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From the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, the worthy and prosperous merchants and burghers of Edinburgh vied with each other to leave their fortunes for the founding of schools throughout the city. Education was held in awe, and the Scottish idea was that nobody should be denied this privilege. The schools, only a few of them having undergone change in nature and in buildings, still exist. Heriot's School, founded by George Heriot, otherwise known as Jingling Geordie, still flourishes. Jingling Geordie was a jeweller, a goldsmith, and a moneylender to James VI of Scotland (James I of England). Daniel Stewart, an Exchequer officer, endowed a school that still stands in its turreted splendor of 1814. Mary Erskine, "relict of James Hair, druggist," left a fortune for the foundation, in 1707, of the girls' school named after her. Fettes College was founded by Sir William Fettes, a late-eighteenth-century tea-and-wine merchant and Lord Provost of Edinburgh. George Watson, an early-eighteenth-century merchant and the first accountant at the Bank of Scotland, left considerable funds for the boys' school and girls' school of his name. James Donaldson, a publisher of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, left a fortune that now provides a school for deaf children. And splendid Andrew Carnegie, whom we all know by his bequests to universities and libraries, came from a linen weaver's family in Dunfermline, close to Edinburgh. Carnegie's endowments included handsome trusts for a school and library in Dunfermline, and for Scottish universities, among them the University of Edinburgh, of which he was Rector.
When James Gillespie, a snuff merchant, died, in 1797, a part of his fortune went to found a day school for boys and girls. This was the school that it fell to my happy lot to attend. Gillespie's endowment allowed for parents of high aspirations and slender means, like my own, to pay moderate fees in return for educational services far beyond what they were paying for. When I first attended, at the age of five, it was coeducational, but after some years we lost our little boys and we were James Gillespie's High School for Girls, to this day one of Edinburgh's best-known schools.
Never were we allowed to forget the history of our dear Mr. Gillespie. Each year on Founder's Day the school gathered for a ceremony, which all during the twenties began with the Our Father and ended in general hilarity as the students watched the staff, on the platform, taking a pinch of snuff in honor of the Founder's profession. Founder's Day was held on a Friday in June. While our elders recovered from their sneezes, the senior prefect always put up an eloquent and prolonged plea on behalf of a holiday for the school on the following Monday which was invariably granted. In between these opening and closing events would come a homily, reminding us of the worthy Gillespie legends. In the nineteen-thirties, the snuff-taking ceremony was waived.
The story of James Gillespie, Esq., of Spylaw, is in many ways the most charming of all the merchants' histories; he was so satisfactorily and completely an Edinburgh character. He was humbly born, a son of the people. He is depicted with a shrewd eye; his bulbous nose and protuberant chin form a nutcracker profile; his mouth has the set of prosperity. James Gillespie and his elder brother, John, went into the snuff-and-tobacco business in the early part of the eighteenth century. James had his own mill in the Spylaw district of Edinburgh, while his brother ran a tobacconist shop in the High Street. Neither brother married. They had a reputation for extreme frugality and, at the same time, for benevolence. The Gillespies flourished all the more when the American war caused a scarcity of tobacco and sent up the price. I like to reflect on the fact that my good schooling is partly due to the War of Independence. James appears to have outlived his brother, working on to a ripe age and accumulating a large fortune. He kept a carriage, and the story is told that one day, meeting a friend of the nobility, James asked for a motto to place upon it. The friend (Henry Erskine) obliged with the couplet:
Wha wad hae thocht it
That noses had bocht it.
Gillespie put nothing of the kind on his carriage, content with only his initials. A memoir of this fine old man records:
Mr. Gillespie lived among his workmen in homely and patriarchal style, and though far from being miserly was extremely frugal and industrious, his favourite maxim being "waste not, want not." Even in extreme age one might have seen him with an old blanket round him and a nightcap on, both covered with snuff, attending the mill and superintending the operations of his man, Andrew Fraser.
There was one young man, evidently a relation, whom James Gillespie brought up as his heir, but Gillespie's death revealed that this, his next of kin, had been disinherited. It sounds a mean act on the part of the Laird of Spylaw, reputed, as he was, to have sat at the table familiarly with his servants, to have been an exceptionally indulgent landlord, to have nourished affection for his horse and cared greatly for his household animals and livestock. Why did James Gillespie disinherit the younger man? It is said that he did not want to indulge in the vanity of being remembered by a "thing called after himself." There is no verification for the story beyond a history of the Parish of Colinton written while James Gillespie's name was "still green" in the parish. It was certainly an attitude typical of Edinburgh to deny feelings for the sake of principle, and maybe that is the chilly truth about the disinheritance of the young Gillespie. Certainly, no member of James Gillespie's family benefitted at all from his will.
Gillespie's fortune was originally left in trust for a hospital and a school for poor boys. Gradually the object of the charity was changed until a modest fee-paying establishment—James Gillespie's School, for boys and girls—came under the benefit of his foundation. For most of my school days, it fell under the care of the Edinburgh Education Authority, and after 1929 it was mainly for girls. Today, it is a state-board school, again coeducational. What happened to James Gillespie's money is a question that has cropped up throughout all these changes, never failing to occupy correspondence columns in the newspapers. Some say that the funds were simply absorbed by the Edinburgh educational authorities. An interesting point is that at a committee meeting in 1938 the school was reported to be overcrowded, with fourteen hundred girls. There was a waiting list of four hundred. As a solution to the problem, it was proposed that the fees be raised. To which the chairman replied, "Every time we have increased the fees the number of pupils desiring to attend has risen."
Despite the introduction of fee paying, one of the main benefits to be derived from James Gillespie's fortune was the system of bursaries and scholarships, which enabled the more intelligent girls from free schools to attend Gillespie's without paying, while girls already at Gillespie's who obtained sufficiently good marks could continue their higher education without further fees. This was a godsend to parents like mine, who could not afford the rising cost of education. After the age of twelve, I did not involve my parents in school fees.
The official religion of James Gillespie's School was Presbyterian of the Church of Scotland; much later, this rule was expanded to include Episcopalian doctrines. But in my day Tolerance was decidedly the prevailing religion, always with a puritanical slant. Nothing can be more puritanical in application than the virtues. To inquire into the differences between the professed religions around us might have been construed as Intolerance. Many religious persuasions were represented among the pupils. There were Jewish girls in practically every class. I remember one Hindu Indian, named Coti, whom we made much of. There were lots of Catholics. Some students were of mixed faiths—mother Protestant, father Jewish; Irish Catholic mother, Episcopalian father. It meant very little in practical terms to us. The Bible appeared to cover all these faiths, for I don't remember any segregation during our religious teaching, although in other classes some pupils may have sat apart, simply "listening in."
Scotland was historically rich in sects. James Gillespie himself was an admirer of the Covenanters, those worthy bearers of Bible and sword who rebelled against the imposition of the English liturgy on the Scots in the seventeenth century. The Covenanters could be said to be reformers of the Reformation. But James Gillespie went further than that. He inclined toward a stricter sect, the Cameronians—a section of the Scottish Covenanters named after their chief exponent, Richard Cameron. In 1743, during James Gillespie's lifetime, they became the Reformed Presbyterians. Politically, they strongly opposed the union of England and Scotland.
One Founder's Day, Friday, June 12, 1931, after the ceremony, twenty-five Gillespie's girls set off for the Covenanters' Grave in the Pentland Hills to sing the Scottish paraphrase of the Twenty-first Psalm in Mr. James Gillespie's honor:
I to the hills will lift mine eyes
From whence doth come mine aid.
My safety cometh from the Lord
Who heaven and earth hath made.
The school building had been built in 1904 for another school, Boroughmuir. But Gillespie's took over in 1914. It was an Edwardian building, and, for those days, modern inside, with large classrooms, and big windows that looked out over the leafy trees, the skies, and the swooping gulls of Bruntsfield Links. From where I lived, the school was a ten-minute walk through avenues of tall trees. Leading away from the school was another avenue—of hawthorns, flowering dark pink in May. We called these "may blossoms." The school was surrounded by the large public moorland of the Links. A very attractive cottage (which had belonged to a fashionable photographer, Swan Watson) was attached to the school, but shortly after my arrival, to our mixed sorrow and delight, it was pulled down to make way for an extension that comprised a wonderful science room, a spacious gymnasium, and a totally new infants' department.
Of the infant school I remember comparatively little. My home life was still of the first importance, and remains imprinted in memories that I can still share with my brother, Philip. But of those early years at school I retain an impression of plasticine modelling, carol singing, and reading aloud (which I did well). A medal was circulated every week. One week, I won it for a crayon drawing of a tomato. I remember my big red tomato on the dark-brown drawing-paper background; I couldn't see anything very special about it. I played the triangle in the percussion band. All I had to do was bang it rhythmically—something that would have driven my parents mad at home. I also played a milkmaid in a tableau.
There were always flowers in the classrooms, on the windowsills and on the teachers' tables, all throughout my school days. The girls or their parents usually provided these, but the teachers were always tending plants. Some of them would lift the flower vases each morning to see if the cleaners had cleaned properly underneath. We had hyacinths in the spring. My mother sometimes put a bunch of daffodils in my hands to take to school in the afternoon.
The furnaces for the central heating were stoked by Jannie (the janitor—an ex-policeman, whose real name was John Bremner). Jannie it was who, with his ally, Parkie (the park keeper), kept an eye on the leafy meadows surrounding the school so that no potential molesters or peeping men in mackintoshes ever got near us. All the same, we were cautioned not to turn somersaults on the low iron railings that lined the pathways, lest "passing men might see your underwear." Alas, those iron railings went, like so much other civic ironwork, to make armaments in wartime, never to be replaced.
From the earliest days, we each tended to have a special friend, our "chum." My chum until I was nine years old was Daphne Porter, an only child whose father had died "out in India." Daphne had been told about sex, and she gave me her elementary version of the affair in a matter-of-fact way: I well remember that she was concentrating on something else, like making a daisy chain, while she informed me what "the gentleman" did to "the lady." We used to have tea at each other's houses after school. One day Daphne was absent, and many days went on into months. Daphne was in hospital and eventually died, taking all her information with her, and her very pretty looks. I had no idea what she died of. Her mother appeared like a ghostly wraith, walking along the street in deep mourning, which in the Edinburgh of those days consisted of a long black veil over a black coat, and black stockings and shoes. At the passing by of Mrs. Porter, I thought of the possibility of my own early death, and was far more unhappy for my mother's imagined grief than I was for myself. I didn't know what to say to Mrs. Porter. I just walked along with her for a block. I don't think she knew what to say to me.
So for a while I had no chum, but soon I found another best friend, Frances Niven. I already knew Frances quite well. We were both deeply interested in poetry and imaginative writing of all kinds. From then, Frances was my closest friend all through my school days.
The walls of our classrooms had hitherto been covered with our own paintings and drawings, records of travels, pages from the National Geographic, portraits of exotic animals and birds. But now I come to Miss Christina Kay, that character in search of an author, whose classroom walls were adorned with reproductions of early and Renaissance paintings—Leonardo da Vinci, Giotto, Fra Filippo Lippi, Botticelli. She borrowed these from the senior art department, run by handsome Arthur Couling. We had the Dutch masters and Corot. Also displayed was a newspaper cutting of Mussolini's Fascisti marching along the streets of Rome.
I fell into Miss Kay's hands at the age of eleven. It might well be said that she fell into my hands. Little did she know, little did I know, that she bore within her the seeds of the future Miss Jean Brodie, the main character in my novel, in a play on the West End of London and on Broadway, in a film and a television series. I do not know exactly why I chose the name Miss Brodie. But recently I learned that Charlotte Rule, a young American woman who taught me to read when I was three, had been a Miss Brodie and a schoolteacher before her marriage. Could I have heard this fact and recorded it unconsciously?
In a sense, Miss Kay was nothing like Miss Brodie. In another sense, she was far above and beyond her Brodie counterpart. If she could have met Miss Brodie, Miss Kay would have put the fictional character firmly in her place. And yet no pupil of Miss Kay's has failed to recognize her, with joy and great nostalgia, in the shape of Miss Jean Brodie in her prime.
She entered my imagination immediately. I started to write about her even then. Her accounts of her travels were gripping, fantastic. Besides turning in my usual essays about how I spent my holidays, I wrote poems about how she had spent her various holidays (in Rome, for example, or Egypt, or Switzerland). I thought her experiences more interesting than mine, and she loved it. Frances, too, fell entirely under her spell. In fact, we all did, as is testified by the numerous letters I have received from time to time from Miss Kay's former pupils.
I had always enjoyed watching teachers. We had a large class, of about forty girls. A classroom that size, with a sole performer onstage before an audience sitting in rows, looking and listening, is essentially theatre. From my first days at school, I had been far more interested in the looks, the clothes, the gestures of the individual teachers than in their lessons. With Miss Kay, I was fascinated by both. She was the ideal dramatic instructor, and it is not surprising that her reincarnation, Miss Brodie, has always been known as a "good vehicle for an actress." It was not that Miss Kay overacted; indeed, she never acted at all. She was a devout Christian, deeply versed in the Bible. There could have been no question of a love affair with the art master, or a sex affair with the singing master, as in Miss Brodie's life. But children are quick to perceive possibilities, potentialities: in a remark, perhaps in some remote context; in a glance, a smile. No, Miss Kay was not literally Miss Brodie, but I think Miss Kay had it in her, unrealized, to be the character I invented.
Years and years later, some time after the publication of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," Frances Niven (now Frances Cowell), my dear best friend of those days, observed in a letter:
Surely 75% is Miss Kay? Dear Miss Kay! of the cropped iron grey hair with fringe (and heavy black moustache!) and undisputable admiration for Il Duce. Hers was the expression "crème de la crème"—hers the revealing extra lessons on art and music that stay with me yet. She it was who took us both (who were especial favourites of hers—?—part of the as yet unborn Brodie Set) to see Pavlova's last performance at the Empire Theatre. Who took us for afternoon teas at McVitie's.
Frances and I were not alone in finding Miss Kay exhilarating and impressive. I don't think anyone of us ever forgot her. One of her former pupils, Elizabeth Vance (formerly Betty Murphy), from a class following mine, has written to me about "the wonderful years with Miss Kay." Elizabeth was quick to recognize the element of our Miss Kay in Miss Brodie. A recent letter of hers from her home in Australia gives some flavor of Christina Kay's extracurricular teaching. ("Teaching" is not quite the word, however. It was, rather, pure and riveting entertainment. )
Here is a part of Elizabeth's reminiscences:
I wonder if Miss Kay had one Italian parent, or perhaps a grandparent, as I remember her with dark eyes and an olive complexion—and such a great love of Italy and its art treasures: the paintings, the statues, the buildings.—I have never seen the Colosseum, the catacombs, the Sistine Chapel, the Ponte Vecchio or the Doges' Palace but through Miss Kay I feel I know them quite well. Interspersed with the Italian masters and the French Impressionists of the 19th century and the Dutch School (Rembrandt's portraits in particular) and literature and poetry and interior decorating (I moved all the ornaments on our sitting-room mantelpiece to form a more pleasing "line") we still had such an excellent grounding in the traditional three R's (useful, even today). How did she manage it. With Miss Kay I liked mental arithmetic and long division and multiplication sums, and those spelling lists, and found grammar thoroughly enjoyable.
But it is in another letter that Elizabeth Vance brings back to me the flavor and sense of Miss Kay in her classroom sixty years ago.
During recent scenes on television of the reunification of Germany, from Berlin, and over the sounds of bands playing and fireworks banging, I heard the commentator mention Unter den Linden—and I was back in Miss Kay's class and she was saying "in Berlin there is a street called Unter den Linden—that means 'under the lime trees,' girls, and there are many furriers' shops in that street."
"Many furriers' shops"—that was typical of those dazzling non sequiturs of Miss Kay's which filled my young heart with joy. One could see in one's mind's eye a parade of rich, overindulged German ladies, already swathed in furs, stepping out grandly under the lime trees of Berlin.
Cathie Davie (now Semeonoff), a brilliant scholar and school Dux, was a senior girl when I was still a junior. She excelled at everything—acting, poetry composition, mathematics, English. I had never known quite such an intellectual; even my clever cousin Mossie, who collected gold medals in medical school, seemed less intelligent. Cathie seemed unaware of her talents. I saw comparatively little of her, but, as she lived near me and took the same route home at lunchtimes and in the afternoons, I used to catch up with her and sometimes introduce a topic. Whatever it was, she would discourse upon it without divergence while traversing the leafy avenues of the Links. I was fascinated. She discussed Chaucer or Spenser as living people, but living people she never discussed at all. Cathie was infinitely kind. Some years ago, when someone had been making a claim in the newspapers for Miss Brodie's origin in a different teacher—the indefatigable and enthusiastic Alison Foster, of the upper school's English Department—Cathie, who had experienced Miss Kay's classroom in her own junior years, was quick to inform the claimant that "anyone who had been in her class knew that the character was based primarily on Miss Kay."
When I first saw the film of "The Prime," my immediate reaction was that it was too brightly colored for a true depiction of the Edinburgh scene. But I think Miss Kay would have felt very happy about the imposed bright colors. She loved colors. She taught us to be aware of them. She could never accept drab raincoats. "Why make a wet day more dreary than it is? We should wear bright coats, and carry blue umbrellas, or green." (In those days, umbrellas were universally black or brown.) She said, "I would like to see a gray coat and skirt for the spring, girls, worn with a citron beret. 'Citron' means 'lemon'; it is yellow with a sixteenth or so of blue. One would wear a citron beret in Paris with a gray suit." We painted the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. I believe that with Miss Kay color came before drawing or form. To her, color was form. "Rossetti knew well how to use the complementary tertiary colors, russet and olive green." And she showed us the picture of Dante's encounter with Beatrice, painted with russets and greens. I don't believe she cared much about Dante or Beatrice or the narrative element in the picture; it was simply a colorfest. "You will always know Corot," she said, "by his small touch of red, such as a hat. That makes the painting."
We could have begun to learn the arts and sciences of colors elsewhere, it is true; Miss Kay's lessons probably did not differ in substance from anyone else's. What filled our minds with wonder and made Christina Kay so memorable was the personal drama and poetry within which everything in her classroom happened. Her large, dark eyes were always alert and shining—that, I think, was half of the magic. Shapes and sculptures, arithmetical problems, linguistic points moved easily around each other. Part of our curriculum was the roots of our language. She would often stop in midsentence to point out a Latin, Greek, or Anglo-Saxon root. I can see her now, chanting, " 'Merrily, merrily shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough'—and the root of 'bough' is?"
Up would go a few hands.
"Right. 'Bōg.' It describes the flexible bough. Well, as I was saying, Ariel symbolizes freedom . . ." In "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" I said that Miss Brodie pointed out to us (as Miss Kay so often did) that "educate" derives from the Latin e (out) and duco (I lead). She had strong views on education. She believed that it was a "leading out" of what was there already (I believe this is basically an Aristotelian theory) rather than a "putting in." When I saw the play of "Miss Brodie" I was puzzled and a little amused to see that another character was made, seriously, to put Miss Brodie right on this question: the right derivation was educare. Either the adaptor or one of the producers had not realized that the root of educare is e and duco. I was so pleased with the play as a whole that I didn't venture to point this out. I didn't want to nitpick. And, besides, I had the distinct impression that any views I, as author of the book, might have were not really welcome.
Did Miss Kay have a sweetheart in her life? I think she did, long before our time. I would put her age at about fifty in my memory, and, looking at the class photograph, I think that is about right. The two years I was in Miss Kay's classes, the last in the junior school, were 1929 and 1930. She was of the generation of clever, academically trained women who had lost their sweethearts in the 1914-18 war. There had been a terrible carnage. There were no men to go round. Until we ourselves grew up there was a veritable generation of spinsters. At any rate, Miss Kay told us how wonderful it had been to waltz in those long full skirts. I sensed romance, sex.
There was no mistaking the romantic feminine ardor with which Miss Kay recounted her visit one summer, with two other ladies, to Egypt. Miss Kay described to us one of the dresses she wore on the cruise that bore her there—large red poppies on a black background, "how right for my coloring." And the visit to Egypt was recounted in every detail; we smelled the smells and felt the heat. We saw the tall, dignified figure of the guide (the dragoman, as he was called) and sensed Miss Kay's attraction to him. While discussing with her the different Lord's days (Friday for the Muslims, Saturday for the Jews, Sunday for the Christians), the dragoman said, with a spiritual smile, "Every day is the Lord's day." This impressed Miss Kay greatly, as did his appearance at the railway station when she and her two travelling companions left the country; he bore for each a large bunch of flowers. When I repeated this exotic tale to my mother, she remarked that Thomas Cook (the main travel agency of those days) paid for those flowers. I felt that this was dreadfully cynical, but I couldn't help feeling at the same time that my mother was probably right, and we had a laugh together about it.
I have said Christina Kay was a devout Christian. She knew how to apply her Christianity. For instance, she felt "Land of Hope and Glory" was basically anti-Christian. And we were expressly forbidden to join in any singing of the lines "Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set; God who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet." Of course, she was quite right. Such teachings, the sheer logic of the contradiction inherent in them of the moral culture we honored, sank in. Miss Kay recommended to us, instead, the lines of Kipling's "Recessional": "The tumult and the shouting dies; The captains and the kings depart: Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart." More than once, Miss Kay brought home to our attention exactly what we were singing so lustily. We were taught not to be carried away by crowd emotions, not to be fools.
Miss Kay's scriptural lessons were among her most marvellous. She had a true sense of the poetry of the Bible. Before reaching her class, we had been taught the Scottish catechism. I loved the beginning:
Q. What is man's chief end?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
We also knew the Ten Commandments.
When I was about nine, before I came to Miss Kay's class, I had a kind of religious experience. I saw a road workman knocked down or hit by a tramcar. He ran from the spot with his arms spread out and fell beside the pavement. I saw this from a place where I was playing with some other children from school. We were all speedily ushered out of the way, and so I had no means of knowing if the man had been injured, or maybe electrocuted, and if he lived or died. My father could find nothing about it in the evening paper. But the image of the workman with arms outspread stayed in my mind for a long time. I fancied he had gone to Heaven, and imagined him there in his workman's cap and overalls. I thought he liked me. I spoke to nobody about him. This image stayed with me for at least two years; then I ceased to be "haunted" by my workman. I remembered only how he once had been in my mind.
I flourished at my Scripture lessons in Miss Kay's class, she so well illustrated and explained the symbolism of both the Old Testament and the New. She made us learn the great passages by heart—the prophecy of Isaiah 53 ("Who hath believed our report?"); I Corinthians 13 on Charity ("Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels"); the song of Deborah; the song of Miriam; the Beatitudes; the Annunciation; the song of Simeon. I can recite them still.
At least twice a week after school, I would go to the public lending library in Morningside; it was in a charming nineteenth-century schoolhouse. I had lots of tickets that entitled the borrower to take out books—my own and my mother's, and also my father's when Philip didn't need them for his studies. I would bring home four books at a time, most of them poetry, for I was destined to poetry by all my mentors. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century poets were my preference—Wordsworth, Browning, Tennyson, Swinburne, and what were known as the Georgian poets (we were in the reign of George V): Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke, Walter de la Mare, Yeats, John Masefield, Robert Bridges, and, the only woman among them, Alice Meynell. I was always discovering new poems for Miss Kay to read. "Have you read this? Look at that," I would say. I was a passionate admirer of Masefield's narrative verse, especially "Dauber" and "Reynard the Fox." It was while I was in Miss Kay's class that I read "Jane Eyre," and Mrs. Gaskell's "Life of Charlotte Brontë," and "Cranford." I also tackled George Eliot's "The Mill on the Floss," without much success.
Miss Kay took Frances and me to the theatre and to concerts, sometimes to a good film, paying out of her own pocket. She begged us not to mention this to the other girls, "lest they should feel it is favoritism." Which of course it was. But she told the whole class that they were the crème de la crème, and meant it, because they were hers.
Among our other clandestine treats with Miss Kay were visits to modern poetic plays. There was at the time a repertory theatre company called the Arts League of Service, which we felt was very romantic. It appealed to us that the actors went round the countryside to act in small towns, sometimes sleeping in barns.
Miss Kay realized that our parents' interest in our welfare was only marginally cultural. She was determined that Frances and I should benefit from all that Edinburgh had to offer. We loved it. She felt rewarded by our response, as she told my mother years later. One of our special treats was going to hear John Masefield read his poems. This was around the time he became Poet Laureate, in 1930, and his fame was at its height. In those years, a poet could draw an immense audience. Twenty years later, when I wrote a book about Masefield, I recorded that event:
On this occasion Mr. Masefield read parts of Dauber—the passage on the rounding of Cape Horn. I remember particularly how well Minnie Maylow's Story came over. His voice was remarkable. When he began to read everyone was aware that the poet was not shy, after all. He read like a true bard. Since then, I have heard many bards reading their own verse; most are diffident, some try to overcome this by overdramatizing. I have not heard anyone read his own work like John Masefield, as if he believed in it. He read as he might have read someone else's work, and that is a very difficult thing for a poet to do. His pronunciation was very pure, his tones very clear.
The most exciting of these outings with our beloved Miss Kay was to the Empire Theatre to see Anna Pavlova, indisputably the world's greatest dancer of her time—an event mentioned in the letter from Frances which I have already quoted. Actually, this was Pavlova's last tour. The great ballerina died shortly afterward. On this occasion, she danced "The Dying Swan." I remember the sinking swan, and the two final death taps of Pavlova's fingernails on the floor of the stage, like claws. Frances and I were now twelve years old. Both had already seen ballet dancing, but we had never thought such dancing as Pavlova's and her corps de ballet's could exist. We spoke of it together time and again afterward. We were busy, too, on various joint projects—nature stories and descriptions of life on Mars, and poems. What happened to those notebooks of ours? Who knows?
That year, I had a batch of five poems published in an anthology of young people's poems called "The Door of Youth." I was one of the youngest contributors. This fact, and the number of the poems, drew some attention to them. They had a certain lyrical quality. There was a poem about time (in which I noted that "as I write this verse on Time / that self-same Time is flying"); one about a stag hunt (in which the stag gets away); a poem about the sea, in which it features as a ravenous lion preying on ships and, in another mood, as a horse; a poem against the snaring of rabbits and against fox hunting; and a poem "To Everybody," which was used as the dedicatory item in the book.
My poems in the school magazine were often influenced by Miss Kay's lessons on relativity. One of the library books recommended by her was "The Mysterious Universe," by Sir James Jeans, a famous popular astronomer. I wrote poems about the universe, such as one in which the inhabitants of other planets "Look up to the sky and say / 'The Earth twinkles clearly tonight.' " Miss Kay predicted my future as a writer in the most emphatic terms. I felt I hardly had much choice in the matter.
Christina Kay was an experimental teacher. Once, she separated us according to our signs of the zodiac: she had read somewhere that children of the same zodiacal sign had a special, mysterious affinity. For a time I was separated from Frances, a Capricorn, and put beside a boring Aquarian. What happened as a result of this experiment was nothing. But even that nothing Miss Kay somehow made into an interesting, a triumphant discovery.
Her father had died when she was still a girl. It had fallen to her to manage affairs for her widowed mother. She told us of the day she had to go and query a bill at the Edinburgh gas office. Our class of girls, incipient feminists, was totally enthralled by Miss Kay's account of how the clerks tittered and nudged each other: a female desiring to discuss the details of a gas bill! "But," said Miss Kay, "I went through that bill with the clerk, point by point. He at first said he couldn't see any mistake. But when I asked to see the manager he had another look at the bill. He consulted with one of his colleagues. Finally he came to me with a very long face. He admitted there had been an error in calculation. I made them amend the bill, and I paid it then and there. That," said Miss Kay, with her sweet, wise smile, "taught them to sneer at a businesslike young woman."
Miss Kay always had the knack of gaining our entire sympathy, whatever her views. She could tolerate, even admire, the Scottish aristocracy (on account of their good manners), but the English no. She made a certain amount of propaganda against English dukes, who, she explained with the utmost scorn, stepped out of their baths every morning into the waiting arms of their valets, who stood holding the bath towels and who rubbed them dry. This made us all laugh a lot. And, in fact, we often had cause for general mirth in Miss Kay's class.
After school, Miss Kay was an ardent lecturegoer. She attended lectures on such subjects as theology and German poetry, which were available to the general public at the University of Edinburgh. She went to lectures on health and "care of the hair and hands" at some other institution. She went to hear art historians and educationists. And on Sundays she would generally be at Professor Tovey's Sunday concerts in the Usher Hall. (Professor Donald Francis Tovey was Edinburgh' s leading musicologist and conductor.) All these events, like her summer, Easter, and Christmas holidays, Miss Kay would bring back to school to offer up to us and enrich our lives.
I continued to enjoy a certain fame as the school's poet. I should describe at this point the curious and ambiguous experience I had after leaving Miss Kay's class when we all moved to the Higher Grade, as the senior school department was called. It was 1932, the year of the centenary of the death of Sir Walter Scott. A poetry competition was launched among the schools of Edinburgh by the Heather Club, a men's club founded in 1823 (for what purpose I do not know, except that it was very Scottish). I won first prize with my poem about Sir Walter Scott, and another girl at Gillespie's got third prize. The school was doubly jubilant; everyone was delighted. So delighted that I hadn't the heart, I couldn't possibly explain how I felt about the prize itself. Partly, it was a number of books, and that pleased me. But partly it was a coronet, with which I was to be crowned Queen of Poetry at some public Scott-centenary celebration. My mother was overjoyed, as was nearly everyone else, in school and out of school. I felt like the Dairy Queen of Dumfries, but I endured the experience and survived it. A star actress, Esther Ralston, did the crowning. It was a mystery to me what she had to do with poetry or Sir Walter Scott. The coronet itself was cheap-looking, I thought. The only person who openly agreed with my point of view was our reserved and usually silent headmaster, T. J. Burnett. He knew I had to go through with it now that I had won the prize, but he showed a sense of the unsuitable nature of this coronet affair. He was essentially an administrator, a man of very few words. "Tinsel," he said quietly to me, and then he made a congratulatory speech in front of the school. According to his daughter, Maida, he remarked at home, "That lassie can write." I know he was indignant for me. After the event, Miss Kay paid us a visit in the upper school with a press cutting in her hand. She said nothing to belittle the affair. But she did say, as she held up the photograph to the class, "You can see the sensitivity in that line of Muriel's arm." And, indeed, you can see an involuntary shudder in the line of my arm in the picture.
Frances, on this occasion, made me a small "laurel wreath" of colored wax, which I still treasure. With it she gave me a verse that she had composed for me:
Though on fame's dizzy heights you stand,
Though you climb ladders without end,
Please don't forget me for I am
Your dear and most devoted friend.
Fairly recently, I had occasion to remind Frances about these lines; I was also able to add that "fame's dizzy heights" are more often than not a great pain in the neck.
One of the good effects on me of this event was my meeting with the adjudicator of the prize, Lewis Spence, an Edinburgh poet and considerable man of letters. The classics teacher, Miss Munro (known as Beanie), and I went to tea with him at his home the Sunday after the awful ceremony. Lewis Spence was the first professional writer I had met. We talked about poetry, the essential suitability of certain forms and rhythms to certain themes. The conversation was general. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Some members of his family joined us, dispensing tea. Lewis Spence said to me, "Of course you will write as a profession." His daughter, very languid and beautiful with long hair, played the guitar and sang "La Paloma." On the way home Beanie Munro said, "She made 'La Paloma' sound quite original, hackneyed as it is."
What good times Frances and I had together! I went with Frances to Crail, a seaside town in Fife, to stay at her grandmother's house for part of the summer holidays. The North Sea was clean in those days but not always hospitable, because of its wildness. We would sit on the shore and watch the steel-gray and white-foam breakers tossing the little shipping vessels far away.
At weekends we roamed in the botanical gardens or went for walks at Puddocky (a puddock is a frog), beside the Water of Leith, then home to tea. We buried a document—I think it was a jointly written story—under an ancient tree in the botanical gardens. But what exactly it was, and why we buried it, I can't remember, except that I know it had a lot of the Celtic Twilight culture woven into it. There was a room at the top of the school where the wind was especially rumorous. I think it was the school library. Frances and I called it the "Mary Rose" room. "Mary Rose" was a play by J. M. Barrie.
The year after Miss Kay's last class, when we were in the first forms of the upper, or senior, school, we were fully occupied in coping with our new variety of subjects, each one taught in a different classroom by a specialist teacher. We dashed from class to class. We were now also in different houses, of which there were four: Gilmore, Roslin, Spylaw, and Warrender. I was in Warrender, Frances in Roslin. It made no difference to our friendship; the system of houses applied predominantly to sports: hockey, tennis, and swimming. (Which house would win the shield?) But Frances and I sat together in class as usual.
Alison Foster (nicknamed Fossil) was an enthusiastic and friendly English teacher who edited the school magazine. Beanie, Miss Munro, taught Latin and Greek; she was pale and quiet and fairly young. There were a few male teachers. Mr. Wishart was our singing master; he got tunefulness out of us, taught us the rudiments of music, and prepared us for our annual Gilbert and Sullivan show and for our concert in the Usher Hall. There, after the prize-giving, a choir of at least seven hundred girls in white dresses and black stockings rendered many a rousing number, to the pride and delight of our parents and their friends. We ended with Blake's "Jerusalem," accompanied on the organ by Herbert Wiseman, Edinburgh's organist No.1.
The handsome art master, Arthur Couling, expressly admired my poems, but about my drawings he was expressly silent. Coolie, as he was called among the girls, was himself a practicing artist. He had some successful shows; one of his paintings, with the tantalizing title "Le Bateau à la Moustache Jaune," was bought by the Glasgow Corporation for a Glasgow gallery. Dishy Arthur Couling also painted the scenery for our dramatic performances and our light operas.
Frances lived near Coolie's house; it was in Northumberland Street. We had such a "pash" on Coolie, the infinitely glamorous, that we would walk up and down the street, quite unnecessarily, in the hope of catching sight of him. But Coolie's favorite girl was Betty Mercer, bold and clever, slightly anarchic, and very handsome. At the school dance he sat and talked to her all evening. He didn't dance with Betty, just talked. When we asked her what they had talked about, she said, "Cosmetics."
Once, when we were exasperating Coolie by our chatter in class, he said, "If you girls don't shut up I'll smash this saucer to the ground." The saucer was held high: he was trying to demonstrate the nature of an ellipse. We didn't quite shut up, so he smashed the saucer to the ground as promised. We were thrilled and astonished. I used this incident in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie."
The history master, Mr. Gordon, whom we called Jerry, was a short, fair man. I remember well his passion for the industrial revolution. The innocence of our minds and the universal decency of our schoolteachers' comportment can be gathered from the fact that he used to make me sit at the front of the class so that he could stroke my hair while teaching, without anyone thinking at all ill of him. The girls tittered quite a lot. I liked it quite a lot. There was nothing whatsoever wrong with Jerry Gordon. My former schoolmate Elizabeth has reminded me that when he saw that someone was not paying sufficient attention Jerry threw a piece of chalk at her. As Elizabeth remarks, this livened up the class.
The Greek class was extracurricular. Only three girls took Greek. We had to get to school at eight in the morning to fit in this extra lesson from Beanie Munro. I loved crossing the Links to school in the early morning, especially when snow had fallen in the night or was still falling. I walked in the virgin snow, making the first footprints of the day. The path was still lamplit, and when I looked back in the early light there was my long line of footprints leading from Bruntsfield Place—mine only. I loved the Bruntsfield Links in all seasons. In the long summer evenings of Scotland, I would practice on the Links putting green with my brother and his friends. Philip was a good and keen golfer. I would often follow him around the Links golf course for nine or even eighteen holes, helping to hunt for lost balls; and when I was old enough I took round the course my junior-sized set of three essential cleeks (clubs). These were a brassie, a mashie, and a putter. Later, my brother gave me a driver and a niblick, the shafts of which my father cut down to size for me.
Miss Forgan (Forgie) taught French. She never appealed to me. She was a large-boned woman of late middle age. She would come into the classroom wearing an invisible crown of thorns and heaving an aggrieved sigh. Looking back over the years, I am convinced she was ill or—who knows?—perhaps burdened with family cares: an ailing father, a war-wounded brother. I would sometimes see her in the street after school, wearily hauling her shopping bags full of "messages" that betokened a plural domestic life. I never offered to help Forgie with her shopping bags (as we were all brought up to do). I was afraid she would say no, nastily. Nevertheless, I did better at French with Forgie than I did with any other French teacher. This included the Mademoiselle who came from France to teach us for a year, and whom we were at great pains to follow. She spoke rapidly and volubly and was delighted with herself. She was very pretty. We were thoroughly dazed. Another French teacher was J. G. Glen, a mild man with white hair. He never taught me, but one of his pupils has since told me that once having learned Mr. Glen's French there was no possibility of ever pronouncing it right for the rest of one's life.
Mabel Marr, small and efficient, with her white coat, presided over the science room, alternating with Margaret Napier (Nippy), a highly qualified, rosy-cheeked woman, who also taught mathematics. So far I had been slow at arithmetic, but algebra and geometry appealed to me greatly, largely because of Miss Napier's teaching. For some odd reason, she showed faith in me, knowing me to be a poet. The result was that I got high marks in both science and mathematics. I still have my science book, in which we wrote up our guided "experiments." I loved the science room, with its benches and sinks, its Bunsen burners, its burettes, pipettes, test tubes, and tripod stands. "Unless you specialize in chemistry or physics," said Nippy, "you will partially forget all this when you leave school. But as soon as you are reminded of any particular aspect it will come back to you." She was right. In spite of the claptrap, when I look at my science book it comes back clearly to me that, following an experiment involving the burning of phosphorous in an enclosed space of air over water, the conclusion is: "When a substance is burned in air (or tarnish is formed) 1⁄5 of the air is used up. Therefore 4⁄5 will be left. Hence the atmosphere consists of 1⁄5 of active air (a gas able to combine readily with substances) and 4⁄5 inactive air (a gas difficult to combine)." When I contemplate this in my schoolgirl handwriting, I see again the apparatus—bell jar, phosphorous, crucible lid, the trough, the water. I smell again the peculiar and dynamic smell of Gillespie's science room. Like all schoolchildren, we called our science lessons "stinks."
An alternative science and maths teacher was the wandlike Sandy Buchan, who impressed on us the dangers of trusting in appearances, especially where colorless, odorless, and tasteless matter was concerned. He put to us the awful caution:
Poor little Tommy Jones
We'll see him no more,
For what he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4.
I remember his enunciation of "colorless, odorless, and tasteless" in a precise Edinburgh voice. I reflected then, and still reflect, that there are people like that: no color, no taste, no smell. The moral is, avoid them; they might be poison. Sandy Buchan looked very elegant crossing the Links with his hat, gloves, walking stick, and long winter coat, but for sex appeal he couldn't compete with Coolie.
Another teacher who was under the impression that my bent for literature might add something to her class was Miss Anderson (Andie), who taught gym and dancing and was head games mistress. I was no good, really, at gym, and little better at dancing. As for games, I was what the hockey captain called "one of the spectators." But Andie would ask me to comment on our dancing, mostly folk dancing. She wanted me to give some imaginative life to it. Once, I was sitting cross-legged on the floor leaning against the parallel bars of the gymnasium and watching a group of girls performing a dance called The Mill when Andie asked me what I thought of it. I can't recall exactly what I replied, except that it was an exercise in diplomacy. I stood up and said something about the dancing being lovely but the dance not: to represent a mill the tempo should be speeded up. I think that this satisfied Andie and that she made our accompanist play faster. Frances was a very graceful dancer. In fact, she grew up to be a tall beauty; it was rightly said that she moved like a swan. And she always maintained her sweet nature.
Andie herself was an enormous, an athletic-looking woman, yet very light on her feet. The girdle of her gym tunic was tied round her hips, as was the fashion then, and tied in a very precise bow. That girdle would have gone three times round the average woman's hips. Andie's features were regular, her hair marcel waved. She would arrive at school in her own little black car, very sporting, wearing a dark leather coat. One of her pupils remembers how excellent she was as a Scottish folk dancer, participating in public performances in Princes Street Gardens. To my memory, her gymnastic feats would have been amazing even if she had not had to heave around that large bulk. She seemed to have built-in springs like the new mattresses that were coming on the market in our parts.
Although I was not much support to my team at hockey, I had to put in some afternoons at our playing fields at Meggetland, in southwest Edinburgh. I had a hockey stick that I had acquired cheaply from an older girl who had grown out of it. But I needed hockey boots. My father couldn't afford them; just at that moment he had bills to pay—no, hockey boots were impossible. I played in my ordinary walking shoes a few times, but very soon afterward my father appeared one evening after work with a pair of secondhand hockey boots. They were a perfect fit. I was overjoyed, especially as those boots had a rather kicked-about and experienced look; they were not at all novices in the field. My father smiled round the room, delighted with his success.
Who was Blossom? I cannot remember her real name, but I see her neat figure and pleasant face. She taught botany and sometimes took a Latin class. The Misses Kirkwood and Lynn taught sewing in those days before electric machines had reached the school. They both had pretty hands, which I much admired, but no style at all. The summer dresses they made us cut out and sew up were hideous, unwearable. The slippers we were induced to knit made one look like Minnie Mouse. Still, Frances and I filled in the sewing period, three-quarters of an hour a week, with quiet conversations about the poetry we were writing. Quiet, though not whispered, conversations were encouraged in the sewing class, for we sewed in pairs.
I believe Mr. Brash taught geography. He was young and fairly good-looking, but we thought him, in our jargon, "a Jessie." This does not mean homosexual in Scotland; it means slightly effeminate.
When the staff annually played the school's first hockey eleven, how vigorous they all were. How they pounded down the field, waving their sticks, especially Coolie and large, lusty, red-haired Mr. Tate, a maths teacher. The staff players sometimes slipped and fell on the muddy field, to the heartless applause and ironic encouragement of the onlookers assembled round the edge. Andie led the staff team, sometimes to glory. ("Go it, Nippy!" "Well saved, Andie!")
It was sixty years ago. The average age of those high-spirited and intelligent men and women who taught us was about forty; they were in their prime. I cannot believe they are all gone, all past and over, gone to their graves, so vivid are they in my memory, one and all.
I think we enjoyed an advantage over boarding-school pupils in our well-organized and friendly day school. We had the benefit of a parallel home life, equally full of daily events, and the impinging world of people different from our collegiate selves. Comparing our young youth with the lives of teen-agers over the intervening years, Frances has lately written to me, "We had the best life, Muriel." In spite of the fact that we had no television, that in my home at least we had no electricity all during the thirties (only beautiful gaslight), that there were no antibiotics and no Pill, I incline to think that Frances is right. ♦


text:
Indonesia on Thursday executed four drug convicts, three of them foreigners, by firing squad, an official said, pushing on with a campaign of capital punishment that has sparked a storm of global anger.
However 10 others expected to have faced the firing squad, including nationals from Pakistan, India and Zimbabwe as well as Indonesians, were not put to death.
Officials did not give a reason for the reprieve, but the prison island where they were expected to be executed was hit by a major storm as the other sentences were carried out.
"This was done not in order to take lives but to stop evil intentions, and the evil act of drug trafficking," Noor Rachmad, deputy attorney general for general crimes, told reporters.
The executions came after days of protests with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the European Union voicing opposition to the plan.
It was the first round of executions in Indonesia since April last year when authorities put to death eight drug convicts, including two Australians, which sparked international outrage.
Friday's executions came after a day of frenetic activity, with distraught relatives travelling to Nusakambangan island to say farewells to their loved ones and ambulances carrying coffins over to the heavily guarded penal colony.
The executed Indonesian was named as Freddy Budiman, while the three others, Nigerians, were: Seck Osmane, Humphrey Jefferson Ejike Eleweke and Michael Titus Igweh.
Two people whose cases had raised high-profile international concern among rights groups were not executed.
The first was Pakistani Zulfiqar Ali, whom rights groups say was beaten into confessing to the crime of heroin possession, leading to his 2005 death sentence.
The other was Indonesian woman Merri Utami, who was caught with heroin in her bag as she came through Jakarta airport and claims she was duped into becoming a drug mule.
It was the third batch of executions under President Joko Widodo, and means 18 drug convicts -- mostly foreigners -- have been put to death since he became leader in 2014.
Widodo has defended dramatically ramping up the use of capital punishment, saying that Indonesia is fighting a war on drugs and traffickers must be heavily punished.
But his execution drive has shocked the international community and disappointed activists, particularly as hopes were high that Widodo, seen as a fresh face in a political world dominated by figures from Indonesia's authoritarian past, would improve the country's rights record.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
New Approaches Needed to Address Drought Emergencies in Kenya
In recent years, Kenya has faced recurrent and intense drought conditions, which require more attention if the development agenda is to be achieved. On 10th February 2017, President Uhuru Kenyatta declared drought a national disaster, having affected 23 arid and semi-arid counties. In his declaration, the President requested both local and international partners to support the government in its efforts to contain the effects on humans, livestock and wild animals. Although drought effects are felt across the country, the pastoralists are the most affected given that they traditionally derive their livelihood almost wholly from livestock while living in a hostile climatic environment with poor linkage to markets.
Effects of drought
The recent 2016/2017 drought spell can be described as an extreme event, but it was not as extreme as the 2010/2011 drought that cost the country Ksh 12.1 billion in drought related losses with the livestock sector accounting for 72 per cent of these losses. The drought has seen pastoralists, particularly in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) counties, lose their livestock with reports of large numbers of animal deaths in Turkana, Marsabit, Samburu, Kajiado, Wajir and Mandera counties. This has also seen a drop-in livestock prices for example, in Kajiado County where a cow that would normally cost Ksh 45,000 was sold off at as little as Ksh 500. In addition, the drought condition has witnessed pupils dropping out of school to accompany their parents in search of water, food and fodder, as well as high levels of malnutrition particularly in ASAL counties.
Policies and institutional frameworks on drought
In the long-term development blue print, Kenya Vision 2030, the government prioritizes containment of drought effects in achieving the national development agenda and commits to Ending Drought Emergencies (EDE) in Kenya by 2022. The Ending Drought Emergencies (EDE) strategy builds on the National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands, using two approaches to reduce the impact of drought. The first approach is to strengthen the basic foundations for growth and development, such as security, infrastructure and human capital, while the second is to strengthen the institutional and financing framework for drought risk management (DRM).
The Ending Drought Emergencies (EDE) strategy is also in line with the African Union Agenda 2063 priority on climate resilience and natural disasters preparedness and prevention and on renewable energy. Accordingly, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) of which Kenya is a member country has Drought Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Initiative (DDRSI) that is relevant with drought management. The initiative recognizes that though drought-prone communities face common challenges and are often interconnected through shared natural resources, individual IGAD member states may have their own specificities and areas of emphasis.
The National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) is mandated to exercise coordination over all matters relating to drought management. So far it has established offices in 23 ASAL counties considered highly vulnerable to drought. The NDMA implements strategic projects that reduce risk or strengthen preparedness to drought, and provides drought information by generating, consolidating and disseminating drought early warning information through publishing monthly bulletins that communicate the current drought status (Normal, Alerts, Alarm, Emergency and Recovery).
In addition, in 2015 the government through the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries and in support of collaborating partners' established Kenya Livestock Insurance Scheme Program (KLIP) to cushion pastoralists in the event of drought occurrence. KLIP is a public-private partnership between the government and a consortium of seven local insurance companies including UAP, CIC, Jubilee, Heritage, Amaco and Kenya Orient, under the leadership of APA Insurance and reinsured by Swiss Re. The program utilizes satellites to monitor vegetation available to livestock, and triggers financial assistance for feed, water and veterinary medicines when drought gets severe that animal lives are at risk. In the event drought conditions reach a certain threshold, pastoralists receive compensation, usually delivered to mobile money accounts, to purchase emergency animal feed and water. To be an eligible beneficiary of the insurance scheme, pastoralists are registered under the Hunger Safety Net Programme. For the registered pastoralists, the government funds premium for insuring five Tropical Livestock Units (five cattle or 50 goats and sheep) per vulnerable and exposed household while the local insurers, managing the overall program, offer additional coverage for a fee.
Since 2008, the government has been supporting Hunger Safety Net Programme (HSNP) that was implemented in two phases 2008-2012 and 2013-2017. HSNP aimed to reduce extreme poverty and hunger among the poorest and most vulnerable households through cash transfers. Implemented through NDMA, HSNP provides regular cash transfer payments every two months, and emergency cash transfers based on prevailing drought conditions. Using a combination of Community-Based Targeting and Proxy Means Testing, HSNP beneficiaries were selected from the poorest 10 per cent in each county. The World Food Programme (WFP) and Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) also usually support cash transfers to vulnerable households in the event of drought occurrence.
To ensure all school going children have access to food, the country has developed a National School Health, Nutrition and Meals Programme Strategy which is in draft form. The strategy recommends Home-Grown School Meals Programme (HGSMP) as the most appropriate and sustainable approach for the country. While linking education, agriculture, health and social protection, the strategy ensures primary schools' children have access to a hot midday meal and smallholder farmers get access to structured markets. Under the HGSMP, funds are transferred from the National Treasury to the Ministry of Education and then to school accounts. The amount transferred is based on enrolment, number of feeding days and estimated cost of a meal per child per day. Each school has a school meals programme committee composed of four teachers and four parents who manage the programme.
While the government implements HGSMP across the country, WFP provides schools meals across the arid and semi-arid areas and in the poor informal settlements of Nairobi. Currently, HGSMP a Kenya's flagship project is reaching one million school-going children while WFP complements efforts in hard-to-reach areas, feeding an additional half a million. In addition, WFP also supports HGSMP through training and coaching of smallholder farmers, small scale traders and food processors nationwide. WFP also purchases food, donates equipment and facilitates access to structured markets.
Drought mitigation and adaptation strategies used
In mitigating the effects of 2016/17 drought condition, the government through the NDMA distributed animal livestock drought pellets to save livestock in affected counties including Turkana, Marsabat, Isiolo, Kwale, West pokot, Kajiado among others. Through the Kenya Livestock Insurance Program (KLIP), the government unveiled a Ksh 215 million livestock insurance payouts. Livestock off-take programme was also launched by the Kenya Meat Commission in partnership with County governments of Kajiado, Baringo, Isiolo, Kwale among other counties. The cattle were bought, slaughtered and distributed as relief food in the same counties.
Using cash transfer to support the vulnerable communities, WFP supported drought-affected people in five counties (Isiolo, Kilifi, Laikipia, Samburu and West Pokot) and reached half a million people. Each family in the semi-arid counties received USD 23 while those in the arid counties received USD 30 per month. The support by the government in HSNP Phase II (2013-2017) through cash transfer reached 100,000 households across the four northern counties that include Mandera, Marsabit, Turkana, and Wajir. Similarly, the KRCS gave each household a monthly cash transfer of Kshs. 3,000 to 41,990 households for three months in 2017. Other interventions by KRCS included animal destocking and slaughter programme, and distribution of foodstuffs in areas where cash transfer programme was not feasible. A total of 34,670 households (about 208,020 people) were reached with 900 MT of food in 8 counties against three million people food insecure in 23 counties. Through the destocking programme, up to 798 cattle and 10,982 goats and sheep were purchased and slaughtered in 5 counties among them Tana River, Marsabit, Wajir, Mandera and Garissa benefitting 179,664 people.
Some County governments among them Kajiado, Turkana, and Marsabit in collaboration with the County NDMA offices responded to drought emergencies through rehabilitation of boreholes, conducting water trucking and provision of fuel subsidies. The county government of Kajiado, in addition, constructed a hay store in Kajiado Central targeting 1,250 households.
Challenges with mitigation and adaptation strategies used
As much as the government intervened in helping pastoralists cope with effects of drought in the 2016/2017, pastoralists still lost their livestock because the efforts made were inadequate to cover the large number of the livestock affected. For instance, the Kenya Livestock Insurance Program (KLIP), covers five animals or fewer per household and also the scheme is available to only six counties that include Turkana, Wajir, Mandera, Marsabit, Isiolo and Tana River out of the total 23 counties that were affected by drought. Furthermore, the feed stores where pastoralists are supposed to spend their insurance payouts to ensure their animals' survival, are often far away from pastoralists' residence. Similarly, the feeds pellets given through NDMA to households were not only inadequate but were also issued to few households.
The KMC destocking interventions were not timely which saw some counties like Kajiado pastoralists selling their livestock for as low as Kshs. 500 in the local market. Moreover, the off-take programme generally pays less than the potential market rate. The school feeding programme was faced with a sustainability challenge due to insufficient resources. Inadequate funding saw WFP discontinue school meals between January and March 2017 affecting 460,000 children in all the seven counties including Lamu, Tana River, Isiolo, Marsabit, Garissa, Mandera and Wajir where it operates. Similarly, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology delayed in disbursing HGSMP funds meant to enhance retention and stable school attendance in the country including in pastoralists communities leading to children dropping out of school.
To make pastoralism sustainable and enhance pastoralists' resilience to impacts of droughts, the country needs to come up with other approaches of mitigating effects of drought to complement the already existing ones.
The county governments in drought prone areas can establish community hay storage facilities to support pastoralists who have no capability to establish their own storage facilities. In addition, the county governments can provide fodder crops that appropriately suit the climate and soils in their county to the households. Furthermore, the NDMA can also facilitate raising of fodder in government's as well as farmer's land with buy back arrangements.
Establishment of feedlot systems by counties that have a comparative advantage in beef production could be a possible solution for pastoralists in mitigating impacts of drought. Feedlot is a grazing system in which animals are confined and provided with feed and water. The system helps to improve body weight and attract favourable prices in the market. Feedlot system is universally practiced in beef production in various countries that include Argentina, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Botswana, Ethiopia, Namibia and South Africa. In Kenya, feedlot system is at its introduction stage by two business partners in Milimani Village of Chaka in Nyeri County who started the venture in 2015. Adoption of feedlot system will lead to reduced livestock movement in search of pasture and water, check on the spread of livestock diseases as well as result in improved, healthy and quality animals. With the expectation of increased number of animals from the feedlot system, the counties can establish hides and skin cottage industries which are among the priority in the manufacturing sector. By so doing, these counties will support the national government in promoting the manufacturing sector one of the big four government agenda.
Vulnerable communities need to participate in drought preparedness measures such as feed conservation like hay which can be stored for several months. Involving the community in drought mitigation is likely to reduce community dependence in government support in feed subsidies and drought relief packages when faced with drought. Furthermore, community involvement in drought mitigation is important in ensuring sustainability and ownership of initiatives as has been with Home Grown School Meal Programme. With the HGSMP, the community is usually involved at all levels and therefore they own the process.
To cope with the delayed disbursement and inadequate funding of the HGSMP and WFP school feeding programme respectively, the county governments need to support the communities in starting school farming projects and embrace storage of the produce which can be consumed in the event of drought occurrence. The initiative will not only reduce absenteeism in school but also ensure sustainability of the school feeding programme.
With just a few people benefiting from the limited safety nets such as cash transfers and food aid across the county in relation to the large number affected by drought, the counties that are prone to drought need to increase their contingency fund to compliment the national government efforts at times of drought.
Author: Edith Wairimu, Productive Sector Division
Photo: Kenya Broadcasting Cooperation


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New Release: Tor Browser 9.0a2
Tor Browser 9.0a2 is now available from the Tor Browser Alpha download page and also from our distribution directory.
Note: this is an alpha release, an experimental version for users who want to help us test new features. For everyone else, we recommend downloading the latest stable release instead.
This release is fixing regressions and providing small improvements similarly to our 8.5.1 release. Additionally, we update Tor to 0.4.1.2-alpha, OpenSSL to 1.1.1c, we disable the WebGL readPixel() fingerprinting vector, add the
ro locale, and start updating our toolchains in prevision to the planned migration to Firefox 68 ESR.
The full changelog since Tor Browser 9.0a1 is:
- All platforms
- Update Torbutton to 2.2
- Update NoScript to 10.6.2
- Bug 29969: Remove workaround for Mozilla's bug 1532530
- Update HTTPS Everywhere to 2019.5.13
- Bug 30541: Disable WebGL readPixel() for web content
- Bug 30712: Backport fix for Mozilla's bug 1552993
- Bug 30469: Add locale ro
- Windows + OS X + Linux
- Linux
- Bug 30451: Compile go-webrtc with a non executable stack
- Android
- Build System
TB alpha release are great…
TB alpha release are great. I look forward migration to Firefox 68 ESR,
I use 68.0b9 in work.
Why is there two versions on…
Why is there two versions on F-droid? Which one should users use? And why is the Play Store seemingly getting more updates?
There is an alpha and a…
There is an alpha and a stable version. If you want to help us find bugs in new features use the alpha one and the stable otherwise. The Play Store is getting updates faster as this is a process controlled directly by us. For F-Droid we still need to ask the Guardian Project folks to upload new versions for us which is a manual process and costs time. But we work on fixing that: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/27539
Thank you for the response…
Thank you for the response and explaination.
Tor project that my dream
Tor project that my dream


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Mama P's Herbal Grinding System is the only complete modular system for processing and preparing herbs for use in a full range of forms. The Li'l P Pollen Press Accessory directly connects to any Mama P's Custom or Classic Grinder for near instant and clean compression of pollen and keif into pressed cake form for vaporizing, dabbing or smoking. Made of recycled aluminum in Spicewood, TX. Order NOW to take advantage of our FREE SHIPPING promotion happening now. If you order with any Classic or Custom grinder you'll save even more with a free Grindson cleaning tool too.
Li'l P Pollen Press
Announcing the new Li'l P Pollen Press. Use alone or mated to any Mama P Custom or Classic Grinder to prepare compressed pollen into cake formulations for use in vaporizers, dabbers or pipes. Like our grinders, it's made of recycled aircraft aluminum here in the USA and is guaranteed for life! Full instruction for use on the box.
Additional information
|0.73 lbs
|4 × 4 × 4 in


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There was a period not all that long prior when going to a unique occasion in a couple of tennis shoes was a surefire approach to hail yourself to your glossy shoed associates as a fashion outcast. Be that as it may, demeanors have moved in unanticipated ways and what was at one time the scruffy exception is currently the footwear highest quality level. The change from running track to runway has been a moderate and steady one, however lately it has achieved a crescendo. A crescendo that looks set to boom on uncertainly.
This is thanks in no little part to various key originators and tennis shoe brands who have been pushing the footwear as far as possible each possible way. Some have made white cowhide kicks that take a gander at home with fitting. Others are concocting innovation that should have come straight out of a lab at Area 51 (or simply Back to the Future). In the interim, there are the individuals who have hoisted the tennis shoe from its utilitarian roots to the total zenith of high form it is today.
Here we investigate the most compelling tennis shoe marks on the planet at the present time and what they're doing to help make the world's most loved footwear.
Nike, The Undisputed Masters Of Hype
Better believe it, in 2016 Nike truly went back to the future and delivered Marty McFly's self-binding tennis shoes. In any case, this is only one occasion when the brand apparently came to through a tear in spacetime and brought us something straightforwardly from the future, making it the greatest trailblazer in shoes and a solid indicator for what's around the bend.
The brand has a long reputation of world-beating execution footwear and additionally mechanical advancement (Flyknit uppers and NikeID personalisation in the most recent decade). More than that, Nike knows how to make items that satisfy their extensive promotion. It has a greater number of symbols in its back index than some other tennis shoe mark. Air Max, Air Force 1 and Air Jordan are for the most part shoe traditions in their own particular right and return further and you'll discover significantly more great retro tennis shoes like the Cortez and the Blazer.
Adidas, The Brand That Turned Sneakers Into A Science
The continuous mechanical weapons contest between the world's sportswear enormous hitters has delivered a portion of the boldest advancements in footwear. Fortunately for us, it doesn't hint at any easing up.
Ask any sneakerhead in the city who's in shaft position and they'll reveal to you it's Nike. In any case, with featherlight materials and mind-bowing sole innovation, it could be effortlessly contended that great old three stripes is moving for a surpass.
Indeed, there are adored works of art – the Superstar, Stan Smith and Gazelle all ring a bell – and they're not leaving, but rather as of late the brand's R&D lab has turned into the tennis shoe world's Q branch. Disregard the Yeezy collab, it was the Ultra Boost that changed the diversion and most as of late, the German games monster has been trying different things with 3D printing as a generation technique for noteworthy webbed sole units. Try not to take your eyes off them for a second.
Converse, The 100-Year-Old Design Icon
It's mind blowing (and somewhat frightening) to consider how much the world has advanced over the most recent 100 years. Business flight, TV, cell phones and the web are only a couple of the creations that have changed the way we live. In view of that, it's a genuine triumph of outline when something presented a century back is as yet being utilized internationally today.
Speak's celebrated high-top, the Chuck Taylor All Star, is one such thing. Conceived in 1917, the notable b-ball shoe has stayed 99.9 for every penny unaltered and is presently the top of the line shoe in the US, UK and a long ways past. Truly, the brand has other incredible shoes, yet this is apparently the most famous tennis shoe at any point made. Also, likewise, it's for everybody.
Common Projects, The Luxe Trendsetter That Made Minimalism Cool
At the point when extravagance New York tennis shoe mark Common Projects initially presented its Achilles Low model in 2004, the menswear world went distraught for it. In any case, why? Is it accurate to say that it was creative? No. Was next-level agreeable? Scarcely. Did it come in at deal costs? An incredible inverse.
This shoe was just a plain, calfskin tennis shoe. Nonetheless, the thing that had the fash pack groveling over this moderate mentor was that each and every detail was carefully executed to the furthest limit. This was a tennis shoe made like an Oxford shoe handmade in Northamptonshire.
Rich Italian calfskin, stunning streamlined shapeliness and an immortal wearability that made each combine the ideal backup to anything from a suit to shorts. It ostensibly began the present flourishing extravagance tennis shoe market, and the greater part of this, in a world currently overwhelmed by Balenciaga creepy crawly crushers, isn't to be underestimated.


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Ahead of the announcement of Gareth Southgate's 23-man World Cup squad tomorrow, it has emerged that a duo with 109 caps between them will not be on the plane.
While that announcement hasn't been made yet, the likes of BBC Sport and Sky Sports are reporting that both Jack Wilshere and Joe Hart will not be in the England squad for the upcoming World Cup in Moscow.
The English midfield situation has drawn the most debate prior to June's showpiece, with some clamouring for the inclusion of Arsenal's Wilshere.
The 26-year-old is undoubtedly talented, but has had among the worst luck with injuries among those in the English professional game. Wilshere made 38 appearances for the Gunners this season, the first time he has played more than 35 since 2011.
While sustained game-time is encouraging, form is still an issue, with other outlets reporting that Manchester City's Fabian Delph is set to get the nod, given his role in the Premier League champion's excellent campaign.
As for Joe Hart, the former England number one continues his marked decline.
Despite being just 31, and having 75 England caps to his name, Hart's days as an international stalwart may be at an end. Since Pep Guardiola's arrival at the Etihad, Hart has spent loan spells at Torino and West Ham.
It is his poor campaign with West Ham this season, which saw him replaced in the starting line-up by Adrián, that has put paid to his hopes of appearing at a fourth international tournament, after turning out for Euro 2012, the 2014 World Cup, and Euro 2016.
Everton's Jordan Pickford and Stoke City's Jack Butland are likely to contend for the coveted number one shirt.


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MP Mykhailo Dobkin, archive photo
MP from "Opposition bloc" Mikhail Dobkin declared Arsenal of weapons, a collection of wines and Golf clubs. This is evidenced by his e-Declaration.
According to the document, the MP owns a flat in Kharkov, the area of 44,4 sq. m. marked "Other type of ownership" Dobkin pointed to a land area of 16.8 thousand square meters, two houses and 1136,9 to 127.6 sq m and a wine cellar 195,4 sq. m.
His wife Alla have two apartments in Kiev with an area of 79 sq. m 78,2 sq. m, land plot area of 168 23 sq m, a house 1136,9 sq. m. dwelling house to 127.6 sq m and a wine cellar 195,4 sq. m. it Also rents two plots of land and 34000 28500 sq m respectively.
Among the material values Dobkin declared: 9 valuable watches among which Rolex, Patek Philippe and Jaeger LeCoultre, 8 antique items (including figurines), 12 icons, Golf clubs, 13 books, 11 jewelry, Hermes bag, two coats, two sets of furniture, 7 rifles, 10 carbines, a lamp for the transportation of the Holy fire, 3 sets of dishes, vases 7, 5 candlesticks, 15 paintings, hunting knives, a collection of red and white wines, cognacs, whisky and other (1780 units) and safe.
In the fleet Dobkin has 3 cars: Toyota (2007 onwards), Toyota (2012 year), Toyota (2013) and trailer. He also has water means Silver Hawk 520 and Bass Prote 520. His wife's Volkswagen Multivan (V. 2012), Porsche 911 Turbo (2011 onwards), two watercrafts and a trailer.
News on topic: Deputy head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on health care Donets declared 5 flats, 3 houses, 12 Parking spaces
Dobkin's wife also owns 90% of the total capital in the servicing cooperative "Housing Association "Triumph", and 33% of the total capital service cooperative a "Dacha cooperative "Heather".
For 2015 Dobkin declared 61,59 thousand UAH wages, 80,56 thousand UAH of compensations for the work 167,9 thousand UAH of compensation of the cost of hiring a hotel room, 76,28 ths – scholarship Honorary citizen of the city of Kharkov, 3.43 million UAH of credit funds in "PrivatBank" and 10 million that he borrowed from Mark Dobkin.
At the same time his brother, the MP from the "opposition bloc" Dmitry Dobkin in his Declaration also indicated that he borrowed it from Mark Dobkin 10 million.
In a Bank safe Deposit box, Dobkin holds cash of 12 million, 470 thousand dollars., 30 thousand euros. Another 100 thousand dollars he holds in the form of precious metals. His wife keeps in a Bank drawer of $ 500 thousand and 550 thousand euros.
According to the document, in 2015 Dobkin paid on the credit in "PrivatBank" 4 093 390 and 52 564 USD.


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Creeping Beauty
$ 9.00
(2019) "Creeping Beauty" (20" x 20") is the 8th and final piece in my German Fairytale Series. Many children have consumed the story of "Sleeping Beauty" through the Disney lens. The original story in Grimm's is called "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood", where Briar Rose falls into a 100-year sleep and is saved and awakened by the hero prince.
In my rendition, the prince was just a little too late.


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Welcome to our website! As we have the ability to list over one million items on our website (our selection changes all of the time), it is not feasible for a company our size to record and playback the descriptions on every item on our website. However, if you have a disability we are here to help you. Please call our disability services phone line at (603) 742-2105 during regular business hours and one of our kind and friendly personal shoppers will help you navigate through our website, help conduct advanced searches, help you choose the item you are looking for with the specifications you are seeking, read you the specifications of any item and consult with you about the products themselves. There is no charge for the help of this personal shopper for anyone with a disability. Finally, your personal shopper will explain our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, and help you place an order if you so desire.
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Spend $50 and get FREE SHIPPING across North America
Add some greenery to your home with these artificial palm leaves (but without the hassle of needing to water!).
These look stunning in a vase, and you don't need many to make a statement.
Production Times & Shipping:
Our palm leaves are sent from our manufacturing partner overseas. Allow 5 days for production. Once ready, they are shipped with insurance and tracking. We will ensure you get your product as soon as possible.
For delivery in North America, please allow for 2-4 weeks after shipment.
We cannot rush shipping, so please be aware of this longer shipping time when ordering. Thanks!
Want 15% off?
Get a coupon code emailed to you when you sign up for our e-mail list: http://bit.ly/2DF5DLZ


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Vending Machines and Office Coffee Service Chelsea
If there was a way to increase your employee's productivity without a huge increase in spending, would you be interested? Of course you would. That's what the valuable services offered by Reading Vending in Chelsea can do.
Your employees get thirsty or hungry, and they leave on extended breaks to go and get these items. We provide them in your building so your employees stay and enjoy break time for relaxing instead of fighting traffic to rush out and back. That's why we also offer office coffee services, vending machines and water delivery or filtration.
Vending machines have come a long way from the brown boxes of the past. Today's vending machines offer several payment options, a huge selection of quality products, are very efficient and stylish and are extremely dependable. Our team will install them, fill them keep them filled and service them at no cost to your business.
Reading Vending machines have:
- Candy
- Snacks
- Coca Cola
- Pepsi Cola
- Energy drinks
- Sport drinks
- Coffee
- Nutritious and healthy foods
We offer three different plan options – traditional, free and subsidized. If you want even more selection and convenience for your large staff, we can install a Smart & Go Micro Market at your Chelsea location.
Get your employees back up and running quickly with customized office coffee services from Reading Vending. Coffee services include brand new brewing equipment, name brand coffees and teas, cups, plates, filters, paper towels, Kleenex, utensils, sweeteners, creamers and everything else a fully functional break room needs. Your staff will have a fresh coffee around the clock and you'll never have to run out for supplies. Keep your employees in house and get them back to work refreshed and ready to produce.
We also have filtered water service. We have a premium bottleless filtration system and deliver Dasani, Aquafina and Poland Springs bottles.
Let's start making your staff more productive today. Call Reading Vending in Chelsea at 781-935-2567 or (781) 974-6620 or email us at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Camp Invention is coming to Enumclaw School District, July 11-15, 2016 at Southwood Elementary from 9:00 AM to 3:30 PM every day. Camp Invention is created by the National Inventors Hall of Fame with partnerships with the United States Patent and Trademark office as well as the Collegiate Inventors Competition. This program is inspired by the world's smartest inventors. This program will give students entering grades one through six an opportunity to explore science, technology, math and engineering concepts (STEM) in a creative, hands-on atmosphere. Students will collaborate, innovate and think critically. To find out more or to register your children, please go to the Camp Invention website. If you have specific questions about Camp Invention, please email the camp director, Tracy Brown at email@example.com.
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2929 McDougall Avenue, Enumclaw, Washington 98022


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Emerging Dentists
Dr. Monica has been practicing dentistry as an associate for 3 years. She is married with a two year-old son. Her husband, Matt, is an electrical engineer. Dr. Monica has significant student loan debt, she and Matt both have automobile leases, and they recently purchased a large home that their family hopes to grow into. While practice ownership has always been a goal for Dr. Monica, they are not sure if they would get approved for a large practice loan with their existing debt and minimal savings or if servicing the additional debt would put too much stress on their family. They have heard about the importance of saving at a young age, but have not yet been proactive in this area.
Before CBG
- Uncertain of future opportunities due to amount of debt
- A strong family income, but it feels like most goes to pay debt and taxes
- Dr. Monica had no vision of how to get from where she is now to owning her own practice
- Had not yet considered college savings
- Significant potential implications for their son with no estate plan in place should something happen to them
After CBG
- Knows what to expect and how to prepare for future underwriting of a large practice purchase loan
- Savings targets are in place and they are now comfortable knowing where their dollars are going
- Dr. Monica understands the process of searching for and analyzing potential practice purchase options
- Established a 529 college savings account in their state that provides tax benefits in addition to beginning their son's college fund
- Basic inexpensive estate plan is in place that outlines their custody wishes for their son and future children
Are you an Emerging Dentist ready to start your career on a great foundation?Schedule a Complimentary Consultation
or Call (317) 257-7400


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Year: 2015
Genre: Fantasy, Struggle, Melodramic, Adventures
Country: Belgium, India, Australia
Director: Roland Joffe
Runtime: 109 min.
Actors: Josh Hartnett, Temina Sunny, Alice Englert, Om Puri, Temzin Edgerton, Claire van der Bom, Bipasha Basu
Big Bererny Reef. The action takes place in 2020. The film tells the story of human courage and the irresistible power of love. Jay Finnel - known talented archaeologist - submarine. Together with his wife Laura, he conducts research, sunken in the XVIII century, an old merchant ship. One day, during a routine dive unsafe unforeseen happened and Jay had to rescue his beloved. Finnel saved the life of his beloved at the cost of his own life during the rescue operation, he received a terrible wound and falls into a coma. In the fight to the death, the protagonist transcends reality and transferred in 1778 year. The surprise becomes what it is in India. Jay becomes a British officer named James Stewart. In addition, he falls in love with the local beauty Tuladzhu dangerous militant and takes part in the war. With the help of this site you can download The Lovers free movie in HD quality.


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Black Wide Patent Belt
Restocked Happy to combine shipping on an order of 2 or more.
New. No Stretch. Very structured.
3 1/2 inches wide
Adjustable fit
Made in America
As a plus size woman it is so hard to find structured belts that don't roll or curl. This belt is very structured and will give you a "snatched" look. Complete your outfit with this wide patent belt.
An enormous, rectangle buckle winces a wide belt that makes a dramatic focal point for any ensemble
Exchanges only.