Hèctor Moret i Coso (1958) is a poet, essayist and narrator in the Catalan language; a linguist, literary critic, historian and researcher of language and literature.
Since the age of 10 he has lived in Barcelona, where he graduated in Catalan Philology. Currently he is a secondary school teacher and teaches Catalan language and literature.
Özdemir Asaf (1923 -1981) was one of the most prominent figures of contemporary Turkish Literature. His real name was Halit Özdemir Arun.
He studied Law at the Istanbul University and Economics and was always more interested in theoretical subjects.For a few years he worked as a journalist and in 1951 he set up his own printing house.
His poetry and his translations from French poets and writers have been published in journals and anthologies since 1940. For Özdemir Asaf every man is sensitive and wise. Yet not at the same moment. Therefore, he does not tie poetry only to the feelings or only to the mind. Neither does he divide it between the two.
Tariq Aziz (1936 –2015) was Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister (1979–2003) and Foreign Minister (1983–1991) and a close advisor of President Saddam Hussein.
Their association began in the 1950s when both were activists for the then-banned Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. Although he was an Arab nationalist, he was in fact an ethnic Assyrian, and a member of the Chaldean Catholic Church.
Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush claimed Aziz as one of the Iraqi regime who was responsible for hiding Iraqi WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction).
President Bush expressed unshakable confidence about finding banned weapons in Iraq and complained that Tariq Aziz was not cooperating with U.S. forces who had him in custody. Bush said the deputy prime minister, the most visible face of the former Iraqi government other than Hussein, 'still doesn't know how to tell the truth'…
The Cree (Nehiyawak in the Cree language) are the most populous and widely distributed Indigenous peoples in Canada. Cree First Nations occupy territory in the Subarctic region from Alberta to Québec, as well as portions of the Plains region in Alberta and Saskatchewan. According to 2016 census data, 356,655 people identified as having Cree ancestry and 96,575 people speak the Cree language.
The name Cree originated with a group of Indigenous peoples
near James Bay whose name was recorded by the French as Kiristinon and later
contracted to Cri, spelled Cree in English. Most Cree use this name only when
speaking or writing in English and have other, more localized names. Nehiyawak
is the Cree name for the Cree people, though it is often also used to describe
Plains Cree.
Michael C. Thorpe is a visual artist living and working out
of New York, New York, with a primary focus in textiles. His mother, Susan
Richards, taught him the art and craft of quilting. Thorpe is exploring the
limitations of both social constructs and textiles by combining fabrics,
imagery and language to evoke alternative perspectives on the human experience.
Cecilia wearing a beret is a depiction of his girlfriend Cecilia wearing a beret.
Robert Clerc was born in Switzerland in 1948, where he served his apprenticeship in fine jewelry (Geneva).
In 1975, he opened his first jewelry store in The Strand Arcade in Sydney, Australia; designed his first collection ‘The Egyptian Collection’ and won the Australian Jewellery design Award in the same year. In 1981 he created his ‘Aboriginal Collection’ and has been in the spotlight of Australian jewelry making ever since.
Rüdiger Nehberg, also known as 'Sir Vival', (1935 – 2020) was a German human rights activist, author and survival expert.
Nehberg described
himself as having "No astrological sign, no church, no hair, and no clip
in the ear (the latter means: he is a maverick)".
Nehberg
initially became a pastry chef by trade, but increasingly turned his attention
to outdoor survival. He would finally sell his three bakeries and live from his
books and lectures.
In 1972, together with two friends, he became one of the first to travel the length of the Blue Nile in a home-made boat. Since 1980, he has been involved in defending the interests of the Yanomami Amerindian tribe. With his enterprise, "The Tree" (crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a fir-tree in 2000), he contributed to the provision of a protected reservation for the Yanomami. In 1981 – followed by a camera team – he crisscrossed Germany without any special equipment and relying for his sustenance solely on what he was able to find in nature. In 1987, Nehberg crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a pedal boat.
In September 2000, he founded the human rights organization TARGET to prevent the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). For his commitment to endangered peoples, Nehberg was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz ("Federal Cross for Merit"). In November 2006, TARGET organized and financed a conference under the patronage of the Egyptian Great Mufti Ali Gomaa at Al-Azhar University of Cairo. As a result of the conference, leading authorities of Islamic law denounced genital mutilation.
Mervyn Bishop (1945) is an Australian news and documentary photographer.
Joining The Sydney Morning Herald as a cadet in 1962 or 1963, he was the first Aboriginal Australian to work on a metropolitan daily newspaper and one of the first Aboriginal Australians to become a professional photographer. In 1971, four years after completing his cadetship, he was named Australian Press Photographer of the Year.
He has continued to work as a photographer and lecturer. Bishop is a member of the Murri people.
Herman
August Kähler (1846 –1917) was a Danish ceramic designe, manufacturer and early
adept of the beret who ran the Kähler ceramic factory (Kählers Keramiske
Værksted) in Næstved, Denmark.
His daughter Sigrid married the painter L.A. Ring (the painter of Kähler with beret).
Werner Tübke (30 July 1929 in Schönebeck, Germany – 27 May 2004 in Leipzig, Germany) was a German painter, best known for his monumental Peasants' War Panorama located in Bad Frankenhausen.
He was one of the most important painters in the GDR and
belonged to the so-called Leipzig School with Bernhard Heisig , Wolfgang
Mattheuer and Heinz Zander.
He is one of the few East German artists who gained
recognition in West Germany.
Tübke was a known wearer of berets, as often depicted in his self portraits.
Hilda (also known as Hildafolk) is an award-winning British children's graphic novel series written and illustrated by Luke Pearson.
The graphic
novels are set in a fantastic world resembling a late 20th century Scandinavia
and are drawing inspiration mainly from Scandinavian folklore and folk tales
and the Moomins.
The titular
character is a small beret-wearing girl, who in the first two books lives with
her mother in a cottage on a plain surrounded by mountains and forests, but
later moves to the city Trolberg.
Hilda's world is inhabited by regular people and fantastical creatures like trolls, giants, elves and spirits. In the fourth book, Hilda joins Trolberg's Sparrow Scouts.
Roelof Westerhof passed away in February 2017 in his hometown of Tynaarlo. He was 83 years old.
Roelof Westerhof was one of the last traditional clog makers. At the end of 2001, Westerhof donated the inventory of his clog-making workshop to the De Wachter Windmill Museum in Zuidlaren. Westerhof then worked there as a volunteer, to demonstrate his beloved profession.
A klomp (plural klompen) is a whole-foot clog from the Netherlands.
Approximately 3 million pairs of klompen are made each year. They are sold throughout the Netherlands, with a large part of the market for tourist souvenirs.
However, some Dutch farmers, market gardeners, and gardeners
still wear them for everyday use. Outside the tourist industry, klompen can be
found in local tool shops and garden centers.
The traditional all-wooden Dutch clogs have been officially
accredited as safety shoes with the CE mark and can withstand almost any
penetration including sharp objects and concentrated acids. They are safer than
steelcapped protective shoes in some circumstances, as the wood cracks rather
than dents in extreme accidents, allowing easy removal of the clog and not
continued pressure on the toes by the (edge of the) steel nose.
Klompen are typically made from willow or poplar.
Jean-Guilhem Xerri is a psychoanalyst and medical biologist, who has developed a practice of controlling our thoughts.
“The Desert Fathers, Christians who took shelter in the
deserts of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria, and Palestine between the III and VII centuries,
lived as hermits in huts, caves, in trees, or even on top of a stone pillar.
They searched for a life of solitude, manual labor,
contemplation, and silence, with the goal of growing spiritually. Convinced of
the intimate union between the body, soul, and spirit, the Desert Fathers—who
we could also say were the first therapists—developed recommendations to heal
the “sicknesses of the soul.”
According to the Desert Fathers, uncontrolled thoughts are
the origins of some of the sicknesses of the soul. They identified eight
non-psychological sicknesses of a spiritual origin, classified by the monk
Evagrius as: greed of any sort, a pathological relationship to sex, a
pathological relationship to money, sadness, aggressiveness, acedia (an illness
of the soul expressed by listlessness, boredom, laziness – a precursor to
slothfulness) vanity, and pride. These eight generic diseases have a
pathological source: narcissism, which the Fathers called philautia, excessive
self-love.
Guarding the heart, in Greek nepsis (vigilance), is being
attentive to everything that happens in our heart. It is a spiritual method
which aims to free man of bad or passionate thoughts. It invites us to observe
the thoughts which penetrate our soul, and to discern between the good and the
bad.
Thanks Thomas
Jean Keulen, aka Sjeng Fransse, is the troubadour of the (Dutch) Limburgian Heuvelland.
He celebrates his 80th birthday with a new CD full of Limburgian dialect songs: "Rundje Limburg".
Raymond Pierre Paul Westerling (1919 –1987) was an infamous Dutch military officer of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. He orchestrated a contraguerrilla in Sulawesi during the Indonesian National Revolution after World War II and participated in a coup attempt against the Indonesian government in January 1950, a month after the official transfer of sovereignty. Both actions were denounced as war crimes by the Indonesian authorities.
Raymond
Westerling was born on 31 August 1919 in Istanbul. He was the son of a Greek
mother and a Dutch father, whose family had lived there for three generations.
He grew up speaking Greek, Turkish, French and English, and later wrote:
"One of the few Western European languages that I didn’t speak a word of
was my mother tongue: Dutch." When World War II engulfed Europe in 1941,
he went to the Dutch consulate in Istanbul and enlisted in the Royal
Netherlands Army, much to his father’s dismay.
Westerling was twice the subject of official inquiries. Dutch historian Nico Schulte Nordholt stated: "...his actions had the approval of the highest authorities, and in the eyes of the Dutch authorities, he was successful at the time. Determant and effective". In 1949, the Dutch–Indonesian agreement on transfer of power stipulated neither country would call the other on its wartime offences, thus ruling out any attempt by Indonesia to press for Westerling's extradition.
 |
| From the theater production 'Westerling' Via Belgium,
Westerling reached the Netherlands, where he settled down with his
Indonesian-French wife in a small town in the province of Friesland. Westerling
later studied voice at the Amsterdam conservatory. His début as a tenor in
Puccini’s Tosca in the city of Breda in 1958, however, proved unsuccessful. He
moved to Amsterdam, where he ran an antique book store. |
Westerling died of heart failure on November 1987.
