Major Winter Storm Heading for Manitoba

After unseasonably mild temperatures, Manitoba including Winnipeg city, are in the crosshairs of a big winter storm. That is what the crystal ball watching weather gurus say.

It has been way above normal temperatures in October and early November.

According to this weather expert Manitobans better batten the hatches and hunker down.

This is what is coming.

American Idiots

The idiot above committed one of the greatest geopolitical blunders in history. The Iraq invasion in 2003 was uncalled for and completely unnecessary. Saddam was no threat to the U.S. The invasion and subsequent war cost tens of thousands of lives and caused that area of the Middle East to headlong into chaos, extreme hardship and indescribable violence . The invasion is still felt in the region to this day.

Green Day released this song in 2005.

This idiot attempted a coup D’etat against the fairly elected president of the United States in 2021. He continues to say that he actually won the 2020 presidential election without any concrete evidence whatsoever. He also pulled the United States out of climate agreements and a nuclear deal with Iran. He imposed tariffs on friendly countries and harshly criticised and slandered NATO. He also divided the American nation like no other president. His lies have created a deep ideological rift within the very fabric of American culture and society. Let’s hope and pray that this idiot fades away and gets sequestered into a deep cesspool within American history.

Week in pictures: 30 October – 5 November 2021

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson greets French President Emmanuel Macron as they arrive for day two of COP26 at SECC on 1 November 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland
Image caption,Amid a dispute over post-Brexit fishing rights, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson greets French President Emmanuel Macron as they arrive for day two of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference – COP26 – in Glasgow.
A family celebrates Diwali with firecrackers at Shivaji Park, Dadar on 3 November 2021 in Mumbai, India
Image caption,Celebrations at Shivaji Park, in Mumbai, mark Diwali. A time for feasts, prayers and fireworks, Diwali is one of the most important festivals in the Hindu calendar.
Declan McDonogh, Mark Enright and Dylan Browne McMonagle compete on the beach during the annual one-day Laytown races in Ireland, on 1 November 2021
Image caption,Jockeys Declan McDonogh, Mark Enright and Dylan Browne McMonagle compete on the beach during the annual one-day Laytown races in the Republic of Ireland.
A family evacuate from their flooded home, following heavy rain in Bandung, Indonesia, on 3 November 2021
Image caption,A family flee their flooded home following heavy rain in Bandung, Indonesia.
Toby Perkins during Prime Minister's Questions at the House of Commons, London, on 3 November 2021
Image caption,Labour MP Toby Perkins brandishes banknotes in the House of Commons during a row over the conduct of Conservative MP Owen Paterson. Mr Paterson, who has since resigned, was due to be suspended for breaking lobbying rules, until the government backed a shake-up of the standards watchdog instead – a decision that was reversed the following day.
An angler walks on concrete tetrapod wave breakers in Gangneung, South Korea
Image caption,An angler walks on concrete tetrapod wave breakers, whose shape helps dissipate the force of the water while remaining relatively stable, in Gangneung, South Korea.
A competitor in a wheelchair is helped up by a member of Kenya's National Youth Service during the Nairobi Marathon on 31 October 2021
Image caption,A competitor is helped up by a member of Kenya’s National Youth Service during the Nairobi Marathon.
A giant inflatable rubber duck designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman sits in a lake in Santiago, Chile, as part of an open-air art festival, on 2 November 2021
Image caption,A giant inflatable rubber duck, designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, sits in a lake in Santiago, Chile, as part of an open-air art festival.
People sit at a cafe in a flooded St Mark's Square during seasonal high tides in Venice, Italy, on 5 November 2021
Image caption,People sit at a cafe in a flooded St Mark’s Square during seasonal high tides in Venice.

BBC

‘All I can hear is a cacophony of screaming girls’ – photographing the Beatles and Stones

The Beatles at Stockton Globe
Image caption,The Beatles played the Stockton Globe on the day their second album was released in November 1963

Photographer Ian Wright was just 18 when he captured The Beatles on stage on 22 November 1963. But the photos never made it into his newspaper because of an event half-way around the world.

The Beatles had just played their first set at the Stockton Globe to 2,400 screaming girls, and another 2,400 were making their way in for the night’s second performance when the frontman of the support band heard a newsflash on his transistor radio.

“He had a clapped-out trannie that was held together with chewing gum and elastic bands, and he used to tie the little aerial around one of his cymbal stands,” recalls Wright, who was hanging around backstage.

“He was tuning in to Radio Luxembourg to find out who was in the top 10. All of a sudden there was a crash. He’d dropped the cymbals. He came out and looked completely gaunt and ashen. He mumbled something but you couldn’t grasp what he was saying.

“And then he composed himself and he said, ‘It’s just been on Radio Luxembourg. The president of the United States of America has been assassinated.’

“It was surreal. The place just went silent.”

The Beatles at Stockton Globe
Image caption,The Fab Four returned to the venue in October 1964

Wright’s paper the Northern Echo, under the direction of legendary editor Harold Evans, immediately turned out a special edition that went on a fleet of lorries to London in an attempt to beat the national titles to the following morning’s commuter trade.

The day of the gig also saw the release of The Beatles’ second album With The Beatles, but the paper’s exclusive story about the world record 350,000 advance orders went by the wayside, as did Wright’s photos from that night – which remained unpublished for almost half a century.

The Stockton-on-Tees venue shut in 1975 and did not operate as a music venue for almost half a century, until it reopened after a £28m renovation (delayed and way over budget) earlier this month.

Wright’s photos of The Beatles and other iconic artists who performed there in the 60s, many of which have never been seen, have now gone on permanent display at the venue, as well as being included in a new book.

Beatles fans outside Stockton Globe
Image caption,Beatles fans ignored the “no waiting” signs outside the venue

Wright got to know the bands while hanging out at venues including the Globe, taking photos from the orchestra pit.

“McCartney said, ‘What do you hear down there?'” Wright says. “I said, ‘It’s very surreal because it’s like a seashell. If I turn this way, I can hear you perfectly on stage. If I go the other way, all I can hear is a cacophony of screaming girls wetting their knickers.'”

As well as the crowds inside the venue, thousands more blocked the high street outside.

When the news began to spread about US President John F Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas, there was an eerie atmosphere, Wright says.

“When we went out into the streets, it was sheer silence. You could hear a pin drop. Many young girls were hugging each other and consoling each other. Nobody knew what to do next.

“Over the road was the parish church, and somehow the dean managed to pull all his campanologists together, and all of a sudden the bells started to toll. It was absolutely incredible. And then slowly…” He imitates the crowd’s spontaneous applause. “That’s what happened.”

Rolling Stones at Stockton Globe
Image caption,The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones and Mick Jagger photographed in 1965

Nevertheless, The Beatles’ second performance of the night went ahead as planned, and Wright photographed them again when they returned the following year.

One year after that, the Stones visited the County Durham town – and this time there was a very different atmosphere.

“There was a feeling of menace in the air. Something was going to happen, you knew it,” Wright recalls.

“I hadn’t been there more than about two songs into the Rolling Stones set when all of a sudden a nine-inch spanner whistled past my head, landed on the stage, pinged off the cover of a footlight and hit Charlie Watts’ drums.

Mick Jagger at the Stockton Globe

“The next thing, all of a sudden [Mick] Jagger jumped, span in the air and had his back to the audience. He carried on singing and all the time he was fumbling in his pocket. He brought out this crisp handkerchief and then turned to the audience, and there’s blood pouring down his face.

“It’s on his shirt, it’s down his trousers, it’s on his shoes. He finished the song, and he walked off. And they brought down the curtain.”

Rolling Stones gigs were occasionally marred by violence, and the singer had been hit by a sharpened coin thrown by Teddy Boys in the crowd, according to the photographer. “This one was half an inch above his eye, otherwise he’d have been blinded.”

Cliff Richard with an unknown woman at Stockton Globe
Image caption,Cliff Richard backstage with a local woman whose identity Wright and his paper unsuccessfully tried to trace
Cilla Black at Stockton Globe
Image caption,Cilla Black in the Globe’s not-so-salubrious dressing room (with Wright in the mirror)

Wright also captured stars like Cliff Richard, Cilla Black, Roy Orbison and Ike and Tina Turner on stage and in their dressing rooms.

Many of those photos can now be seen on the walls of the venue, which reopened with a McFly concert on 6 September.

Wright, now 76, returned on Tuesday to give a talk about his memories – and says he was transported back to that night when The Beatles came to town.

Ian Wright with his photos at Stockton Globe
Image caption,Ian Wright returned to the renovated venue this week
Stockton Globe
Image caption,The refurbishment ended up costing seven times the original £4m budget

“We were doing a run-through and they put the photographs up on the screen, and they put The Beatles on the sound system, and I said, ‘This is where I was standing when I took this photograph.’

“And all of a sudden, when the picture came up, the whole atmosphere in the theatre went cold, it went tingly, and everybody stopped. It was dead quiet. They were like spirits.”

BBC

Winnipeg Paranormal Activity

T.G. Hamilton was one of Winnipeg’s stranger characters to say the least.  He held many seances in his Henderson Hwy home.  It is near Hespeler.  Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made a visit to the house in the early part of the century. 

Below are some pictures taken at the house of ectoplasm.  To me it looks like early photo-shop.

Thomas Glendenning Hamilton (November 27, 1873 – April 7, 1935) was a Canadian doctor, school board trustee and member of the Manitoba legislature. He is best known however for the thousands of photographs he took during séances held in his home in Winnipeg in the early 1900s. His wife, Lillian May Hamilton, and his daughter, Margaret Hamilton Bach, were co-researchers and continued this enquiry into life after death after he died.

Ectoplasm  is a term coined by Charles Richet to denote a substance or spiritual energy “exteriorized” by physical mediums.  Ectoplasm is said to be associated with the formation of ghosts, and asserted to be an enabling factor in psychokinesis.

At first T.G. and Lillian’s investigations into the paranormal were held in secret. But T.G. went public in 1926, delivering a lecture on his research on telekinesis to the Winnipeg Medical Society. From that time until his death, Hamilton delivered eighty-six lectures and wrote numerous articles published in Canada and abroad. His fame spread and the Hamilton family’s work became known in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and Americans Mina Crandon, the medium known as “Margery,” and her husband L.R.G. Crandon, all travelled to Winnipeg to participate in the Hamiltons’ séances. Among those who worked with Dr Hamilton were Ada Turner and her adopted son Harold Turner. Harold or “Norman” as he is called in the Hamilton records was interviewed by Norman James Williamson about his experience with the Hamilton group in 1982. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series, came to Winnipeg as part of a cross North American tour in 1923, he attended one of the Hamiltons’ home circles. Even after his death, the Hamiltons tried to contact Conan Doyle by mediumship. In 1935, T.G. Hamilton died suddenly of a heart attack. His wife Lillian and his daughter Margaret continued his work. Lillian and her son James Drummond produced a summary of T.G.’s work in the book Intention and Survival, published in 1942. When Lillian died in 1956, her daughter Margaret carried on. She wrote a series of articles in 1957 for Psychic News in England. These thirteen articles were collected in a booklet and also circulated to daily papers throughout Canada. Margaret later produced a second edition of Intention and Survival in 1977; a third edition came out in 1980.