"86 million trees are set to be planted in Wales by the end of the decade as part of a pledge by the Welsh Government to combat the climate emergency. Farmers and landowners will receive around £32m worth of grants, Minister for Climate Change Julie James has announced."

Read the full article here on the UK Daily Post - https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/farmers-landowners-wales-32m-grants-24913512

Musician, performer and author, Andy Edwards, of Mother Bear Productions, has a new video series out,  In The Company of Curlews .  AmeriCymru spoke to him about it and what else he’s been doing during the pandemic. 

AmeriCymru:  You're sharing your new youtube series with us, we've called it storytelling, how would you categorize this work you're making? 

Andy: In The Company of Curlews has been written as an audio drama for a single voice. 

For years now I have been storytelling in different live venues. With the encouragement of audience feedback, I wanted to take a step towards getting more stories out there. Some of the venues would restrict your time on stage to 5-10 minutes, and I wanted to stretch myself and have no time restrictions.

Even before Covid lockdowns and self-isolation, I found it easier to do things on my own. Shut the door and get on with it, not having to rely on the help of others. 

AmeriCymru: You're a musician, what got you started creating these video stories? 

Andy:   I love songs that tell stories. I’ve had a hand in composing a few and they all have a strong narrative. TRENCHFOOT was all about Great War stories from local history. My latest release with the POLLYTUNNEL PIRATES is full of stories from the past; personal, social or historical. The title track ‘BIG DAY’ is all about my 18 th birthday and the crazy excessive drinking that went on. 

There is a video available, ‘ANGELS,’ from the album which tells the story of a group of friends cycling Coast 2 Coast USA. It was 2009, Americymru were kind enough to promote the trip to their audience and helped me gain so many Welsh contacts along the way. One of the contacts was in Taos, New Mexico, and what a welcome we had! We made so many friends and there was one lady who was interested in me because she could see angels all around me, they would keep me safe and sound. So there lies the story song.

The series of MOTHER BEAR videos that Seimon Pugh Jones and myself made for Americymru, pre-Covid, gave me the basic skills of editing and sound recording. All the recordings are produced in a room upstairs in my house on a basic digital recorder. There are no special effects, just me and my voice. So, with basic video editing skills and a creative streak which has been with me since writing stories in primary school, I was ready to let my imagination go.

AmeriCymru:   Your current main character is a coracle man named Jac, for people who don't know what that is, can you tell us about this character, what a coracle man is and what inspired his story?

Andy: I just happened to be walking down the road towards town and I bumped into an old school friend. We started talking about his family and the cultural history of coracles in our hometown. A year later I had successfully gained a small grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Research brought in an abundance of information resulting in educational resources being produced and distributed to Primary Schools in the area. So with a wealth of local knowledge regarding the heritage of Carmarthen Coracles I wanted to put it into a narrative form. Coracle fishing has dwindled so much that there are but a handful of pairs still fishing in an ever-decreasing time slot of a season during the year. So the project took on the attempt to help maintain the heritage and culture of a dying profession.

Please check out the Mother Bear video: Carmarthen Coracles, The Last Coracle Men

AmeriCymru:  We can see that people are watching, have you got much response yet from your audience on Jac's story?

Andy:   Not a great amount to be honest. Some friends and families have congratulated me on the project and all are complimentary. I’m thankful for all the feedback and support and am always prepared for criticism, be it positive or negative.

AmeriCymru:   You did a previous series, Nail, can you tell us a bit about that series and its main character? How would you compare him to Jac? 

Andy:   Sin and redemption arc through the life stories of Jac and Nail. 

Nail , set in the 1930’s, is the story of a man who had been affected by the Great War and his way of coping with the experiences in the life of a small West Wales town during the inter-war years. Nail is a gravedigger in the small town and sees what goes on from a different angle and all  the time he holds a dark secret from the war.

In The Company of Curlews follows Jac’s life on the river from a young teenager in the 1950s to the present day when he is eighty. He makes the error of not standing up for his brother and then feels responsible for a tragic accident which leads to his younger brother’s death. Guilt stays with him throughout his life and we see him make mistakes time and time again in his life.

AmeriCymru:  What's been the best part of producing these stories for you?  

Andy:   The saddest thing is to leave a song written on a scrap of paper. These stories have been sitting on my hard disk for a few years and I just felt why not put them out there?

I feel the importance of keeping stories alive, whether through textbooks or through narrative works. 

"For every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own
concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably."
(Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History , v)

Every community has history pulsating at their core and so does every family within that community. These need to be archived for future generations. As Benjamin points out, they need to continue to have value in the present but, unless they are recognised and archived for the future they threaten ‘to disappear irretrievably’

The history book or big screen film cannot tell us everything about the past. They are always looking for the ‘sexy’ side to the story. Entertainers give us their version and although great storytellers they present a world of magnificent events and outstanding actions where facts are twisted to fit a formula. As the old proverb says, ‘never let truth get in the way of a good story’.

The quick fix digital generation need to be entertained with continuous box-set T.V. series that never end, where challenges are overcome and where stories never finish. Oral history will not make the Hollywood script precisely because it deals with a communal experience rather than a heroic one. Within this frame each individual has a significant story to tell with a socially interesting aspect.

I hope the project will show future generations a small part of social history

AmeriCymru:  What's your process on a project like this, how do you write and create these? Do you start with a character or a plot or something else completely? Do you write first or develop as you go? 

Andy:   It’s a few years ago now! I think, after a lot of research: interviewing fishermen, walking the river, getting a feel for the location and actually storytelling sections of the story I started to sketch out the protagonist’s life, from his young life to his old age. 

One of my aims was to incorporate the myths, tradition, and stories of the river. One of the myths is the role of the Curlew. The bird in the coracle world is seen as a bird of wisdom and the judge of the river. It decides whether the fisherman is worthy. If found guilty for bad behaviour the curlew would banish the coracle man from the river never to catch a fish again.

When Jac finally satisfies his fishing appetite and catches the big fish he has sought all his life, he realises that it’s not his heart’s desire and returns it to the river to spawn again. His treatment of the fish is his atonement. He sees his brother again and although Jac is close to death himself he is at rest in his mind as he has resolved his issues of guilt. 

AmeriCymru:  You and artist Seimon Pugh-Jones from the Tin Shed previously collaborated on a year-long project of interviews with people around Wales, Voices from Wales , which AmeriCymru was lucky enough to run, and they were really excellent. How was working on that project? What kind of feedback did you get on it and any chance you and Seimon may do something else in the future? 

Andy:   Covid lockdowns put a stop to any continuity of the project. We talk forever about different projects and documentaries. Seimon has so many great ideas and is one of the most creative people I know. Hopefully after Christmas we can get our act together.

AmeriCymru:  You don't seem like the kind of person to sit around and not do too much, what else have you been doing during the pandemic and where can people find your work?  

Andy: One life! Got to get things done! Seimon and myself wrote a screenplay during the pandemic that is doing the rounds at the moment. Hopefully we’ll get a commission! – Children in a small West Walian town help an Italian POW escape from the Fascists to a new life in the U.S.

I also put a radio programme together for Welsh Connections, available on Mixcloud, I tell my own stories, bands I played in, my influences, all with the help of music from different eras: 

https://www.mixcloud.com/michael-kennedy5/playlists/andy-edwards-episodes/

Twenty episodes later I needed a break but I am in the process of putting together the next ten episodes to be released after Xmas.

AmeriCymru:  What's next for you and for Mother Bear, and will you do more of these stories?  

Andy:   I have another single-voice audio ready to go, EVERYTHINGS GONE WRONG - children growing up in a West Wales town, based on an experience when I was held at gunpoint down by the river during a lunch hour in my Primary School days. 

AmeriCymru:  Any final message for the readers and members of AmeriCymru?

Andy:  I fear I was too late to save all the dying traditions of coracle fishing in Carmarthen, but I will have been able to help keep fragments of the customs alive. I was never going to be able to, ‘awaken the dead, and  make whole what has been smashed .’

I urge you all to realise the importance of your own history, your community’s history and do not accept what is served to you on the t.v. or big screen as gospel.

Thanks for all your support and hopefully you enjoy.

Between 1854 and 1862,  naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (born 8 January 1823, Llanbadoc, Monmouthshire) travelled the Malay Archipelago (now Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia), studying and collecting specimens he would later exhibit and write about.

The most famous animal he and his team found was a brilliant green tree frog that jumped out of the high trees of the rainforest canopy and slowed its fall with big, webbed feet, like a tiny parachutist. 

Wallace's Flying Frog is small, between 3-4" long, males are a little bigger than females, and they've been found in Indonesia, Singapore and Sumatra. Their populations are decreasing but their status is currently "least concern."  These little frogs mainly hunt insects but have also been observed to eat toads and even small birds, and are themselves hunted by snakes.  They can glide as much as 50' to a new branch or even the forest floor, and climb back up using their very sticky toes. 

The Latin species name for this frog is Rhacophorus nigropalmatus.  Whenever I see a new word I don't know, including Latin, I always try to look up what it really means and where it came from. "-phorus" added to the end of a word means that the animal being named resembles something like the first part of the word, in this case "rhaco." The second part of their name is nigro (black) + palmatus (hand).

I couldn't find that first part, "rhaco," as Latin or as a zoological prefix anywhere, including in a Latin dictionary. I only found it two places, the first was a medical term which meant "rough" as part of two medical conditions that made the skin rough, but they don't look rough skinned to me. The second was in a Welsh dictionary from the early 1800's.

I haven't been able to find out if Wallace spoke Welsh or even knew any. I haven't been able to find out who named the family of 300 species of southeast Asian gliding frogs Wallace's Flying Frog is one of, the Rhacophoridae , but I believe Wallace was the first person to describe them. It's also possible that "rhaco" comes from a Malay word as Wallace had Malay and other assistants on this trip.

In William Owen Pughe's A Dictionary of the Welsh Language (1803), " rhaco " is defined as "adverb: Yonder, in the advance, in the distant view. Sylla di rhaco , 'Behold thou yonder.' "

That sure sounds to me like a great way to describe tiny frogs, falling slowly toward you out of the tall trees. I can't prove that at all, but I think I'll go with it until I learn different.  

Illustration by J. G. Keulemans, from Wallace's The Malay Archipelago (1869)

More about Wallace's Flying Frog - 

https://www.ecologyasia.com/verts/amphibians/wallace's_flying_frog.htm

https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Rhacophorus_nigropalmatus/

More about Alfred Russel Wallace and his time in the Malay Archipelago -

https://www.amazon.com/Malay-Archipelago-Periplus-Classics/dp/079460563X/ref=asc_df_079460563X/  

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-was-alfred-russel-wallace.html

https://wallacefund.myspecies.info/

PS. If you're a zoology or particularly a paleontology nerd like me, I want to recommend that youtube channel at the top of this post, Ben G. Thomas - they're some brilliant, creative young dudes who make great and interesting videos. 

I’m slowly working on family genealogy and I got some wonderful family photos recently. Ceri had done his article on a Welshman who was at Little Big Horn and I have an ancestor with a very tangential connection to this.  

My first (so far) Welsh ancestor in North America was James B. Morgan, Sr.  I haven’t got to see much in the way of primary source documents so far, only research other people have done, so I’ve got a ways to go to reach confident certainty on his history. 

James Morgan was born in Llandaff, which is now part of modern-day Cardiff, in 1607. In about 1635, James sailed from Bristol to Boston with his two younger brothers, John and Miles, an ancestor of J. P. Morgan.  James became a freeman in the Plymouth colony and a farmer. 

Some generations later, his many-greats granddaughter, my mother’s great grandmother, Francis Henrietta Steele was born. 

Francis Henrietta (Steele) Bubb

Francis married John Wilson Bubb, who had fought in the union army in the US Civil War and had recently returned to his home in Washington, DC, after spending the end of the war as a captive on a Confederate prison ship. 

John Wilson Bubb

John Bubb went on to become a lieutenant under General George Crook at the Battle of Slim Buttes, to lead an attack on a Lakota village and experience Crook’s Starvation March, also called ”The Horsemeat March" as the punishing 35-mile-a-day pace killed so many mules and horses and soldiers slaughtered them to survive when the few remaining supplies ran out. Bubb was sent to Deadwood to try to secure food and successfully cleaned out the town's stores for his men.

Soldier's camp in Cook's Starvation March, from "A Campaign From Hell", by Mike Coppock in True West,  https://truewestmagazine.com/a-campaign-from-hell/

He went on to serve in the Phillipines and become Brig. Gen. John Wilson Bubb. He commanded at least one fort, I’m not sure which one(s) but in the photos I’ve received are some wonderful old shots of life at Fort Sherman, Idaho, and Fort Spokane, Washington, and I’m sharing those below.

Below is a photograph of a June 1893 game of tennis on the lawn at Fort Sherman, which was on the banks of the Spokane River in what is now Coeur d'Alene, in northern Idaho. 

A group of soldiers on a porch at Fort Sherman, Gen. Bubb is seated in the center row, on the right. This photo is undated but other photos in the group had handwritten notes indicating they were from 1893 and 1894. 

Frances Bubb (standing in the back) and a group of ladies at Fort Sherman 1894

Unless otherwise noted, all these photos are from a family collection of John and Henrietta Bubb's effects.

Deann recently joined AmeriCymru as A Fairy House Studio , where she creates unique, one-of-a-kind mixed media sculptures.

AmeriCymru:  How would you describe what you do?

Deann:  I make sculptural fairy houses from selected natural, botanical materials. Some of them include jewelry or small figurines or other things in them and they all include fairy lights. Each one is completely unique. 

AmeriCymru:  How did you start making fairy houses?

Deann: I’ve been an artist of some kind for most of my life. I was a dancer, a multimedia sculptor and I just like to make things. Years ago, I had a serious heart attack and afterwards my physical activity was really limited. My doctor told me to take long walks to help heal and build up my stamina and I did that. 

On my walks, I spent a lot of time in the woods and along nearby marshes and rivers and for fun imagined fairies living in these places, just out of sight, and what would their homes be like? I started looking for material on fairies, where did they come from, etc, and found first British fairy stories and then that there were Welsh fairies. I can’t remember where I read this but I did read something that described at least some of them as what we often think of today as fairies, tiny women with wings, like Peter Pan’s Tinkerbell, and houses for them seemed to be what I wanted to make.

AmeriCymru:  Where do you get the inspiration for your houses?

Deann: I mostly get my inspiration from my materials, find an interesting branch, some interesting leaves or lichen or moss or a flower I want to dry, and those things eventually inspire the house I want to put them in.  Inspiration can also come from a piece of costume jewelry or a small figurine of some kind or as I collect things, all of a sudden they fit together and then I start working on something new. I love to make beautiful things and see people take pleasure in them, that’s what fulfills me. 

I also include a string of fairy lights with a battery pack so they can be lit in the dark and present a completely different appearance than they do during the day. Each house is completely unique and gets its own name.

The Mouse Girl's Fairy House

 
Photos: 8

AmeriCymru: They’re very beautiful , they look like they take a long time to make and aren’t particularly for children.

Deann:   No, they’re not and they’re not for placement outside. The materials on them are real - dried roses, dried mosses and ferns, dried leaves, acorns, bark and other elements, attached with adhesives but still fragile. They’re definitely a display piece you have indoors and don’t handle. People have talked about them as meditation aids, Pagans and Wiccans have used them as religious shrines, but I think for most people they’re something beautiful to enjoy  looking at, especially in the evening with their lights on.

AmeriCymru: What’s been the response to your work?

Deann: So far, everyone who’s seen them has said they’ve loved them, they get a lot of attention online. I think right now people are looking for things that give them joy, that are calming and pleasant. 

AmeriCymru: I see that you’ve got a house with a Welsh name, what’s your connection to Wales?

Deann: Mainly two things, I have some ancestors from different parts of southeast Wales. When I started making these houses I went looking to see if there were Welsh fairies, and of course there are, and found first British fairy stories and then that there were Welsh fairies. Yes, I made one house named after the Tylwth Teg and I want to do some more Welsh-themed houses as I find out more about those stories.

Trysor Gwyn Fairy House

 
Photos: 7

AmeriCymru: I hope we'll get to see more of your work and more fairy houses? 

Deann:   Thank you, yes! Right now I’m just going to keep making fairy houses. They’re the thing that’s most inspiring me. 

AmeriCymru: Any message for AmeriCymru readers?

Deann: Ha, buy my houses? Seriously, though, I hope people like looking at them and find the something that makes you happy, I suppose?  Making these and looking at them makes me happy. I hope they make other people happy.

Film and television creatives Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) and Rob McElhenney (It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia) have bought the north Wales, National League Wrexham Association Football Club, and they've done this lovely ad for team sponsor Ifor Williams Trailers, and to announce their own involvement:

Wrexham AFC, the oldest club in Wales, was founded in 1864 and became fan owned in 2011.

The Gaurdian reported that the Wrexham Supporters Trust Board voted 98% in favor of Reynolds' and McElhenney's involvement and their plan to "revive" the club. Reynolds has said that he and McElhenney want to great ambassadors for the club to introduce it to the world, to attend as many games as possible and that fans will "be fed up of us!"

If you want to support the Dragons but you don't live in Wales, they have lots of swell swag on their webstore .

Literature Wales has named award-winning Pembrokeshire novelist Eloise Williams as its first Children's Laureate. Ms Williams 

https://www.literaturewales.org/lw-news/eloise-williams-named-first-childrens-laureate-wales/

Her latest novel, Wilde , will be available May 2020, from Firefly Press . You can find out more about her and her books on her very fun-looking website at http://www.eloisewilliams.com/