MIRACLE OF DEVELOPMENT

SUDDENLY A FOUNTAIN OF PRECISE SPEECH

Our youngest Grandson whose third birthday we celebrated on 1st June, 2012 - see the Post "The Miracle of Life and Love"on that day - has, in the space of one week, dropped a tendency to stutter , common to most children learning to speak. Of course we have seen the phenomenon before with our other Granchildren and our own children! 


But I doubt it has ever been so abrupt a transition and, marvel to behold.. resulted in an immediate flood of rapid , precise , very determined and often unusual words! Sample , to his older brother : "And where is MY vehicle??"( looking for his ride-on car). And his ability to muster up derision  in simple sentences like "Noooo Grandad, NOT like that!"is awesome.


It is a great joy to see once again the flowering of God's plan for each of us in such a fine little boy, already full of great charm and affection! Some other benefits must have come with the latest speech module, because he subsequently fell off his "vehicle"in a manner which a week or so would have resulted in dissolving into tears and running to Mummy/Daddy - but no,he just got up and hopped back on! Maturity! Bring it on! 

GENERATIONS

Great Grandfather Conrad BECKMANN
FAMED GERMAN PAINTER OF THE LATE 1800s

To-day is the 166 th anniversary of the birth in 1846 in Hannover Germany of my Mother's Grandfather - my Great Grandfather - Conrad Beckmann.

The Generations tumble on, and he is now the Great Great Grandfather of our three children : Marianne, Justine and Matthew., and the Great Great Great Grandfather of our Grandchildren : Stephen,Josephine,Gabrielle and Anastasia DIXON, and Emily, Christopher and Daniel Whiting.

Great Grandad you really started something! Thank God that you did , for you would be really proud to see how the shoot of the tree via your youngest son Wilhelm Toby Leonhardt Edward Beckmann flourished through his eldest child Elsie Georgina Beckmann ,not to mention other branches.

Congratulations on your Birthday and on the fact that your paintings are still coming to light via the Internet as late as a few days ago. Here is your Blog to prove it, and to tell all of your amazing story!http://conradbeckmann.blogspot.com.au/

THE MIRACLE OF LIFE AND LOVE

To-day we mark the 3rd Birthday of our Grandson Daniel.

Three years ago he was born 2 months premature on 1st June. He was so tiny , that he fitted comfortably in my not overly large hand! he lived in the ICU in his own acrylic protective enclosure to the enless fascination of his elder sister and brother.Although all the Doctors ( including his Father) were consistent in their predictions of his sound prospects, most of us had to keep unspoken our anxiety at the sight of God's tiny handiwork. But top quality medical care, endless maternal and paternal love and oceans of prayer saw him through.

Once a handful!

To-day, the "handful"of 3 years ago is a solid, healthy lad , sharp as a tack and marvellously subtle in expression, both facial and spoken.He is a very happy , intelligent, sensitive and loving and loveable joy to his parents, siblings and grandparents. Thank God for our not so little treasure!

ALL THE CROWNED HEADS OF EUROPE AND 10,000,000 PEOPLE

ELSIE GEORGINA BECKMANN victim of anti-German prejudice Born 28th May, 1905

All the Crowned Heads of Europe were still in place as they had been for centuries, with only occasional disturbances, Hansom Cabs still clip-clopped about the streets of Sydney, and 10,000,000 people lived and loved who never guessed that the War to End All Wars, the Great War would ,within a few years , propel them violently into eternity,that  Sunday, 28th May , 1905 when my dear Mum was born. That was 107 years ago.

AT AGE  24 YRS

She grew to be a beautiful young lady, saw the tough lives of her parents, the effects of WW I and anti-German prejudice. She married had two sons saw the effects of WW II , experienced the post War recovery, and suffered a great amount of illness exacerbated by bad medical treatment. She went to her reward at age 66, comforted and prepared by the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. 

By returning to the Faith of her distant ancestors, she had rejoined the Vine from which they had been torn by Law and persecution during the Protestant Deformation in England and Germany hundreds of years before. Thank God she did.

You saw only one ( baby Marianne) of your three Grandchildren and none of your seven Great Grandchildren - but not one of us would be here without you and your attraction to Jack Dixon's "kind eyes"!

I love you always dear Mum and pray for the repose of your soul still, for time means nothing in Eternity.

1960 -1961 A GLIMPSE OF HISTORY

EVERY JOB HAS ITS PROBLEMS PRESIDENT KENNEDY PONDERS THE OPTIONS
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS OCTOBER, 1961 - OR SO IT SEEMED AT THE TIME< BUT SUBSEQUENT REPORTS SAID THE THE PHOTO WAS NOT TAKEN AT THE TIME OF THE CRISIS BUT USED BY THE MEDIA AT THE TIME FOR ITS SYMBOLIC VALUE

After about two years in the Stock and Share Department of the Commonwealth Bank, I became the subject of one of those Staff Department letters which began "It has been decided to move Mr Anthony Dixon to ( in this case) Summer Hill Branch". And that was that!

My familiarity with Summer Hill was limited to flying past it on non-stop electric trains rushing into the City or from the City to their first stop at Strathfield before heading on to Lidcombe. A few times I had driven alongside the railway past Summer Hill, but it was not a place to stop - for me, anyway. Until now.

So I started working in this quiet little backwater of a branch. As I said of Stock and Share Department, computerisation lay well in the future. At Summer Hill we had hand posted Savings Bank ledgers and simple Machine posted Trading Bank ledgers.Almost everything about the Branch would within ten years be regarded as archaic. But, for now things went on as they had always done - in the case of the hand posted Savings Bank ledgers - since about 1901 when the Bank was founded.

 The essential elements were a set of about twenty square pidgeon hole files., an appropriate number of small rectangular two post binders for the ledger sheets, a stand-up desk and there you were - in business. The virtuoso of the hand -posting was the Branch Accountant a very short man named Mr Wilson. The poor fellow had had a nervous breakdown at some stage and it had heavily marked his personality. Every day with rigid regularity he went home to have lunch with his wife.One skill had come through totally unimpaired - his virtuosity at the Hand Posted Ledgers. It was something ( however petty) to see . Standing at the Stand up Desk, topped with the pidgeon holes. he would take up a batch of deposit slips , read the account number on the top one, his hand would shoot to the appropriate Binder, fly through to the correct account, post the transaction , note the new balance on the deposit slip, initial it and re-insert the Binder in a flash. "There, that's how its done. Now get on with it!"

The Trading Bank ledgers were posted on a simple accounting machine - no Comptometers yet and there was still a handwritten control ledger.

The work was shared by two other young people a good looking curly-haired happy go-lucky young Catholic guy Mick ? and a short rather sullen girl whose Christian names were "Melodie Charlotte Ivy Aloma Phyllis... whatever". I could never forget that assemblage of Christian names!

The Manager of the Branch was a retired Second World War Brigadier who had accepted the Japanese surrender at Rabaul . He was always impeccably dressed in his suit and vest and had a moustache . His desk , like his entire office was a testament to inactivity. He read the Sydney Morning Herald from front to back each morning then came out and stared at the street for about fifteen minutes and would give a damning review of any workmen in the street: "Look at these lazy wretches Mr Wilson - four of them standing about with only one shovel ! One shovel - Four men! Outrageous! Mr. Wilson ,do you hear? " "Yes Sir, of course! Outrageous!" Smirks from the staff and scarcely suppressed laughter from the younger ones.

And that was it really, until one day during the Cuban Missile Crisis the newspapers were brought into the Branch reporting the confrontation between the United States Navy quarantine blockade and a fleet of Russian ships bringing missiles to arm the Cuban bases they had built on the United States doorstep. But Mr Kruschev had badly misjudged the younger President Kennedy. The U.S. Navy stood firm it was Mr Krushchev's ships that had to first stop, and then head home. The world stood back from the nuclear brink. At the same time, my future wife Robyn and best friend Penny, still , together with her husband Keith our oldest friends, was travelling round Ireland and being advised "you had better get back home, it looks like there is going to be a war"!

*PRESCRIPTION DRUGS AND NANNY ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL

MORE DEATHS THAN ILLEGAL DRUGS OR ALCOHOL

Asleep at the wheel?

 Governments have tremendous responsibilities. But we need to judge them with particular care in those areas in which they are intensely and pervasively active in regulation.One of the areas of the most intrusive regulation by the Australian Federal Government is the area of Health , and within that area the matter of Prescription Drugs is regulated very 

heavily and aggressively.So we would expect to see gleaming efficiency and progressive outcomes from this vast bureaucratic apparatus.

But reports on radio to-day relate to a study by the Victorian Coroner,

show that in 2010 there were 338 Victorian deaths from drug toxicity. 261 of these deaths involved the use of Prescription drugs, and of these 165 were principally those used as tranquilizers to suppress anxiety and insomnia. Only 151 of the deaths involved illegal drugs.

The problem with the Prescription drugs resulted primarily from Prescription Shopping, where multiple filling of the same prescription is obtained by visiting a number of Pharmacists to obtain quickly, more than has been prescribed.

In fact we understand from a Pharmacist, that the Federal Drugs authorities do not consider a person to be Prescription Shopping until he/she has visited 8 Pharmacists!!!!

There are now calls by the Victorian Coroner and others for the institution of a National Prescription Database operating on a real-time basis linking Doctors and Pharmacists so that offenders can be instantly protected from themselves. Too late....but better late than never!

It is incredible that in this modern Nanny State society, Nanny  - who sticks her bib in all over the place, and watches us everywhere, has not got her priorities right in such a fundamental area. Asleep at the wheel Nanny! Or too busy fighting factional foes! 

YOUR MOTHER NEVER KNEW

ARMENTIERES - THE BATTLEFIELD _ GERMAN BUNDESARCHIV PHOTOGRAPH


On this cold but brilliantly sunny Aussie morning
I recall that other 14th May, ........94 years ago,
and on the other side of the world:

IT WAS A TUESDAY, WASN’T IT BILLY?

- TUESDAY, 14TH MAY, 1918

Private James William“BILLY”Wilson   Service No. 5659

17TH Battalion, Australian Imperial Force

KILLED IN ACTION Near / Armentieres FRANCE In the course of repelling the German Forces, whose attempt to reach the Sea had already failed.

Did you know it was Tuesday, or in that Hell around Armentieres, blasted to Kingdom Come for miles and miles, did you really care what day it was?

THE ICONIC AUSTRALIAN SLOUCH HAT

They didn’t tell your Mum how you died, blown to pieces by a German shell blast.But your Superior Officer took the trouble to tell my Grandma and Grandad – your Sister Louisa (“doll’s eyes” you called her) and her German-born husband Ted. Louisa was distraught at losing her only brother whom she loved so much. In due course, the Army provided your Mother with a Certificate of Burial for which Ted made an ornate carved wooden frame with all the flags of the Allies around its edges. (I guess he inherited that skill from his Grandfather Carl Dopmeyer whose sculpture and wood carving gained him fame in Germany in the second half of the 1800s.

We don’t seem to have a photo of you Billy, which is strange for your time. But we know a lot  about you:

You enlisted on 16th November 1915. You were said to be 27 years old and 3 months, of dark complexion weighing 119 lbs. and 5 Feet 3 ½ “in height. So you were a little bloke by Aussie standards but true to your English born parents’ physique. You had no distinguishing marks on your body. You were a Laborer.

But what’s this? You were Discharged just over a month later on 22nd December 1915. Because you had insufficient teeth to masticate!

17th Battalion A.I.F. (AUSTRALIAN  IMPERIAL FORCE) COLOUR PATCH

But you can’t keep a good bloke down, and on 24th February 1916(only two months later) you enlist again! 

By now you have a “Fresh” complexion, Brown eyes, Brown Hair, your height is the same but at 27 years and 6 months you weigh in at 116lbs And you have acquired a scar at your Right eye, on your Right thigh and inside your Right knee. Did this happen during your initial enlistment? An accident? All the injury was on your right side and the inclusion of a scar behind your right knee doesn’t sound like a fight!

Whatever the case, the lack of teeth, (stated to have occurred over the 10 preceding years due to cavities)– perhaps you had obtained dentures (?)- did not stop you from being accepted again.

You appear to have been buried initially at Fouilloy and later exhumed and re-interred at the great Australian War Cemetery at Villers- Bretonneux.

"

The sun shining down on these green fields of France

The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance

   The trenches have vanished long under the plow

    
    No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now

    
    But here in this graveyard that's still no man's land

    The countless white crosses in the mute witness stand
    
     To man's blind indifference to his fellow man

      And a whole generation were butchered and damned

      Did they beat the drums slowly?

      Did they play the fife lowly?

      Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?

      Did the band play the last post and chorus?

      Did the pipes play the "Flowers of the Forest"?

     (The Green Fields of France - Eric Bogle)

The Australian War Memorial at Villers Bretonneux

On 4 th February 1919 your Mother received from the Army your personal effects – you know how pitifully few and pathetic they were. You had made your Mother your Next of Kin because your Father had died previously.

 

CONCLUSION

I’m sorry Billy, that I haven’t yet got more information about you and the War you fought, but I am on the job and will set the record straight as best I can.I do now have your official Army records in facsimile. I am still striving to locate a photograph!

You and your comrades, who already went through Hell on earth in France, are in my daily prayers for the repose of your Souls. And we who live our lives today are forever grateful to you.