Re: We need more
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2023 9:13 pm
Free thinking people...
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British RAF Pilots Memorial at Oak Ridge Cemetery FloridaEach year on Memorial Day a service coordinated by the Arcadia Rotary Club and the local American Legion is held to honor 23 RAF trainee pilots and their American instructor who were killed training at nearby Carlstrom and Riddle flight schools during WWII.
Well over one hundred people, many of whom bring floral tributes, congregate at the beautifully maintained British Plot in the Oak Ridge Cemetery.
The one hour service, starting at 10:00 a.m., at which the Sarasota British Club is always represented, is dignified and moving. The Union Jack and RAF flags fluttering overhead add a further touch of Britain to the proceedings.
This is a private, non-commercial project.
Hitler's V Weapons, Summer 1944 - With Operation Overlord, the greatest air and seaborne invasion in history, now underway across the Channel in Normandy, the British people dare to imagine the war may soon be over. But for London and the Kent villages, a new nightmare is about to begin.
RadioNZ: Christchurch school's Stairway to Heaven cover an online hitA Christchurch school performance of Stairway to Heaven has wowed the crowd so much it led to a flood of requests for the footage, and has now been viewed more than 150,000 times.
St Andrew's College included the classic Led Zeppelin rock song as part of a prizegiving ceremony on 26 November, with about 3500 people in the audience watching.
The school said it "became the canvas for a showcase of the extraordinary talent within our school community", and the video was compiled "in response to high demand".
"The 100 performers on stage poured their hearts into the performance, leaving the audience in absolute awe. The standing ovation from many parents echoed the sentiment-truly a performance to remember," a school spokesperson said on its Facebook page.
The school rock band and orchestra contributed, and a light show was choreographed.
Centre stage were year 13 pupils Grace Burnett who sang lead vocals and Mia Fraser as lead guitarist, as well as year 12 James McIver on the acoustic guitar.
McIver told Checkpoint : "It was an amazing experience".
Each group that participated had been rehearsing separately, and they only tried it out all together just three days before the event.
"I was pretty nervous in the rehearsals, but it felt pretty natural to get up there and just play on the night," McIver said.
The school's head of music Duncan Ferguson said the school likes to go big with its performances and he was pleased that it had gone down well.
"The response has really blown us away ... It's surprising how many people overseas are commenting on it, and we're hearing from other people not connected to the school, in the different countries, that are really blown away by it."
The song had made sense for this group of pupils, he said.
"This year's particularly year 12s and 13s, a lot are good guitarists and drummers, and there's really an emphasis on rock with them. So we wanted to do something which could blend that and use our school orchestra and our choir.
"This arrangement that we came across which is by the band Heart, who did it as part of a tribute concert to Led Zeppelin, ... we got it arranged for our orchestra and it was the right piece of music for the right year group, so it came together really well."
Once the event was over, and requests for the recording began to flow in, Ferguson said they scrambled to edit the video together, but found a hard drive that had all the wide angle footage on it had been corrupted and those shots were not longer accessible.
So an appeal went out to anyone from the audience on the night who had wide angle video - and those tapes were added to the edit.
The school posted on its Facebook page thanking those who had shared the video, and said its success was down to "the exceptional talent within our team of staff and students".
"We feel incredibly fortunate to have such a dedicated and skilled group, and we thank you once again for acknowledging and directing credit where it truly belongs."
The views are probably of the Campbells Bay/Rothesay Bay/Browns Bay area north of Auckland. The volcanic cone island on the horizon is Rangitoto.The pohutukawa (botanical name Metrosideros excelsa) is New Zealand's best-known and most visible native tree. It is found virtually everywhere along the coastline of the upper half of the North Island.
Translated from Maori, pohutukawa means "sprinkled by spray", which is an obvious reference to the fact that it is usually found along the seashore.
In addition to providing welcome shade for beachgoers in the New Zealand summer, the blaze of crimson flowers it produces from November to January has given the pohutukawa the label the "New Zealand Christmas Tree". Certainly, for generations of kiwis, the flowering pohutukawa is one of the great symbols of the Christmas holiday season. There are in fact several varieties of pohutukawa, producing a range of colored flowers, from scarlet to peach. The tree is also notable for its erratic flowering; different parts of the same tree may flower at slightly different times.