Yelena Osipova #2

Remember the March 4 post on Yelena Osipova? The brave beret-wearing woman is back on the streets of Saint Petersburg after her arrest, protesting Putin's war on Ukraine!

"This is Yelena Osipova. She is in her late 70s and comes from a family of 'Siege of Leningrad' survivors. A few days ago, she was arrested for protesting Putin's war in Ukraine. Now, having been released, she is back at it, protesting publicly in St Petersburg, in the very center of the Nevsky Prospect.

"Soldier, drop your weapon -- and you'll be a real hero!"  The banners and posters she painted herself say. 

Behind her, looming, is Catherine the Great's statue, and behind the statue -- the august Pushkin Theater."

The Lennon Sisters

The Lennon Sisters are an American vocal group initially made up of four sisters from a family that had seven sisters in all and five brothers. The original quartet consisted of Dianne, Peggy, Kathy and Janet. All 12 Lennon children were born in Los Angeles, California.

For thirteen years, from 1955 to 1968, the group appeared regularly on The Lawrence Welk Show before having their own television variety show, called Jimmy Durante Presents the Lennon Sisters with Jimmy Durante.

The Lennon Sisters were 2001 inductees into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame.

Bruce Brand

Bruce Brand is a guitarist and percussionist with several outfits around Billy Childish and similar bands.

To avoid staying on at school or getting a job, Bruce attended [what was then] Medway College of Design between 1975-9 and did a graphic design course.

In his early days, he played with Mungo Jerry. In 1977, he met Billy Childish (in the queue (or 'line') for a Damned concert in the Astoria in London); the start of Wild Billy Childish.

Benjamin Abeles

Benjamin Abeles (1925 –2020) was an Austrian-Czech physicist whose research in the 1960s in the US on germanium–silicon alloys led to the technology used to power space probes such as the Voyager spacecraft.

He grew up in Austria and Czechoslovakia and arrived in the UK in 1939 on one of the Kindertransport missions. In July 1939, aged 14, he was one of hundreds of Jewish children brought from Prague to London through the efforts of British humanitarian Nicholas Winton, an example of the various Kindertransport missions that saved many such children from the impending dangers of World War II and the Holocaust. His parents and older sister were killed in the Holocaust.

He completed his education after the war in Czechoslovakia and Israel (from 1949), obtaining a doctorate in physics. He then lived and worked as a research physicist in the US and retired in 1995. His honours include the 1979 Stuart Ballantine Medal and his induction into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame (1991).

Gerard Petrus Fieret

In January 2005, photographer Koos Breukel made  stately portrait of the Hague-based poet and photographer Gerard Petrus Fieret (1924-2009) in the boardroom of the Fotomuseum Den Haag.

Using an old 8” x 10” plate camera, Breukel captured the artist as the resigned, wise philosopher that he could sometimes be.

In the second portrait, Fieret displayed another side of his temperament: that of a provocateur.

Tired of the photo session, he yanked his beret in front of his face, creating an unexpected, but telling diptych.

Amina Okuyeva

Ukrainian Interior Ministry member, MP Anton Herashchenko, reported this on his Facebook page:

"The heart of Ukrainian patriot Amina Okuyeva has just stopped. Her car came under fire from the bushes at a railway crossing near the village of Hlevakha in Kyiv region. Amina died as a result of wounds that she sustained," he wrote.

Herashchenko said that Osmayev was injured, but would live. "I have just spoken with him on the phone," Herashchenko said.

The first assassination attempt on Adam Osmayev and Amina Okuyeva, Chechen volunteer soldiers who participated in the war against Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine, was made in Kyiv on June 1, 2017. The would-be assassin, who introduced himself as a French journalist, invited the couple to a meeting and then shot in a car at Adam, but Amina returned gunfire and wounded the attacker.

Gambian Fireman

 

Fireman in uniform with beret and safety equipment at Bakau Fire Station, The Gambia, West Africa.

Magomed Tushayev; not a Boinero Rolemodel

Like people anywhere, Chechens come in all sorts. There are many Chechens who decided, despite everything, to side with the pro-Kremlin Chechen government of Ramzan Kadyrov. 

Magomed Tushayev, (L) & Ramzan Kadyrov

One of the top warlords and close advisor to Kadyrov,  Magomed Tushayev, was killed while fighting in, and against, Ukraine one week ago. 

Prior to the Ukrainian invasion by Russian forces, Tushayev was directly involved in the campaign of terrorizing the LGBTQ community in Chechnya.

Sources with Russian-based human rights organizations confirmed that Tushayev played an unspecified role as recently as May 2021 when human rights activist and a gay man, Ibragim Selimkhanov, was abducted from a subway station in the Novogireyevo District of the Russian capital of Moscow by four Chechen operatives and flown against his will to the Chechen capital of Grozny.

Selimkhanov was questioned by Chechen security operatives, working for Tushayev, seeking information on human rights activists and independent journalists engaged in assisting LGBTQ people in the North Caucasus region. He later escaped returning to Moscow.

Activists from the Russian LGBT Network pressed the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) of the Russian Ministry of Justice with an official complaint about the kidnapping of Selimkhanov, which in late August 2021, the governmental body refused to take further action.

International Women's Day

 

Kathleen Hanna

Louise Bryant 

Eleanor Roosevelt

Bernice Kopple

 

Bernice Kopple in Melbourne, Australia, 1950s. In the 1950s and 1960s, Bernice Kopple worked as a performer on the Tivoli Circuit. 

Kopple was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1930 and migrated to Melbourne onboard the ship New Australia in 1950 when she was nineteen years old.

The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is an English folk dance dating back to the Middle Ages. The dance takes place each year in Abbots Bromley, a village in Staffordshire, England. The modern version of the dance involves reindeer antlers, a hobby horse, Maid Marian, a Fool ánd berets.

There are no recorded references to the horn dance prior to Robert Plot's Natural History of Staffordshire, written in 1686.

According to some, the use of antlers suggests an Anglo-Saxon origin along with other native Anglo-Saxon traditions that have survived into modern times in various forms. It has been speculated that the dance originated in the pagan period and was connected with the ruling dynasty of Mercia, based some 15 miles away at Tamworth, who owned extensive hunting lands in Needwood Forest and Cannock Chase surrounding Abbots Bromley.

On this theory, the royal forester would have organised sympathetic magic rituals to ensure a plentiful catch each year, a tradition that survived into Christian times and gradually came to be seen as affirming the villagers' hunting rights.

The Horn Dance takes place on Wakes Monday, the day following Wakes Sunday, which is the first Sunday after 4 September.

The Crows Have Landed!

It is with great pride that I announce the arrival of the Crow berets.

These top quality, artist designed berets are the result of a collaboration with artist and friend Billy Childish, the L-13 Light Industrial Workshop, Flamingo Berets and Boneteria Aotearoa.

The Billy Childish Crow comes in three diameters, varying from 26cm to 30cm. The small diameter W6000 comes only in lamp black. All are lined with a 1930's satin multi-colour lining and fitted with the Crow and Flamingo labels.
The Crow 6200 measures 28cm in diameter and, like the W400 in 30cm diameter, comes in five artist colours:Permanent Green Light, Herculean Blue, Managanese Violet, Jackdaw Grey and Raw Sienna.

All Crow berets are handmade of the finest and softest Australian Merino wool, offering superb insulation and comfort.

The berets are dyed with the blessed groundwater of Mount Aso; slow dried in sunlight and the whole manufacturing process integrated in one company, overlooking Mount Aso, the largest active volcano in Japan.

Every Crow beret comes with an original Crow woodcut print, autographed by Billy Childish.

Tien Niu

Tien Niu is the younger sister of glamorous Shaw Brothers actress Tien Ni (aka Tanny).

Tien Niu was born from a family of Shandong lineage, who followed in her sister's footsteps first as a television and movie teen-idol in their native Taiwan before her frank and provocative debut performance in Hong Kong. 'Zao Shou' aka 'Thirteen' still resonates with teenage girls today.

Yelena Osipova

Brave boinera Yelena Osipova, a 77-year-old artist and activist, was marched away by a group of police while she protested against the war in Ukraine in St Petersburg.

‘Ukrainians are our friends’: the young Russian anti-war protesters defying Putin chant.

Thousands of people in cities across Russia have been defying police threats and staging protests against the invasion of Ukraine. Authorities have a low tolerance for demonstrations and marches, and attending them can have serious consequences including fines, arrests and imprisonment.

Putin's Wars

Stanley Greene

Usually I prepare my posts for The Beret Project a little while in advance. Now, with the war in Ukraine raging and keeping my thoughts occupied almost 24/7, a more personal post.

Stanley Greene

I have just received the book Open Wound, by American photojournalist Stanley Greene. 

Two Chechen 'Boivik' berets, a gift from my then bodyguard Isa (RIP)

Greene worked in many of the countries, and conflicts, that I worked (for Médecins sans Frontières, when I wore berets instead of selling berets). It was a period that I saw first hand what Mr Putin is capable of. 

Grozny, Chechnya

Despite the news coverage, I feel many people in "the West" don't appreciate the enormity of destruction that happened to Grozny - the city was essentially wiped from the earth (before being rebuild by pro-Kremlin forces).

Grozny, Chechnya

The same seems to be happening now in Kharkov and Kiev. The difference with Chechnya, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Ngorno Karabach is that social media are omni-present now. One doesn't see the occasional photo by a war reporter in the newspaper, but we follow live what destruction unfolds. 

Another difference with the 1990's is the united response by countries across the globe - that is at least one positive outcome of this horror. 

I dedicate this post to Stanley Greene, to all reporters (so many with beret) and all those brave people standing up to defend their country (with and without beret). 

Bruce Bisset

Bruce Bisset discovered a love of writing early. He used it to help protest Vietnam, then became a journalist.

Bruce took over the management of a 7-day cafe/music venue and began performing his poetry, followed by becoming a full-time performance poet and travelling New Zealand. Two more books, another cafe/venue, and seven years later he stopped performing to have a family.

Instead, he went into politics and served three 3-year terms on Waiheke Island, the last as chairman of its community board.

Later, after his move to Hawke’s Bay, he became the left-wing pro-environment voice in the otherwise rabidly right-wing local rag, writing a weekly column for 14 1/2 years.

Covid killed his last band, but presently he performs with a guitarist and keyboards under the name BB3.