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Juliet Nicolson reviews The Great Western Beach: a Memoir of a Cornish Childhood between the Wars by Emma Smith
It has been said that you only ever meet the world once: in childhood. Everything that follows is just memory. In Emma Smith’s evocative, witty and profoundly moving book, her England - of the era after the First World War - shines with an intensity quite unblurred by the eight decades or so that have elapsed since.
Born in 1923, Emma Smith (Elspeth Hallsmith when small) grew up in the Cornish seaside town of Newquay, in genteel poverty, with her twin brother and sister, Jim and Pam, the baby Harvey, her parents and their nanny/housekeeper Lucy.
The town’s Great Western Beach supplied the backdrop to Smith’s childhood, its prosaic name giving away nothing of the magical opportunities afforded by the endless stretch of sand. It became their “summer playground”: a place where, for Smith, “a timeless tranquillity that must be what is meant by heaven” bordered the “delicious embrace” of the sea itself.
Smith describes with a remarkably sharp recall that “teases the very edge of memory” how, although the seasons came and went, an all-pervading sense of summer filled those years.
The blessed good fortune of growing up in a seaside town peopled by delightfully eccentric characters meant constant entertainment - batty but inspirational teachers; the deck-chair man, “agile as a monkey”; and the Italian family who made forbidden, mouthwatering ice cream (the following day’s supply was said to be stored each night beneath their beds, right next to the chamber pots).
Busy summer days are filled with family picnics, the exquisite, unforgettable taste of the jam sandwich that follows a morning swim, and by the children’s amused monitoring of the influx of the summer tourists - “truly pitiable, these poor transients” with their “ludicrous” floundering attempts to master a surfboard.

telegraph.co.uk

WOMEN'S craft displays and children's racing car kits were some of the popular attractions at the 12th annual Wimmera Woodturners Guild Wood and Craft Expo at Horsham Town Hall last Sunday.
Guild secretary Bryan Loats said the expo featured 33 displays and attracted 550 woodwork enthusiasts from Victoria and interstate.
“We had four woodturners from the Mornington Peninsula, as well as people from Whyalla, Murray Bridge, Mt Gambier and Bendigo,” he said.
“Everybody I talked to said it was a really interesting show, especially for us woodworkers.”
Mr Loats said the display featured wood and craft supplies for sale, racing car kits for children, women's craft exhibitions, lunch and afternoon tea.
“The ladies' display was especially good. The CWA ladies had a lot of craftwork and things like cards and china paintings and lots of sewing work which was very popular,” he said.
“But the kids making racing cars was a stand out, too.
“There were 65 children at the exhibition and they would have made about 70 cars. The woodturners make up all the bits and the kids just put them together… they loved it.”
Mr Loats said a raffle on the day raised around $5000.
“We're not sure exactly how much was raised just yet but it was about $5000 which is usually around the same amount we raise every year,” he said.
“Mel Sleep won the main prize which was the rocking horse.
“The other prizes were a miner's couch, jewellery box and a garden wheelbarrow.”
He said Brooke O'Brien from Buninyong won the miner's couch, Jordan Jess of Laharum won the jewellery box and Tanya Aitken of Dimboola took home the garden wheelbarrow.
Mr Loats said Wimmera Woodturners' displays were a personal highlight for him.
“We also put on a display of our members' works. They all really stood out, the woodwork and woodturning were great,” he said.

wimmera.yourguide.com.au

By Colleen Surridge
ALTAMONT — Altamont will celebrate its 33rd annual Flag Day on June 14.
The public is invited to share in the fun of the day, beginning with a biscuits and gravy breakfast from 6:30 to 9:30 a.m. at the Altamont Fire Department.
Children’s games will begin at 8 a.m. and continue through 2 p.m.
“We have three inflatables coming, a slide and two moon walks. They are sponsored by the Flag Day Committee and the Altamont Recreation Committee, so the kids can ride them all they want free,” said Flag Day committee member George Kibler. “There will also be a turtle race, water wheelbarrow race, money in the haystack, a hoola-hoop contest, an egg toss, a balloon toss and numerous other games.”
There will be a quilt show from 9 a.m. to noon at the Altamont Fire Department. The horseshoe toss will begin at 10 a.m. Registration is at 9 a.m. in the Altamont City Park Building.
“The parade starts at 11 a.m. with line up at 10:30 a.m. behind (Labette County High School’s) Harrison Auditorium. Anyone who wants to be in the parade should come on down and we’ll get them in,” Kibler said.
There will be two concession stands operating.
“We are going to have a prize drawing at 4 o’clock, and it is a spectacular one this year,” Kibler said. “That’s all I’m going to say.”
A free bean feed, sponsored by the Altamont Methodist Church preschool, will begin at 6 p.m. Entertainment during the bean feed will be Alan Banzet.
A free street dance featuring Rick Cook will close out the evening, following the bean feed.
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parsonssun.com

HOLLAND — Diana Van Kolken recalls watching her father, John Noe, march in the Holland Memorial Day parade after their family moved from Coopersville in the early 1960s.
“We always went,” she said.
“We would usually watch from 16th Street.”
Noe, who served as principal at the former E.E. Fell Junior High School on River Avenue, was wounded in the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II. He was awarded a Purple Heart.
As Van Kolken watched the parade year after year, she had this question: Why didn’t it go down Eighth Street, through the center of Holland’s downtown, like the Tulip Time Festival parades?
The 64-year-old owner of the Shaker Messenger doesn’t have to ask that question anymore.
Partly because of her persistence, on Monday the city’s Memorial Day parade will step off on Eighth Street for the first time in nearly 60 years.
American flags will line the downtown route as veterans head east on Eighth to Columbia Avenue, then south on Columbia to 16th Street, then east to Pilgrim Home Cemetery.
“We wanted to bring it back to the heart of the community, which is downtown,” Van Kolken said.
More than a year ago, Van Kolken and Judie Zylman, the former executive director of Hospice of Holland, approached the Holland Area Veterans Council with the idea of moving the start of the parade to Eighth Street.
For years, the parade had started at Centennial Park, just a few blocks south of Eighth, and ended at Pilgrim Home.
The veterans’ council agreed to the change.
Van Kolken then convinced city and police officials to approve the change.
For Zylman, the Memorial Day parade will have special meaning.
A year ago today, her nephew, U.S. Army Pfc. Casey Zylman of Coleman, was killed near Tallafar, Iraq, where a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle.

blog.mlive.com

With the Memorial Day holiday as a backdrop, the presidential candidates are on the road in key areas today, with issues like veterans health care and the war in Iraq still themes on and off the campaign trail.
Both Senator John McCain and Barack Obama, who traded barbs last week over a new G.I. bill that would provide education benefits to veterans, make Memorial Day appearances in New Mexico – a key electoral swing state.
Mr. McCain will give a speech Monday morning at the New Mexico Veterans’ Memorial in Albuquerque. He spent the weekend at his ranch outside Sedona, Ariz., where the guest list included several potential vice presidential picks.
In Las Cruces, N.M., Senator Obama and Gov. Bill Richardson will appear together at a veterans’ town hall. On Sunday Mr. Obama delivered a commencement speech at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, standing in for Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The Times’s Katie Zezima reports that Senator Obama, “implored the 737 undergraduates and 100 graduate students to change the country and the world through service to others, a theme Mr. Kennedy planned to focus on.”
Newsweek devoted its cover this week to Senator Obama, with its topic piece on race.
And while the front-runners for the Democratic and Republican nominations will be tackling military issues, the highest-ranking officer in the armed services, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, has issued a directive to service men and women to remain neutral throughout the presidential election. According to The Times’s Thom Shanker, “The essay can be seen as a reflection of the deep concern among senior officers that the military, which is paying the highest price in carrying out national security policy, may be drawn into politicking this year.”
The Los Angeles Times reports how both the McCain and Obama campaigns stack up when it comes to aides with previous lobbying ties, noting that “the history of both candidates is peppered with campaign operatives, policy advisers and others who have clear links to the long-standing but often scandal-tinged practice of making money by trying to influence politicians.”

thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com

Today is Memorial Day, the federal holiday where U.S. men and women who have died in military service are remembered. Federal and state offices are closed, as well as post offices, schools, financial markets, and banks. Alternate side of the street parking rules are suspended and mass transit is running on weekend schedules (though there’s additional weekend service on some lines)
Mayor Bloomberg will be speaking at Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in Riverside Park at 11 a.m. and the Whitestone Memorial Field at 12:15 p.m.; he’ll be marching in the Little Neck-Douglaston Memorial Day Parade at 2 p.m.
There are also many remembrances, whether about the military or the season, from the local papers: Here are editorials from the NY Post and NY Daily News that remember the fallen, while ones from NY Times and Newsday discuss the summer. And, as always, there are many events going on today, from Fleet Week to concerts and sunbathing. But the nation’s moment of remembrance is at 3 p.m. today–here is President Bush’s Prayer for Peace for this Memorial Day.
Photograph of Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument in Riverside Park by dschaub on Flickr

gothamist.com

Each Memorial Day, I mourn a little — not just for the people in my life who have passed on, but for all the stories, insights and wisdom they took with them to the grave.
The winds of time blow many wonderful things away.
Still, now and again, a little something will get preserved almost by accident — something will remain behind, like a piece of paper caught in a chain-link fence after the chilly gusts have passed.
That happened to me.
Out of nowhere, a woman named Trudie Downs in Bountiful sent me a little packet of papers. She said her father, A. Alton Hoffman of Benson Ward, had spoken at my grandfather’s funeral back in 1971. She had found his notes from that talk and was sending them along to put in my memory bank.
The deposit was pure gold.
My grandfather, a soldier, lost a thumb while fighting amid the poppies during World War I. Since that day, like cherry chocolate candy, he had a tough shell around him to protect his sweet and soft insides. He was a stern and stoic dairy farmer who called alfalfa “lucerne” and drove only Pontiac cars and Ford tractors. He ate strawberry ice cream and liked to use curse words as terms of endearment for us grandkids.
When he died, he was buried in the Logan cemetery beneath a marker my grandmother had decorated with hand-drawn dogwood flowers.
But it wasn’t grandfather that Trudie’s packet brought to life for me. It was her own father — A. Hoffman — a legendary figure in Benson Ward who spoke at hundreds of funerals. And to each one he brought heartfelt compassion. Including the funeral of my grandpa.
A. Hoffman’s words for my grandfather — written in Palmer Method pencil on some old notebook paper — were alive and filled with breath. After 37 years, I could still feel the heartbeat behind the lines.

deseretnews.com

A beta update for Valve’s mod-turned-retail title Day of Defeat: Source (PC) has been announced, bringing a number of new additions to the World War II multiplayer shooter.
Included in the update are 51 achievements, player avatar support and detailed player statistics, along with a Team Fortress 2-style nemesis-revenge freeze cam and new particle effects that came out of TF2’s development.
The update also brings with it a new map, dod_Palermo, said to be “a remix of the most popular community map, dod_salerno.”
The beta client is currently available to Day of Defeat owners via Valve’s online delivery platform Steam.
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shacknews.com

BEN brOMLEY / NEWS REPUBLIC
Martha Flautt sells bouquets of cookies made by her business partner Victoria Ast. The duo is selling glazed cookies and sugar-free, all-natural muffins made in the kitchen at Jayar's Take-Out Kitchen and Catering in downtown Baraboo.
Fanciful Creations doesn't have a Web site, a telephone number or even a bank account. But it has customers.
Business partners Martha Flautt and Victoria Ast make healthy muffins and novelty cookies that will be available at local outlets by Memorial Day.
Ast is the baker, Flautt the promoter. Flautt used her marketing experience and connections to directly approach area grocers about carrying Fanciful Creations' line of fat-free, sugar-free muffins. Outlets were sold on the muffins' taste and the growing market for healthy snack foods. The flavorful fruit muffins are all-natural and high-fiber. Outlets include Pierce's Markets, as well as Consumers Co-op in Sauk City.
"It's an anomaly how it's happened so fast," Flautt said. "I'm telling you, this thing took (on) a life of its own."
Flautt and Ast endured some false starts in launching the business, but got it up and running over the past three months. This, despite slicing through a lot of red tape to get licensed by the state to sell food.
Fanciful Creations will operate out of the kitchen at Jayar's Take-Out Kitchen and Catering in downtown Baraboo. In addition to muffins, the business offers glazed cookies that can be customized for any occasion. "If you can dream it up, she can re-create it," Flautt said Ast. "Anything theme-oriented, she can make a cookie for it."
Flautt said cookie customers will be biting into works of art. "People don't believe it's edible," Flautt said of Ast's cookies. "It's not like anything you've ever seen."
Ast has long been known among friends and neighbors as the "cookie queen," baking bread and dozens of cookies daily. She test-markets recipes using her teenage sons' friends, who come through her kitchen after school for snacks. "This was real scientific," Flautt said with a smile.

wiscnews.com

Baby Boomers Couples Club, 10:30 a.m., 5050 Town Center Circle, Boca Raton. Call 561-445-7778.
Ballroom dancing, 7:15-10:15 p.m., American Polish Club, 4725 Lake Worth Road. $12. Call 561-683-7012.
Compulsive Eaters Anonymous, 10:30 a.m., Crossroads Club, 1700 Lake Ida Road, Delray Beach. Free. Call 561-870-7060.
Dignity Palm Beach, religious and social club for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Roman Catholics, 5:30 p.m., St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 100 N. Palmway, Lake Worth. Free. Call 561-309-0088.
Haitian Flag Day, noon to 10 p.m., Old School Square, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. $8 to $13. Call 561-279-1100.
Moving Forward, 3 p.m., Boca Raton Community Hospital, 800 Meadows Road. Free. Call 561-395-7100.
Slavic-Russian food festival, noon to 2 p.m., St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church, 7099 S. Military Trail, Lake Worth. Call 561-967-4183.
VFW Post 4141 breakfast, full service, all you can eat, 8 a.m. to noon, 5 SE Second Ave., Delray Beach. $6. Call 561-276-9529.
Voice for the Children, seminar on parental alienation and parental abduction, 1 p.m., Unity of the Palm Beaches, 1957 S. Flagler Drive, West Palm Beach. $10. Call 561-586-8515.
Barbershop chorus, Hurricane Harmonizers rehearsal, 6:30-9 p.m., Olympic Heights High School, 20101 Lyons Road, Boca Raton. Free. Call 954-427-1921.
Bereavement support group, 1 to 2:30 p.m., Center for Group Counseling, 22455 Boca Rio Road, Boca Raton. Call 561-483-5300.
Camera club, 7 p.m., Boynton Beach Senior Center, 1021 S. Federal Highway. First two meetings free. Call 561-735-4888.
Canasta, noon to 4 p.m., Wellington Community Center, 12165 Forest Hill Blvd. Free. Call 561-753-2484.
Compassionate Friends, 7:30 p.m., St. Paul Lutheran, 701 W. Palmetto Park Road, Boca Raton. Free. Call 561-368-0324.
Computer classes in Spanish, 8:30 a.m., Vickers House South, 3801 Georgia Ave., West Palm Beach. Free. Call 561-804-4975.
Delray Newsmakers Toastmasters, 5:45-7 p.m., Ted Center, 401 W. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach. Free. Call 561-737-3174.

sun-sentinel.com