AMARAL PRESENTS 'SALTO AL COLOR' IN BARCELONA

Eva Amaral & Juan Aguirre

Today, Claire Fontaine and The Grandma have gone to the Palau Sant Jordi in Montjuïc, Barcelona, to listen to Amaral, one of the most wonderful and amazing groups in current world music.

Claire and The Grandma love this duo because of their beautiful music, but especially their deep, poetrical and hermetic lyrics, full of social conscience, respect for diversity, care for the planet and hope in a better future for our humanity.

Claire and The Grandma like all songs, new and old ones, but today they strongly recommend  the new album Salto al Color and a little treasure, not included in it, named Corren sung for the new disc of La Marató de TV3.

Thanks to Eva, Juan and all their team for coming to our city, for Camins, for Corren and for offering an impressive show full of great music and social conscience. Good luck with this new and awesome project.

We will continue walking into wild, being drops of a great sea and eyes of falcon, being respectful in diversity like fish of colours and believing in our revolution because it is our time and we are listening to the drums that announce it.

We are going to gallop to bury them in the sea. Let's go to jump to colour!

Before going to this unforgettable concert, The Grandma has read a new chapter of Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic.

Amaral is a music group from Zaragoza, Aragon hat has sold more than four million albums worldwide. The band consists of Eva Amaral (vocalist) and Juan Aguirre (guitarist), who write their songs together.

Eva and Juan met in 1992 in a bar in Zaragoza. She played drums in a local punk rock band called Bandera Blanca and also sang with Acid Rain. Aguirre was playing with a band called Días de Vino y Rosas at the time. Soon after they met, the two decided to play together and perform their own material. In 1997, they moved to Madrid and signed a major deal with EMI.

Claire & The Grandma enjoy Amaral

Amaral's musical style is often called pop rock, but it is often fused with Latin beats, folk rock, synthesizers, complex poetic lyrics, and in particular, traditional Spanish folk music.

Their distinctive style was described by Juan as folk, and the person who has heard a lot of folk and traditional music will listen and understand, but I think our attitude to life is rather that of a rock group.

Juan Aguirre was born in Donostia, Guipúzcoa in the Basque Country. He spent his childhood in the town of Gros and currently resides in Zaragoza, while Eva originates from Zaragoza, Aragon.

The inspirations for their songs include cinema, friends, and literature. Amaral have won numerous awards including the MTV Europe Music Award for their 2002 album Estrella de mar, which was nominated for 5 other categories, and are one of the best-selling Spanish groups of all time.

As of 2019, they have released eight studio albums, one (double) live album, and two live DVDs. According to Eva, they are a libertarian group that doesn’t think of music as a conquest or a competition... We chose music as a way to break a lifestyle that we didn’t like and a society that we don't understand.

More information: Amaral

Eva María Amaral Lallana (4 August 1972) is a Spanish singer-songwriter, and a member of the group Amaral with Juan Aguirre.

She studied sculpture studies at the Art School of Zaragoza. During this time, she was a member of the band Bandera Blanca, where she was the drummer. In 1993, she met the guitarist Juan Aguirre, who was a member of the band Días De Vino Y Rosas. Together, they created the band Amaral. They moved to Madrid and later signed a contract with Virgin Records.

They have recorded six successful studio albums and have performed as tour support for Lenny Kravitz's Spanish concerts. Their song Rosa de la Paz was included in a record to support Prestige boat victims, also performing at the Nunca Máis demonstration in Madrid. Moby performs along with Eva Amaral on the song Escapar, the Spanish version of the Amaral song Slipping Away. Beto Cuevas, front man with the Chilean band La Ley joins Amaral on their song Te Necesito. Pájaros En La Cabeza is their most famous album.

Even though some people believe that she was born in 1973, she confirmed that she turned 40 in 2012. I just turned 40 and I feel much more secure and stronger than 20 years ago.

Juan Aguirre & Eva Amaral

She claims that she had a joyful childhood and that she never liked to play with dolls. Instead, she would play music with her cousin. She declares that she is shy and that as a teenager, she felt like a weirdo and had many insecurities.

At a very young age, she started to play the drums in a self-taught way and she did not think she could sing until she started to do it and realized that it was a much more powerful way to communicate than the drums.

She studied in Zaragoza at the school Romareda. Afterwards, she studied volume techniques in the art school of Zaragoza. Meanwhile, she also worked as a bartender in Azul Rock Café. She began to study lyrical singing when she realized that she wanted to become a singer. First, she took lessons in a civic center, but the teacher was fascinated by her voice and she sent her to her master. Her lessons were very expensive and I did not have much money… She was asked to audition and the master admitted her with a discount.

Eva and Juan met in 1992 at the back of a bar in Zaragoza. At that time, she played the drums in a local punk-rock band called Bandera Blanca and was also the leader single of another band called Lluvia Ácida.

From the beginning, there was love, friendship and music between the two of them. They went through all the bars performing. They were together for five years before it all started. After that, they began to do some sporadic trips to Madrid and then they started to stay there a little longer, sleeping at friends' places, working in the catering industry and much more while they performed in Libertad 8, San Mateo 6, El Rincón del Arte Nuevo and La Boca del Lobo.

More information: Amaral-Youtube

One day, Jesús Ordovás invited them to Radio 3 and sometime later, a guy from the Virgin company attended one of their concerts and decided to work with them. Then, someday in 1997, they made the decision of staying in Madrid.

In 1998, Eva and Juan signed with the company Virgin-EMI and on 18 May, their first album was released. They called it Amaral and it was produced by Pancho Varona and Paco Bastante. The name of the band was Juan's idea, who took Eva's last name, even though she did not like it at first.

Claire & The Grandma ready to listen to Amaral

In 2000, after touring to present her first album, she recorded her second one in London. It was called Una pequeña parte del mundo (A small part of the world) and it contained 13 songs, 12 written by the band and a version of the song Nada de nada by Cecilia.

This time, the album was produced by Cameron Jenkins, who also worked with The Rolling Stones, George Michael and Elvis Costello. Eva met him on the recording of an Enrique Bunbury’s album, on which she collaborated. Cameron loved her extraordinary voice since the first time he heard it and he proposed the band to work with him. Jenkins produced all their albums until 2008.

In 2001, Eva Amaral was given the title of honorary citizen by the local government of Zaragoza.

The band recorded in London their third album, called Estrella de mar (Starfish). This was the best seller in Spain in 2002 and the most successful album of the band so far, having sold more than 2 million copies. The album appears as the number 24 on the list The 50 best Spanish rock albums, made by the magazine Rolling Stone. They did a tour for two years where they gave more than 200 concerts and they played as supporting band in a concert of Lenny Kravitz. Furthermore, in 2003, Eva played the leading role in a short film by Andreu Castro called Flores para Maika (Flowers for Maika).

In November 2004, Eva and Juan left to London, where they recorded their fourth album, called Pájaros en la cabeza (Birds in the head). The album was released in 14 May 2005 and they started the tour in June in Salamanca. Afterwards, they continued the tour in Mexico, Chile and Argentina.

More information: Amaral-Twitter

Amaral made a stop in Barcelona to record the concert and release it on DVD. It was called El comienzo del big bang (The beginning of the big bang). Pájaros en la cabeza was the most sold album in Spain in 2005.

Eva and Juan remember this period as a difficult time. After 'Pájaros en la cabeza' we toured and it was a long and hard phase. It was all too much to handle. Suddenly, there was a lot of people around us who made us be worried about a lot more things than music, so we decided to detach ourselves from all that. We wanted to reflect on it and live a little", says Eva. Eva has shown me that she is very brave and she stays true to herself, against the interests of the market, claims Juan.

The tour of Pájaros en la cabeza turned into a nightmare, so they decided to give fewer concerts on the following tour, and with a band formed by friends, not by professional musicians. Juan declares that they needed to go back to their origins and Eva adds that they have lived a complete regression.

Juan Aguirre & Eva Amaral

In the summer of 2007, while Gato negro-Dragón rojo was being recorded, Eva Amaral's mother died and the singer was not feeling strong enough to continue. First, I thought that by locking myself in the studio I would get through it, but it was not that easy. But here we are, still standing on our feet, thanks to Juan, who really supported me". And Eva continues We thought about quitting. We did not do it, but we thought about it. Juan also confirms that they almost quit It was a bad time and we thought that maybe this was not making us happy. We liked to make music but we did not like to be public figures. There are some things that happen to you that turn you into something like a puppet, like the one on the cover of 'Pájaros en la cabeza'.

During these bad days, the producer Scott Litt had just replied to an email that Juan had sent him before. We had sent him a song and he said that the voice sounded amazing and he wanted to see us. I was freaking out, I thought it was a joke, says Juan. Scott moved to Madrid, where he worked for a couple of weeks with the band. But Juan and Eva could not get over the personal downturn so they explained it to Scott and he understood it and stopped the project. We thought that if you do something, you have to do it with all your heart and that was not our best time. We would rather lick our wounds on our own, we care more about ourselves than the band, continues Juan.

More information: Amaral-Facebook

Finally, Eva and Juan started the year 2008 making a version of A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan, the promotional song for the Expo Zaragoza 2008. The name of the version was Llegará la tormenta.

On 27 May 2008 was released the fifth album of the duo from Zaragoza with the title Gato negro-Dragón rojo, a double disc with 19 songs. The tour 2008 started in Zaragoza in December 2008. They were accompanied by a new band, formed by Coki Giménez (drums), Zulaima Boheto (cello), Octavio Vinck (acoustic guitar), Iván González (bass guitar) and Quique Mavilla (keyboard). 

On 2009, they had another tour that started in March in the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, a concert that was included on the Guitar Festival of the city. On July 2009, they participated in the concert of MTV Spain Murcia Night, celebrated in Cartagena by the wall of Carlos III and for more than 35.000 people.

On 22 September 2009, closing the Gato negro-Dragón rojo cycle, Amaral published a double CD+DVD/Blu-Ray named La barrera del sonido, which includes the concert recorded in the Palacio de los Deportes in Madrid in October 2008, closing like this a season to start a new band with the next studio album.

Salto al Color by Amaral

With Gato negro-Dragón rojo they started to self-manage their own songs.

It's an idea that came up in 2006 and we started doing in 2007. This year we've seen that it has caused interest. For us, it is a step forward [...] It's something that comes from long ago. We started the path of self-management with 'Gato negro-Dragón rojo', but the idea that we had was already from many years ago. We had our ideal world where everyone can just manage themselves and keep everything more familiar. As I was saying, we started the last CD with our own brand but it was distributed by EMI but this year we've taken another step. The distribution is done by a small Spanish company and the truth is, we are very happy. We don't have any kind of problem with EMI, in fact, we still have a good relationship with them.

Hacia lo salvaje is the name of the sixth album by the band, released on 27 September 2011, already under the new brand created for the band, called Antártida and also produced by herself, Juan Aguirre and Juan de Dios Martín.

Eva explains the name of the brand saying that since we edited the CD with our own brand, it turned out that we didn't have a name because we are a bit of a mess. We also didn't care if it was our brand or Pepito Records. We decided to name it 'Antártida' because we were recording that song in the moment and it gave us the idea. We loved the image of the Antarctica, a completely imagined place as we've never been there. However, we loved the whiteness, something so pure and so real that it dazzles you. It also reminded us of that blank paper you have to face every time you start to write a song.

The presentation tour began in Zaragoza 6 October, where they performed five concerts in a row with all tickets sold out. Hacia lo salvaje was chosen as the third most important Spanish CD of 2011 by the Rolling Stone magazine.

In 2017, Amaral released Nocturnal, the seventh album by the band, and in 2019, Salto al Color, the last album of the duo.

Bien Alta la Mirada

Entre la Multitud

Halconera

Juguetes Rotos

Lluvia

Mares Igual Que Tú

Nuestro Tiempo

Ondas de Mar de Vigo

Peces de Colores

Ruido
 

Señales

Soledad

Tambores de la Rebelión

We are too many and they can not pass
Above the years we had to shut up
For forbidden books and secret entries...

Amaral

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, ABOLITIONISM & LITERATURE

Louisa May Alcott

Today, The Grandma has gone to the public library to borrow Little Women, a masterpiece written by Louisa May Alcott to commemorate the birthday of the author who was born on a day like today in 1832.

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist but she was also a voice of abolitionism and feminism, difficult ideas to defend in the US during the 19th century. Her acclamaided work, Little Women, is an autobiographical novel that addresses three major themes: domesticity, work, and true love, all of them interdependent and each necessary to the achievement of its heroine's individual identity.

Before going to the public library, The Grandma has read a new chapter of Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic.

Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832-March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, short story writer and poet best known as the author of the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886).

Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many of the well-known intellectuals of the day, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used the pen name A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote novels for young adults that focused on spies and revenge.

Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts, and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Alcott Pratt. The novel was well-received at the time and is still a popular children's novel today. It has been adapted to film several times.

Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She died from a stroke, two days after her father died, in Boston on March 6, 1888.

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown, which is now part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on her father's 33rd birthday. Alcott's early education included lessons from the naturalist Henry David Thoreau who inspired her to write Thoreau's Flute based on her time at Walden's Pond.

Poverty made it necessary for Alcott to go to work at an early age as a teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and writer. Her sisters also supported the family, working as seamstresses, while their mother took on social work among the Irish immigrants.

Only the youngest, May, was able to attend public school. Due to all of these pressures, writing became a creative and emotional outlet for Alcott. Her first book was Flower Fables (1849), a selection of tales originally written for Ellen Emerson, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Alcott is quoted as saying I wish I was rich, I was good, and we were all a happy family this day and was driven in life not to be poor.

More information: Literary Hub

In 1847, she and her family served as station masters on the Underground Railroad, when they housed a fugitive slave for one week and had discussions with Frederick Douglass.

Alcott read and admired the Declaration of Sentiments, published by the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights, advocating for women's suffrage and became the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts in a school board election.

The 1850s were hard times for the Alcotts, and in 1854 Louisa found solace at the Boston Theatre where she wrote The Rival Prima Donnas, which she later burned due to a quarrel between the actresses on who would play what role.

In 1858, her younger sister Elizabeth died, and her older sister Anna married a man named John Pratt. This felt, to Alcott, to be a breaking up of their sisterhood.

As an adult, Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist. In 1860, Alcott began writing for the Atlantic Monthly. When the American Civil War broke out, she served as a nurse in the Union Hospital at Georgetown, DC, for six weeks in 1862–1863. Her novel Moods (1864), based on her own experience, was also promising.

After her service as a nurse, Alcott's father wrote her a heartfelt poem titled To Louisa May Alcott. From her father.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

The poem describes how proud her father is of her for working as a nurse and helping injured soldiers as well as bringing cheer and love into their home. He ends the poem by telling her she's in his heart for being a selfless faithful daughter.

This poem was featured in the book Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals (1889). This poem is also featured in the book Louisa May Alcott, the Children's Friend that talks about her childhood and close relationship with her father.

Alcott became even more successful with the first part of Little Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (1868), a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood with her sisters in Concord, Massachusetts, published by the Roberts Brothers.

Alcott originally delayed writing the novel, seeing herself incapable of writing a story for girls, despite her publisher, Thomas Niles' urges for her to do so. Part two, or Part Second, also known as Good Wives (1869), followed the March sisters into adulthood and marriage. Little Men (1871) detailed Jo's life at the Plumfield School that she founded with her husband Professor Bhaer at the conclusion of Part Two of Little Women. Jo's Boys (1886) completed the March Family Saga.

More information: Mental Floss

In Little Women, Alcott based her heroine Jo on herself. Little Women was well received, with critics and audiences finding it suitable for many age groups. A reviewer of Eclectic Magazine called it the very best of books to reach the hearts of the young of any age from six to sixty. It was a fresh, natural representation of daily life. With the success of Little Women, Alcott shied away from the attention and would sometimes act as a servant when fans would come to her house.

In 1877 Alcott was one of the founders of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston.

After her youngest sister May died in 1879, Louisa took over for the care of niece, Lulu, who was named after Louisa. Alcott suffered chronic health problems in her later years, including vertigo. She and her earliest biographers attributed her illness and death to mercury poisoning.

During her American Civil War service, Alcott contracted typhoid fever and was treated with a compound containing mercury. Recent analysis of Alcott's illness, however, suggests that her chronic health problems may have been associated with an autoimmune disease, not mercury exposure. Moreover, a late portrait of Alcott shows a rash on her cheeks, which is a characteristic of lupus.

More information: PBS

Alcott died of a stroke at age 55 in Boston, on March 6, 1888, two days after her father's death. Lulu, her niece was only 8 years old when Louisa died. Louisa's last known words were Is it not meningitis? She is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, near Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, on a hillside now known as Authors' Ridge.

Louisa frequently wrote in her journals about going on runs up until she died. She challenged the social norms regarding gender by encouraging her young female readers to run as well.

Her Boston home is featured on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail. Her childhood home Orchard House is now a museum that pays homage to Louisa May Alcott and her family that focuses on education.

In 1996 Alcott was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

More information: Orchard House

Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen;

the more select, the more enjoyable.

Louisa May Alcott

'THE TIMES' & THE STEAM-POWERED PRINTING PRESS

The Times, First Edition 1788

There is nothing better that have a cup of tea meanwhile you are reading The Times.

The Grandma loves English traditions and she practices lots of them. The Times is a newspaper based in London since 1785, then it is one of the oldest around the world.

On a day like today, The Times became becomes the first newspaper to be produced on a steam-powered printing press, built by the German team of Koenig & Bauer and The Grandma wants to commemorate this event talking about the history of this prestigious newspaper.

Before talking about The Times, The Grandma has read a new chapter of Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic.

The Times is a British daily (Monday to Saturday) national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register, adopting its current name on 1 January 1788.

The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times (founded in 1821) are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. The Times and The Sunday Times do not share editorial staff, were founded independently, and have only had common ownership since 1967.

The Times is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, such as The Times of India and The New York Times. In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is often referred to as The London Times or The Times of London, although the newspaper is of national scope and distribution.

More information: The Times

The Times is the originator of the widely used Times Roman typeface, originally developed by Stanley Morison of The Times in collaboration with the Monotype Corporation for its legibility in low-tech printing.

In November 2006 The Times began printing headlines in a new font, Times Modern. The Times was printed in broadsheet format for 219 years, but switched to compact size in 2004 in an attempt to appeal more to younger readers and commuters using public transport. The Sunday Times remains a broadsheet.

The Times had an average daily circulation of 417,298 in January 2019; in the same period, The Sunday Times had an average weekly circulation of 712,291. An American edition of The Times has been published since 6 June 2006.

The Times has been heavily used by scholars and researchers because of its widespread availability in libraries and its detailed index. A complete historical file of the digitised paper, up to 2010, is online from Gale Cengage Learning.

The Times was founded by publisher John Walter on 1 January 1785 as The Daily Universal Register, with Walter in the role of editor. Walter had lost his job by the end of 1784 after the insurance company where he worked went bankrupt due to losses from a Jamaican hurricane. Unemployed, Walter began a new business venture. Henry Johnson had recently invented the logography, a new typography that was reputedly faster and more precise, although three years later, it was proved less efficient than advertised. Walter bought the logography's patent and with it opened a printing house to produce a daily advertising sheet.

More information: Pan MacMillan

The first publication of the newspaper The Daily Universal Register in Great Britain was 1 January 1785. Unhappy because the word Universal was frequently omitted from the name, Walter changed the title after 940 editions on 1 January 1788 to The Times.

In 1803, Walter handed ownership and editorship to his son of the same name. In spite of Walter Sr's sixteen-month stay in Newgate Prison for libel printed in The Times, his pioneering efforts to obtain Continental news, especially from France, helped build the paper's reputation among policy makers and financiers.

The Times used contributions from significant figures in the fields of politics, science, literature, and the arts to build its reputation.

For much of its early life, the profits of The Times were very large and the competition minimal, so it could pay far better than its rivals for information or writers.

Beginning in 1814, the paper was printed on the new steam-driven cylinder press developed by Friedrich Koenig. In 1815, The Times had a circulation of 5,000.

More information: Letter Press Printing

Thomas Barnes was appointed general editor in 1817. In the same year, the paper's printer James Lawson, died and passed the business onto his son John Joseph Lawson (1802–1852). Under the editorship of Barnes and his successor in 1841, John Thadeus Delane, the influence of The Times rose to great heights, especially in politics and amongst the City of London.

In other events of the nineteenth century, The Times opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws until the number of demonstrations convinced the editorial board otherwise, and only reluctantly supported aid to victims of the Irish Potato Famine. 

The Times, First Edition 1788

It enthusiastically supported the Great Reform Bill of 1832, which reduced corruption and increased the electorate from 400,000 people to 800,000 people, still a small minority of the population. During the American Civil War, The Times represented the view of the wealthy classes, favouring the secessionists, but it was not a supporter of slavery. During the 19th century, it was not infrequent for the Foreign Office to approach The Times and ask for continental intelligence, which was often superior to that conveyed by official sources.

The Times faced financial extinction in 1890 under Arthur Fraser Walter, but it was rescued by an energetic editor, Charles Frederic Moberly Bell. During his tenure (1890–1911), The Times became associated with selling the Encyclopædia Britannica using aggressive American marketing methods introduced by Horace Everett Hooper and his advertising executive, Henry Haxton. Due to legal fights between the Britannica's two owners, Hooper and Walter Montgomery Jackson, The Times severed its connection in 1908 and was bought by pioneering newspaper magnate, Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe.

Kim Philby, a double agent with primary allegiance to the Soviet Union, was a correspondent for the newspaper in Spain during the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s. Philby was admired for his courage in obtaining high-quality reporting from the front lines of the bloody conflict. He later joined British Military Intelligence (MI6) during World War II, was promoted into senior positions after the war ended, and defected to the Soviet Union when discovery was inevitable in 1963.

More information: The British Newspaper Archive

Between 1941 and 1946, the left-wing British historian E. H. Carr was assistant editor. Carr was well known for the strongly pro-Soviet tone of his editorials. In December 1944, when fighting broke out in Athens between the Greek Communist ELAS and the British Army, Carr in a Times leader sided with the Communists, leading Winston Churchill to condemn him and the article in a speech to the House of Commons. As a result of Carr's editorial, The Times became popularly known during that stage of World War II as the threepenny Daily Worker, the price of the Communist Party's Daily Worker being one penny.

In 1981, The Times and The Sunday Times were bought from Thomson by Rupert Murdoch's News International. The acquisition followed three weeks of intensive bargaining with the unions by company negotiators John Collier and Bill O'Neill. Murdoch gave legal undertakings to maintain separate journalism resources for the two titles. The Royal Arms was reintroduced to the masthead at about this time, but whereas previously it had been that of the reigning monarch, it would now be that of the House of Hanover, who were on the throne when the newspaper was founded.

More information: British Library

Great journalism will always attract readers.

The words, pictures and graphics that are the stuff of journalism

have to be brilliantly packaged;

they must feed the mind and move the heart. 

Rupert Murdoch

AUGUSTA ADA KING LOVELACE, A BYRON IN COMPUTING

Ada Lovelace

Today, The Grandma was changing her calendar and she has realized it was Ramon Llull's Day.

Llull (1232-1315) was a mathematician, polymath, philosopher, logician, Franciscan tertiary and writer from the Kingdom of Majorca. First major work of Catalan literature, he is also considered a pioneer of computation theory, especially given his influence on Leibniz.

But today is also the anniversary of the death of Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), daughter of Lord Byron who has a direct connection with Ramon Llull because she is sometimes regarded as one of the first computer programmers.

The Grandma has wanted to know more about Ada Lovelace and she has gone to the public library to borrow her biography.

Before going to the library, The Grandma has read a new chapter of Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815-27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine.

She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is sometimes regarded as the first to recognise the full potential of a computing machine and one of the first computer programmers.

Lovelace was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and his wife Lady Byron. All of Byron's other children were born out of wedlock to other women. Byron separated from his wife a month after Ada was born and left England forever four months later. He commemorated the parting in a poem that begins, Is thy face like thy mother's my fair child! ADA! sole daughter of my house and heart?.

He died of disease in the Greek War of Independence when Ada was eight years old. Her mother remained bitter and promoted Ada's interest in mathematics and logic in an effort to prevent her from developing her father's perceived insanity. Despite this, Ada remained interested in Byron. Upon her eventual death, she was buried next to him at her request. Although often ill in her childhood, Ada pursued her studies assiduously. She married William King in 1835. King was made Earl of Lovelace in 1838, Ada thereby becoming Countess of Lovelace.

Ada Lovelace

Her educational and social exploits brought her into contact with scientists such as Andrew Crosse, Charles Babbage, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone, Michael Faraday and the author Charles Dickens, contacts which she used to further her education. Ada described her approach as poetical science and herself as an Analyst & Metaphysician. When she was a teenager, her mathematical talents led her to a long working relationship and friendship with fellow British mathematician Charles Babbage, who is known as the father of computers. She was in particular interested in Babbage's work on the Analytical Engine. 

Lovelace first met him in June 1833, through their mutual friend, and her private tutor, Mary Somerville. Between 1842 and 1843, Ada translated an article by Italian military engineer Luigi Menabrea on the calculating engine, supplementing it with an elaborate set of notes, simply called Notes. These notes contain what many consider to be the first computer program -that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine.

Other historians reject this perspective and point out that Babbage's personal notes from the years 1836/1837 contain the first programs for the engine. Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers. She also developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching, while many others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities. Her mindset of poetical science led her to ask questions about the Analytical Engine -as shown in her notes- examining how individuals and society relate to technology as a collaborative tool.

More information: Famous Scientists

Lord Byron expected his child to be a glorious boy and was disappointed when Lady Byron gave birth to a girl. The child was named after Byron's half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and was called Ada by Byron himself. On 16 January 1816, at Lord Byron's command, Lady Byron left for her parents' home at Kirkby Mallory, taking their five-week-old daughter with her. Although English law at the time granted full custody of children to the father in cases of separation, Lord Byron made no attempt to claim his parental rights, but did request that his sister keep him informed of Ada's welfare.

Lovelace was often ill, beginning in early childhood. At the age of eight, she experienced headaches that obscured her vision. In June 1829, she was paralysed after a bout of measles. She was subjected to continuous bed rest for nearly a year, something which may have extended her period of disability. By 1831, she was able to walk with crutches. Despite the illnesses, she developed her mathematical and technological skills.

Ada Lovelace

Lovelace became close friends with her tutor Mary Somerville, who introduced her to Charles Babbage in 1833. She had a strong respect and affection for Somerville, and they corresponded for many years. Other acquaintances included the scientists Andrew Crosse, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone, Michael Faraday and the author Charles Dickens. She was presented at Court at the age of seventeen and became a popular belle of the season in part because of her brilliant mind.

On 8 July 1835, she married William, 8th Baron King, becoming Lady King. They had three children: Byron; Anne Isabella; and Ralph Gordon. Immediately after the birth of Annabella, Lady King experienced a tedious and suffering illness, which took months to cure. Ada was a descendant of the extinct Barons Lovelace and in 1838, her husband was made Earl of Lovelace and Viscount Ockham, meaning Ada became the Countess of Lovelace.

Throughout her illnesses, she continued her education. Her mother's obsession with rooting out any of the insanity of which she accused Byron was one of the reasons that Ada was taught mathematics from an early age. She was privately schooled in mathematics and science by William Frend, William King, and Mary Somerville, the noted 19th-century researcher and scientific author. One of her later tutors was the mathematician and logician Augustus De Morgan. From 1832, when she was seventeen, her mathematical abilities began to emerge, and her interest in mathematics dominated the majority of her adult life.

Lovelace believed that intuition and imagination were critical to effectively applying mathematical and scientific concepts. She valued metaphysics as much as mathematics, viewing both as tools for exploring the unseen worlds around us.

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Lovelace died at the age of 36 -the same age at which her father had died- on 27 November 1852, from uterine cancer probably exacerbated by bloodletting by her physicians.

Throughout her life, Lovelace was strongly interested in scientific developments and fads of the day, including phrenology and mesmerism.

After her work with Babbage, Lovelace continued to work on other projects. In 1844 she commented to a friend Woronzow Greig about her desire to create a mathematical model for how the brain gives rise to thoughts and nerves to feelings -a calculus of the nervous system.

Lovelace first met Charles Babbage in June 1833, through their mutual friend Mary Somerville.

In 1840, Babbage was invited to give a seminar at the University of Turin about his Analytical Engine. Luigi Menabrea, a young Italian engineer and the future Prime Minister of Italy, transcribed Babbage's lecture into French, and this transcript was subsequently published in the Bibliothèque universelle de Genève in October 1842. Babbage's friend Charles Wheatstone commissioned Ada Lovelace to translate Menabrea's paper into English. She then augmented the paper with notes, which were added to the translation.

Ada Lovelace spent the better part of a year doing this, assisted with input from Babbage. These notes, which are more extensive than Menabrea's paper, were then published in the September 1843 edition of Taylor's Scientific Memoirs under the initialism AAL.

More information: History

Ada Lovelace's notes were labelled alphabetically from A to G. In note G, she describes an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. It is considered to be the first published algorithm ever specifically tailored for implementation on a computer, and Ada Lovelace has often been cited as the first computer programmer for this reason. The engine was never completed so her program was never tested.

In 1953, more than a century after her death, Ada Lovelace's notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were republished as an appendix to B.V. Bowden's Faster than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines.  

The engine has now been recognised as an early model for a computer and her notes as a description of a computer and software.

Doron Swade, a specialist on history of computing known for his work on Babbage, analysed four claims about Lovelace during a lecture on Babbage's analytical engine:

-She was a mathematical genius.

-She made an influential contribution to the analytical engine.

-She was the first computer programmer.

-She was a prophet of the computer age.

More information: Gradiant

The Analytical Engine has no pretensions

whatever to originate anything.

It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform...

But it is likely to exert an indirect

and reciprocal influence on science itself.

Ada Lovelace

CELEBRATING THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF CSE IN GAVÀ

The Grandma arrives to the CSE, Gavà

Last November 21 evening, The Grandma assisted to an important event in Gavà, the 20th anniversary of the CSE (Centre de Suport a l'Empresa), a local centre that gives support to entrepreneurs, business and unemployed people. During the trip from Barcelona to Gavà, The Grandma started to read a new novel titled This Rough Magic written by Mary Stewart.

It was a beautiful act where the main protagonists of the CSE, the workers and users of this centre, talked about their experiences during these 20 years.

The Grandma spent a nice evening remembering how many wonderful people she had met in Gavà during her staying in the city these last years. She thanks the invitation and wishes the best for this institution, their workers and their users.

After the act, when The Grandma returned home by public transport, she was reading about General Economy, Local Purchasing and Circular Economy.

An economy (from Greek οίκος that means household and νέμoμαι manage) is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services by different agents. Understood in its broadest sense, 'The economy is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the production, use, and management of resources'.

Economic agents can be individuals, businesses, organizations, or governments.

Economic transactions occur when two groups or parties agree to the value or price of the transacted good or service, commonly expressed in a certain currency. However, monetary transactions only account for a small part of the economic domain.

Economic activity is spurred by production which uses natural resources, labor and capital. It has changed over time due to technology (automation, accelerator of process, reduction of cost functions), innovation (new products, services, processes, expanding markets, diversification of markets, niche markets, increases revenue functions) such as, that which produces intellectual property and changes in industrial relations (most notably child labor being replaced in some parts of the world with universal access to education).

Economy

A given economy is the result of a set of processes that involves its culture, values, education, technological evolution, history, social organization, political structure and legal systems, as well as its geography, natural resource endowment, and ecology, as main factors.

These factors give context, content, and set the conditions and parameters in which an economy functions. In other words, the economic domain is a social domain of human practices and transactions. It does not stand alone.

A market-based economy is one where goods and services are produced and exchanged according to demand and supply between participants (economic agents) by barter or a medium of exchange with a credit or debit value accepted within the network, such as a unit of currency.

A command-based economy is one where political agents directly control what is produced and how it is sold and distributed. A green economy is low-carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive.

In a green economy, growth in income and employment is driven by public and private investments that reduce carbon emissions and pollution, enhance energy and resource efficiency, and prevent the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. A gig economy is one in which short-term jobs are assigned or chosen via online platforms and a programmable economy is the set of revolutionary changes taking place in the global economy due to technology innovations. New economy is a term referred to the whole emerging ecosystem where new standards and practices were introduced, usually as a result of technological innovations.

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Today the range of fields of study examining the economy revolves around the social science of economics, but may include sociology (economic sociology), history (economic history), anthropology (economic anthropology), and geography (economic geography). Practical fields directly related to the human activities involving production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services as a whole are engineering, management, business administration, applied science, and finance.

All professions, occupations, economic agents or economic activities, contribute to the economy. Consumption, saving, and investment are variable components in the economy that determine macroeconomic equilibrium. There are three main sectors of economic activity: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Due to the growing importance of the economical sector in modern times, the term real economy is used by analysts as well as politicians to denote the part of the economy that is concerned with the actual production of goods and services, as ostensibly contrasted with the paper economy, or the financial side of the economy, which is concerned with buying and selling on the financial markets. Alternate and long-standing terminology distinguishes measures of an economy expressed in real values (adjusted for inflation), such as real GDP, or in nominal values (unadjusted for inflation).

The Grandma & The CSE 20th Anniversary

As long as someone has been making, supplying and distributing goods or services, there has been some sort of economy; economies grew larger as societies grew and became more complex.

Sumer developed a large-scale economy based on commodity money, while the Babylonians and their neighboring city states later developed the earliest system of economics as we think of, in terms of rules/laws on debt, legal contracts and law codes relating to business practices, and private property.

The Babylonians and their city state neighbors developed forms of economics comparable to currently used civil society (law) concepts. They developed the first known codified legal and administrative systems, complete with courts, jails, and government records.

The contemporary concept of the economy wasn't popularly known until the American Great Depression in the 1930s.

After the chaos of two World Wars and the devastating Great Depression, policymakers searched for new ways of controlling the course of the economy. This was explored and discussed by Friedrich August von Hayek (1899–1992) and Milton Friedman (1912–2006) who pleaded for a global free trade and are supposed to be the fathers of the so-called neoliberalism. However, the prevailing view was that held by John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), who argued for a stronger control of the markets by the state.

The theory that the state can alleviate economic problems and instigate economic growth through state manipulation of aggregate demand is called Keynesianism in his honor. In the late 1950s, the economic growth in America and Europe -often called Wirtschaftswunder (ger: economic miracle)- brought up a new form of economy: mass consumption economy. In 1958, John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was the first to speak of an affluent society. In most of the countries the economic system is called a social market economy.

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With the fall of the Iron Curtain and the transition of the countries of the Eastern Block towards democratic government and market economies, the idea of the post-industrial society is brought into importance as its role is to mark together the significance that the service sector receives instead of industrialization. Some attribute the first use of this term to Daniel Bell's 1973 book, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, while others attribute it to social philosopher Ivan Illich's book, Tools for Conviviality. The term is also applied in philosophy to designate the fading of postmodernism in the late 90s and especially in the beginning of the 21st century.

With the spread of Internet as a mass media and communication medium especially after 2000-2001, the idea for the Internet and information economy is given place because of the growing importance of e-commerce and electronic businesses, also the term for a global information society as understanding of a new type of all-connected society is created. In the late 2000s, the new type of economies and economic expansions of countries like China, Brazil, and India bring attention and interest to different from the usually dominating Western type economies and economic models.

The economy may be considered as having developed through the following phases or degrees of precedence:

The Digital Economy

-The ancient economy was mainly based on subsistence farming.

-The industrial revolution phase lessened the role of subsistence farming, converting it to more extensive and mono-cultural forms of agriculture in the last three centuries. The economic growth took place mostly in mining, construction and manufacturing industries. Commerce became more significant due to the need for improved exchange and distribution of produce throughout the community.

-In the economies of modern consumer societies phase there is a growing part played by services, finance, and technology—the knowledge economy.

In modern economies, these phase precedences are somewhat differently expressed by the three-sector theory:

-Primary stage/degree of the economy: Involves the extraction and production of raw materials, such as corn, coal, wood and iron. (A coal miner and a fisherman would be workers in the primary degree.)

-Secondary stage/degree of the economy: Involves the transformation of raw or intermediate materials into goods e.g. manufacturing steel into cars, or textiles into clothing. (A builder and a dressmaker would be workers in the secondary degree.) At this stage the associated industrial economy is also sub-divided into several economic sectors (also called industries). Their separate evolution during the Industrial Revolution phase is dealt with elsewhere.

-Tertiary stage/degree of the economy: Involves the provision of services to consumers and businesses, such as baby-sitting, cinema and banking. (A shopkeeper and an accountant would be workers in the tertiary degree.)

-Quaternary stage/degree of the economy: Involves the research and development needed to produce products from natural resources and their subsequent by-products. (A logging company might research ways to use partially burnt wood to be processed so that the undamaged portions of it can be made into pulp for paper.) Note that education is sometimes included in this sector.

More information: OECD

Other sectors of the developed community include:

-The public sector or state sector (which usually includes: parliament, law-courts and government centers, various emergency services, public health, shelters for impoverished and threatened people, transport facilities, air/sea ports, post-natal care, hospitals, schools, libraries, museums, preserved historical buildings, parks/gardens, nature-reserves, some universities, national sports grounds/stadiums, national arts/concert-halls or theaters and centers for various religions).

-The private sector or privately run businesses.

-The social sector or voluntary sector.

More information: Economics Discussion

Local purchasing is a preference to buy locally produced goods and services over those produced farther away. It is very often abbreviated as a positive goal, buy local, that parallels the phrase think globally, act locally, common in green politics.

On the national level, the equivalent of local purchasing is import substitution, the deliberate industrial policy or agricultural policy of replacing goods or services produced on the far side of a national border with those produced on the near side, i.e., in the same country or trade bloc.

Historically, there have been so many incentives to buy locally that no one had to make any kind of point to do so, but with current market conditions, it is often cheaper to buy distantly produced goods, despite the added costs in terms of packaging, transport, inspection, retail facilities, etc. As such, one must now often take explicit action if one wants to purchase locally produced goods.

Local Purchaising or Local Economy

These market conditions are based on externalized costs, argues local economy advocates. Examples of externalized costs include the price of war, asthma, or climate change, which are not typically included in the cost of a gallon of fuel, for instance.

Most advocates for local economics address contracting and investment, as well as purchasing. Agricultural alternatives are being sought, and have manifested themselves in the form of farmers' markets, farmed goods sold through the community cooperatives, urban gardens, and even school programs that endorse community agriculture.

The argument that buying local is good for the economy is questioned by many economic theorists. They argue that transportation costs actually account for a fraction of overall production prices, and that choosing less efficient local products over more efficient nonlocal products is an economic deadweight loss. Moreover, the community as a whole does not actually save money because consumers have to spend so much more on the more expensive local products.

Similarly the moral purchasing argument has been questioned as more and more consumers consider the welfare of people in countries other than their own. Most buy local campaigns rely on the implicit assumption that providing jobs for people in the consumers' own country is more moral than in foreign countries. They also imply that money going to foreign countries is worse than money staying in the consumers' own country. Increasingly, these campaigns have been called out as paranoid, jingoist and even xenophobic.

Additionally, organic local food tends to be more costly so this is not an appealing option to consumers who are shopping on a budget.

Small-scale farmers do not receive government subsidies and are not able to support their business on prices comparable to those of industrial-scale food production, so they must sell at higher prices to make a living.

Therefore, in order for the appeal of the local agriculture movement to overcome the economic cost, people must be willing to invest in it, which is unlikely when apparently similar products are available in grocery stores for a lower cost. Despite this, distribution costs of expansive food trade must also be factored in; with increasing gas prices, it becomes more expensive to ship food from outside sources.

More information: Time

A circular economy, often referred to simply as circularity, is an economic system aimed at eliminating waste and the continual use of resources.

Circular systems employ reuse, sharing, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing and recycling to create a close-loop system, minimising the use of resource inputs and the creation of waste, pollution and carbon emissions.

Circular Economy

The circular economy aims to keep products, equipment and infrastructure in use for longer, thus improving the productivity of these resources.

All waste should become food for another process: either a by-product or recovered resource for another industrial process, or as regenerative resources for nature, e.g. compost. This regenerative approach is in contrast to the traditional linear economy, which has a take, make, dispose model of production.

Proponents of the circular economy suggest that a sustainable world does not mean a drop in the quality of life for consumers, and can be achieved without loss of revenue or extra costs for manufacturers. The argument is that circular business models can be as profitable as linear models, allowing us to keep enjoying similar products and services.

Intuitively, the circular economy would appear to be more sustainable than the current linear economic system. Reducing the resources used, and the waste and leakage created, conserves resources and helps to reduce environmental pollution. However, it is argued by some that these assumptions are simplistic; that they disregard the complexity of existing systems and their potential trade-offs. For example, the social dimension of sustainability seems to be only marginally addressed in many publications on the circular economy. There are cases that might require different or additional strategies, like purchasing new, more energy efficient equipment.

More information: Ellen Macarthur Foundation

Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment;

it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment

for the individual to explore, in his own way.

Noam Chomsky