was in the year 1215,  the late Middle Ages, that a group of Anglo-Norman noblemen decided that the time had come to establish once and for all in England the limits of royal power and the fundamental rights of the people.

Inspired partly by the democratic tradition of the Anglo Saxons (who ruled England until the Norman conquest in 1066), partly by their own desire to prevent a royal dictatorship, they forced the notorious King John to sign away the right of a monarch to rule autocratically without the consent of parliament.

As far as basic human rights are concerned, they too were established in writing in Magna Carta.

"No free man shall be imprisoned, unless by the lawful judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land," it stated. "To none will we (i.e. the monarch) sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice."


Magna Carta was the original Bill of Rights. Although it did not give "power to the people" in any modern sense of the word, it did limit the power of the King. It confirmed the authority of Parliament, and established for good one of the most important principles of regal or political power in England - namely that the power and authority of a leader to rule are subject to approval and permanent scrutiny of those over whom he rules.

In other words, Magna Carta served to banish for ever from England any idea of the "divine right of kings" or "absolute monarchy". On the few occasions since then when British monarchs have tried to override the limitations imposed on them by Magna Carta and subsequent constitutional acts, they have done so at their peril. When King Charles 1st was tempted by the attraction of absolute power in the seventeenth century, he had his head cut off, and the monarchy was temporarily abolished. 

A fact that is often forgotten nowadays, is that England was one of the first nations to become a republic in modern times; Charles 1st was replaced by a commoner called Oliver Cromwell, and England became a "Commonwealth".... which is a vague translation of the Latin expression res publica – more normally translated as republic. The republic lasted for only eleven years, after which  Parliament reinstated the monarchy; but twenty-nine years later, the power of the monarch was again restricted, and the rights of Parliament and the people were reaffirmed, in the English Bill of Rights of 1689.

Transferred into the language of eighteenth century America, the principles of Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights were taken one step further, when the United States Constitution totally separated the three sides of power: executive power (the President), legislative power (Congress) and judicial power (the Supreme Court).

In the course of the centuries, the bold democratic principles originating in Magna Carta have too often been neglected in individual cases; but at least they had the merit of existing, and generally speaking they have underlined law in the English speaking countries ever since. It is a pity that even in Britain or the USA, there are politicians today who do not believe in all the democratic values that have guided our history for many generations..




In Britain there's no "National day", no "Britain day" and obviously – since Britain has not been colonised since Norman times – no Independence Day. 

Instead Britain has Guy Fawkes day, also known as Bonfire Night,  which is not even a public holiday, but is a day, or more exactly an evening, of great celebrations in towns and villages up and down the country. On the evening of November 5th, the night sky is ablaze with light from bonfires and the pyrotechnics of millions of fireworks. It looks like a National day, it sounds like a National day, but it is not; it's neither a celebration of the founding 
  of the modern state, nor the commemoration of a moment of constitutional change. 

Nor indeed is it a day to remember a father of the nation, since Guy Fawkes was neither a statesman nor a great political leader. Quite the opposite; he was a criminal, potentially a mass murderer, and is celebrated not for what he did, but what he failed to do, which  was to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London, during the Opening of Parliament in the presence of the King, in the year 1605.

If the "Gunpowder plot" had succeeded, then November 5th might well have become England's national day, the day on which its parliamentary democracy was undone and replaced by an autocratic Catholic monarchy, a kind of royal dictatorship of the type that existed in continental Europe at the time. But that did not happen; someone spilt the beans,  
 and before Fawkes and his conspirators had time to carry out their deadly deed, the barrels of gunpowder that had been sneaked into 
 the cellars underneath the Westminster parliament building were discovered, and the plot was foiled 
 .

People have been remembering the event ever since, and each year on the night of November 5th bonfires are lit all over Britain and effigies of Guy Fawkes, known as "the Guy", are burned on them. While it is not a National day, Guy Fawkes Day began life as an official holiday in 1606, when Parliament ordered people throughout England to celebrate the failure of Fawkes and his conspirators. Each parish had to hold a service of Thanksgiving, and attendance was mandatory 
 . 

In times before the mass media, many people needed to be reminded what they were remembering, and songs and stories were made up for the purpose. The best known of these is the very popular rhyme Remember, remember the fifth of November, Gunpowder treason and plot" , which has been known and recited for many generations. (1).

In the absence of any National day, Bonfire Night remains to this day the biggest moment in the year for firework displays in the United Kingdom. Although laws governing the sale and use of fireworks, and the rising cost and technicity of fireworks,  have put limits on the multitude of free-for-all backyard firework displays that used to take place, bonfires are lit throughout the British Isles on the evening of November 5th, and thousands of effigies of Guy Fawkes are burned as fireworks light up the night sky. The date of November 5th is a perfect time for this, coming at a time of year when the night is long and the ground is generally damp, thus reducing the risk of unintended fires and making the festivities family events; it's also the middle of autumn, a time when the outdoor activities of summer have come to an end. It's a moment for excitement and festivities in an otherwise dull time of year, and for many people it's the day after which thoughts can be turned to the next big festivity, Christmas.

.
What was the Gunpowder Plot ?
Clear and concise,  a reference grammar for teachers and students
 In the year 1605, England was a Protestant country  where certain individual liberties had been guaranteed by law for almost 400 years. Since the 16th century, Europe had been divided into two blocs, the Catholic countries (essentially the Hapsburg empire) and the Protestant nations.

England had converted to Protestantism in the time of King Henry VIII, but there were still plenty of people, particularly in the aristocracy, who were nostalgic for the Catholic cause. Guy Fawkes was one of them, though he was not the ringleader, just the one who happened to be 
  guarding the 36 barrels of gunpowder stocked beneath the House of Lords when, working on a tip-off, the guards came round.

The plotters were led by a man called Robert Catesby, whose plan was to blow up the English Parliament during its opening session in the presence of King James I. After that, English Catholics would rise up in revolt, set up a new government, and the authority of the Catholic church would be reasserted.

Hero or villain?
While Guy Fawkes is generally remembered as a villainous traitor who tried in vain to destroy the English King and his parliament, historic facts have all too often been forgotten.  Taken out of context, Guy Fawkes has even been turned into a hero, and seen as an anarchist martyr whose aim was to get rid of elites (the king and parliament) and give power back to the "people"; his face has been used by hacker groups and activists of the left and the right, notably the group Anonymous, as a symbol of the fight against establishment powers and hierarchies.

It's ironic and an interesting insight into how images can take on their own life, with little relevance to reality, that twenty-first century anarchists can iconize a man whose ideals were neither libertarian nor democratic. Though certainly a revolutionary in his way, Guy Fawkes was basically a middle class religious fanatic whose objective was not to give power to the people, but turn the clock back in favour of Catholic power that was more hierarchical, more aristocratic and less tolerant than the Protestant parliamentary system that had replaced it.

Note: 1. The lines Remember, remember the fifth of November are just the first two lines of a longer poem, but were not written by John Milton, as is often claimed. In the year 1626 the young Milton did write a poem about the failed plot, but it was in Latin , was much longer, and bears no similarity to the popular rhyme, whose origins are unknown.




If our world is to survive for much longer, we have no choice but to reduce the use of natural resources and cut out wastage.  Compared to traditional agriculture, aeroponics does both.
Aeroponic in Chicago

  The world's population is expected to continue growing until the end of the twenty-first century; that at least was the general consensus of experts until 2019. Maybe in the new post-Covid reality, the rate of growth will slow; but even so, unless Covid-19 or some other new virus causes millions more deaths than initially predicted, the world's population will continue to grow, putting ever-increasing pressure on the natural environment, on resources, on living space, and most critically on food and water. Aeroponics will be part of the solution.

     According to a United Nations FAO report published in 2011, almost half of the fruit and vegetables produced in the world go to waste – they never get consumed by the humans for whom they are grown.
   Wastage occurs throughout the production and distribution cycle,  during production, during transformation, during transport, and even – notably in developed economies – after purchase by the final customer.
    Fifty percent of all fruit and vegetables going to waste, that is an enormous amount of wastage,  and not just in economic terms.  This wastage has a huge impact in terms of natural resources, particularly space and water, which in turn have huge implications for the global environment.
    Cutting out all waste in the production and distribution of food is an impossible goal. Even people living in small eco-sustainable communities generate waste. Even in organic crop production, pests and disease cause wastage; and even if harvested and distributed locally, part of a crop will always be wasted.
    But there is a large difference between wasting fifty percent of all fruit and vegetables produced worldwide, and the unreachable goal of achieving no waste at all. Between 50% and zero, there is plenty of scope for significantly reducing the volume of food waste worldwide simply through the use of new more efficient production methods.
    Studies have shown that packaging and distribution systems  account for about 25% of total wastage of fresh fruit and vegetables, leaving plenty of opportunity for improvement. In an ideal world, and as in the past, much of the food consumed in cities would be produced locally, not shipped thousands of miles as happens today.
    In 1998, the US Department of Agriculture released a study into fruit and vegetables arriving at the Chicago Terminal Market, the main point of distribution for the American Middle West. The report showed that basic vegetables including lettuce, broccoli, peas or  cauliflowers all traveled over 2000 miles (over 3000 km) before reaching the market... and before being shipped on to supermarkets across the region. Yet Chicago is in the heart of a massive agricultural area. Granted it can get pretty cold in winter, but with modern agricultural techniques, the Midwest could be self-sufficient for many types of fruit and vegetables, cutting out the massive environmental cost of shipping tons of vegetables half way across a continent.
    Since 2011, Chicago's O'Hare airport has been home to an aeroponic garden (photo top of page) , where people can see how vegetables can be grown in an environment that is not only without soil but even without any permanent medium in which to grow. In this experimental  garden, plants are grown, as the name suggests, ... in the air, their roots hanging down in nothing.
    Hydroponics, growing plants in troughs of nutrient-rich water, has been developing since the 1970's. Aeroponics takes things one step further, by removing the water and replacing it with air. Not just air, obviously; while plants are grown with roots hanging in the air, these roots are regularly sprayed with a nutrient-rich solution that gives them just what they need for optimum growth. It's very high-tech, it's not cheap, and it's a long way from currently popular organic farming techniques. Yet in many ways, aeroponics is actually more environment-friendly than even the most strictly managed traditional organic farming methods. And it's down to one factor: waste.
    Traditional farming is wasteful; modern intensive agriculture relies on large inputs of external resources, notably heat, water and nutrients. The vast amounts of water used by agriculture are already causing serious problems in many parts of the world; beneath California's San Joaquim Valley, the world's most productive agricultural area, water tables have been dropping for almost a century, and scientists estimate that the land... not the water table below it... has sunk by over 8 metres in some parts. NASA calculate that Southern California had a "water deficit" of 4.2 gigatons per year from 2002 to 2015.
    Aeroponic agriculture reduces water waste to zero. The only water used is what is actually taken up by the roots of plants when they are sprayed. Any water not used can be collected and reused.
    The same goes for nutrients; in traditional agriculture, plants only extract a small proportion of nutrients from the ground, and good ground will have many nutrients in it that will not be used at all by the crops grown on it. In an age of diminishing natural resources, traditional agriculture uses millions of tons of chemical fertilizer each year, much of which goes to waste. In Brittany, France, many streams and beaches have been seriously polluted by nutrient-rich water running off fields, causing "algal bloom" along the seashore and covering some beaches in green slime. With aeroponic agriculture, no nutrients are lost, so there is no risk of unintended pollution.
    One big advantage of traditional agriculture is that it almost always uses natural heat and light, even if under glass or plastic. Aeroponic agriculture, by contrast, may require artificial heat and light, specially if practised indoors. But with the development of small-scale locally-sited renewable energy production, and highly energy-efficient buildings and lighting systems, large-scale indoor aeroponic vegetable growing units are liable to be a feature of tomorrow's cities.
    If all the lettuces consumed in Chicago in winter could be grown locally, in carbon-neutral zero-waste aeroponic "farms", instead of being brought in by truck from California, that in itself would lead to a huge reduction in the use of water, minerals, land-space and transportation costs.  Reproduced on a global scale, reduced use of natural resources will be vital for ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come, even when the global population goes above 10 billion.





    America's Amish communities live a lifestyle that has changed little since the 18th century; but in other respects, they are showing other Americans the way forward in the twenty-first....


    ► See below for vocabulary explanations

The roadsign is, to say the least, unexpected ; driving through a prosperous rural part of North America, the last thing you expect to see beside the highway is a yellow diamond roadsign with a horse and buggy in the middle! Watch out for horses and buggies on the road? What is this? Do they exercise racehorses here, or what?
    You keep an eye open for horses; for two miles you see nothing, then all of a sudden, look! Coming towards you on the other side of the road, two black horse-drawn buggies! As they go by, your surprise turns to disbelief; what's going on? Are they making a movie about eighteenth century America? The men and the women in the buggy look like they jumped out of a novel by Fennimore Cooper. Amish buggiesThen, another mile and things get even stranger; beside a neat-looking farm-house, there is a whole line of buggies. In the door of the house, half a dozen men in black coats, and with long beards, are talking while some women dressed in a curiously ancient fashion are sitting on a bench. Is this 2020 or 1720 ?
   
    You drive on, wondering what has happened to this part of the United States of America? Have you driven into a time-warp, and without realizing it, gone back 300 years, or is it the people you've just seen who're stuck in a time-warp?
    A quick inquiry at the nearest gas station gives you the answer; you are in Amish country, and the men and women you have just seen are Amish, part of a strange religious group that settled in America in the 18th century, and much of whose lifestyle has changed little since then.
    If you had seen the movie "Witness", you would have already known something about the Amish, how their community is strictly religious and self-contained, how Amish people do without the essentials of modern-day life such as electricity and cars, and how they do not mix with people outside of their own community. It is virtually unheard of for anyone to become an Amish, who was not born an Amish. This is about all that most Americans know about Amish people, unless, that is, they actually live near them and come across them in daily life. So who are they?
Amish farm    In brief, the Amish are members of an ultra-protestant religious movement that first came to America from the upper Rhine valley over three hundred years ago, and have kept their traditions and lifestyles. They are very law-abiding citizens, and their community is one in which there is little crime, or at least little reported crime. Amish families are patriarchal and live strict lives, following the same code of morals as their ancestors. In a sense, they are indeed stuck in a time-warp.
    Yet the most remarkable things to note about the Amish are not their quaint lifestyles and their home-made clothes,  but the expansion of their community,  its efficiency, its social cohesion, and their recent adoption of "green" technology, including wind-power and solar energy. Although they work the land using traditional horse-drawn machines, and use no chemical fertilizers, their agriculture is - interestingly - among the most productive in North America !

    While white America is, on the whole, a population that is stable in numbers, the Amish community is growing faster than virtually any other community in the USA. In the 40 years from 1950 to 1990, the number of Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the original and still the largest Amish community in the USA, grew by exactly 400%, all by natural growth, not through the influx of immigrants. The Amish do not keep statistics, but it is fairly safe to assume that the total Amish population of the United States in the year 1900 was no more than a couple of thousand; today the Old Order Amish, those who have kept up the strictest traditions of their religion and society, number over 100,000, spread in communities across the eastern US and Ontario. The total number of Amish living in the United States in June 2020 was estimated at over 344,000... an increase of almost 90% since the start of the twenty-first century.
Amish couple    Amish, who reject modern medicine and all forms of birth control, have some of the biggest families in America, with an average of over six children per family. Few abandon their community.

    Amish teenagers tend to be as normally rebellious as any other American teens, until they are baptized. Until this happens, they are not obliged to conform to the strict Amish codes of dress, hairstyle and behavior, and many make the most of this liberty; before baptism, Amish teenagers behave much like other American teens;  up to 30% of older unbaptized Amish teens own cars, and 40% have drivers licences! Amish teens also enjoy baseball, dancing and even alcohol!  Amish baptism takes place between the ages of 16 and 21, sometimes even later.
Amish teensAmish youth working at the family sawmill

    The fact that only about 18% of young Amish abandon the austere way of life of their ancestors is not the only reason why the community is growing so fast. Other factors include increasing life-expectancy, and higher standards of living.
      As for machines and modernity, Amish families do not live a primitive life; while they reject the use of mains electricity in the home, they accept the use of kerosene and efficient wood-burning stoves that provide plenty of light and heat and comfort in their homes; and they are certainly not out of touch with technology.  It was estimated that in 2007, 80% of homes in some Amish communities were using wind or solar power ! In this respect, far from being stuck in the past, they can be considered as one of the most advanced communities in the world !
     As for leisure, it is not one of their major preoccupations! While they do not have televisions or radios, they have other social activities; yet Amish leaders actually fear  that the development of a cult of leisure could rapidly destroy their society.
    Contrary to popular belief, the Amish are not cut off from the rest of America; like any farmers, they need markets for their products and suppliers for their goods; some work for non-Amish employers. Many have non-Amish neighbors. They know what is going on in the rest of the United States, and like many other Americans, they are alarmed by many modern developments.
    This too explains why most young Amish opt to carry on with the hard-working and strict way of life of their community. Though Amish life is hard in many ways, it is free of most of the pressures and problems of the rest of American society. As long as this lifestyle is not forced into radical change, many of those who have been brought up in it will continue to see it as an  attractive option.



Notting Hill Carnival - Europe's biggest

When, in 1964, members of a Trinidadian steel band were invited to take part in a street festival in Notting Hill, in the west of London,  none of them realised that they were going to give birth to Europe’s greatest street carnival.
Notting Hill Carnival    There had been racial tension in Britain in the late 1950’s, and the Black people who had come over from the West Indies to work in London found it hard to mix with Londoners. As a way of breaking the ice, the idea of a street festival was suggested; street festivals being popular events on the Caribbean islands, the original organisers suggested that the sight and sound of a Trinidadian steel band playing on the streets of Notting Hill would encourage local residents, both black and white, to come out on the street and enjoy themselves for an afternoon.
    The first festival was an immediate success; once the black people of Notting Hill heard the music of the steel band, they came out into the street to dance and enjoy themselves as they might have done back home in the West Indies; attracted by the unusual and rhythmic sound of the steel band, others too came along to share in the experience. In short, the first festival was such a big success that the organisers decided to organise another one the following year.
    Since then, the Notting Hill Carnival has evolved into a huge multi-cultural arts festival, attended by up to two million people; besides being the annual high point of London’s Afro-Caribbean community, it now attracts hundreds of thousands of people from all over Britain and other countries, and has become the world’s second biggest carnival, second only to Rio.
    Over the years, the carnival has grown in variety, reflecting the multi-coloured and cosmopolitan nature of modern London; recent carnivals have seen the participation of groups from Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Russia, and many other countries, as well as musicians and dancers from other parts of Britain. In addition to the procession of exotic costumes and steel bands, there are now almost fifty static stages with bands playing different types of West Indian music, but also jazz, soul, and other popular varieties.
    With so many people in attendance during the two days of the festival - the last Sunday and Monday in August - moments of tension and the occasional scuffles with the police are inevitable; yet in spite of the crowds, serious problems are rare. The vast majority of those who come to this festival come to have a good time, to finish off the Summer holiday period with a day or two of exoticism and colour; they do not come looking for trouble.
FROM TRINIDAD TO LONDON
    In Trinidad during the days of slavery, black slaves were forbidden to play musical instruments and wear costumes except on the occasion of the traditional imported European carnival, that took place six weeks before Easter. Slaves were also forbidden to be on the streets after dark, unless they were accompanying their master.
    When slavery was abolished in British colonies in 1833, slaves took to the streets in song and dance; to celebrate their new-found freedom, they dressed up in fancy and colourful clothes and powdered their faces white, to mimic their former masters and show that they could be masters too.
    In the years that followed, as slavery eventually disappeared from other parts of the new World, carnivals developed into great moments of celebration for the former slaves throughout a large part of the region; from Rio to New Orleans, by way of the Caribbean, people vied with each other to produce the most exotic and exciting carnival costumes. Even in 19th century Trinidad, it was amazing what some people managed to produce using the very limited resources available to them.
    Today the situation is quite different; and although many Carnival costumes are now made up from left-overs and snippets, others are carefully made from material bought specially for the purpose. Yet regardless of how the costumes are made, the result is spectacular; a flamboyant display of colour and originality that has earned itself a highly deserved place as the most important annual street festival in Britain.






What is the most recognisable symbol of London? Big Ben? The statue of Eros in Picadilly Circus? Or could it be something much less artistic than that? Could it be the big red London double-decker bus?
    It certainly could. Big red buses are recognised  all over the world as symbols of London. Visitors climb into London buses to go and see the Niagara Falls. London buses can be seen driving round Europe to advertise big department stores, or British events . They don't need to have the words "London Transport" on the side of them. They are instantly recognised by millions of people !     
London bus  Red London buses in the 2020s     It was over 100 years ago, on October 25th 1911, that the London General Omnibus Company ran their last horse-drawn omnibus through the streets of the capital. From then on, the monarchs of the road in London have been those famous red motor buses.
  
    The idea of the "double decker" is actually much older than the motor bus. It is simply a continuation of the system that was used for public transport in the age of horse-drawn vehicles, when some of the passengers sat inside, and the rest travelled on the roof. Too bad if it was raining!
    The earliest double-deckers omnibuses in London were horse-drawn vehicles. Like some of today's double-deckers, they had steps at the back, to let people climb up onto the roof. The main difference was that in those days, there was no protection for the people travelling on top. If it rained, they could pull a sort of oil-cloth cover out of the back of the seat in front of them, and pull it over them; but you still got pretty wet.
   It wasn't until the 1930's that all new buses came equipped with roofs over the upper deck! Increasingly powerful engines meant that buses could be bigger and heavier.  Like trams, they could then have roofs.
    The most famous London buses, however, are not those that filled the Capital's streets in the 1930's, but the powerful "Routemasters" which dated from the 1950's and 60's. These are the buses that have been taken all over the world, the buses that feature in the tourist brochures, and the ones which have been sold, in miniature, to millions of visitors and souvenir hunters.
    The Routemaster is an icon in itself! These buses were designed specially for London, by people who knew what London needed, and they  served their purpose well, and did so for half a century !
    Things started to go wrong for the London bus in the late 1960's. That was when the Ministry of Transport decided that it would only give financial help to bus companies that bought new buses with doors! Suddenly London Transport found they could no longer buy any more of their favourite Routemasters, that they had designed. They had instead to choose other models.  They have been buying other models ever since.  
(End of audio text)

The end of the story

In the late 20th century, five hundred of the solid and popular old buses were extensively renovated, and put back on the road as good as new, if not better! But not even the Routemaster could resist the winds of change. Modern transport systems require one-man buses, not buses with both a driver and a conductor. So in 2005, the old Routemasters were finally taken out of normal service.   
    Still, it's not too late to enjoy travelling on one of these historic buses. Some of the old buses have been preserved, and were used for a while on two "heritage routes" through the centre of London, specially for tourists.  Route 9 went from the Royal Albert Hall to Aldwych, via Piccadilly circus and Trafalgar Square; but the last Routmasters were used on this route in 2014. In 2020, the only route left was Route 15, which goes from Trafalgar Square to the Tower of London, via St. Paul's Cathedral.  But other old Routemasters are used by the tourist bus companies, which offer trips round the centre of London.
Today, every day, thousands of Londoners use the big red buses to move - often slowly - around town. Lots of tourists know that a one-day London bus pass, valid on all regular bus routes, offers a wonderful way to see  Britain's capital city.