St Peter Port is the biggest parish by terms of population, with 16,500 people living there.
Guernsey has its own dialect of the Norman language, called Guernésiais. It is spoken by only 2% of the population, but is understood by around 14%. This means that only 1300 people speak it, and most of these people are elderly. Only 1 in every 1000 young people can speak it.
Pottery
Pottery is the ceramic material which makes up potteryware. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is also called a "pottery" (plural "potteries"). Pottery also refers to the art or craft of a potter or the making of pottery. A dictionary definition is simply clay fired in a kiln.
Pottery objects are made from damp clay mixed with other materials. They are then fired in a special oven called a kiln at high temperatures. Firing makes the clay hard. The potter may then apply a glaze to the surface before firing the object again. The fired glaze makes the surface of the pottery shiny, decorative and water-tight.
Some potters make objects which are not useful and are really artistic objects or sculpture. Bare pottery objects without a glaze are called "bisque" or just earthenware. The finest pottery objects, made of porcelain or bone china are quite strong, yet are translucent.
Pottery originated before the Neolithic period. The earliest example we have is from eastern Europe, dating to 25,000 years ago or earlier. It is a female figurine known as the Venus of Dolní Věstonice, from a palaeolithic site in Moravia, Czech Republic. It may have been made as part of a fertility ritual. There are some similar figures from other nearby sites.
Since the invention of agriculture, and the building of cities, containers for food and drink have been found at almost all archaeological sites.
This means the area of Stoke-on-Trent in England, sometimes called the Staffordshire potteries. There were six towns, Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton, which now make up Stoke-on-Trent.
The area was the centre of the English pottery industry. The area had local supplies of clay, salt, lead and coal. Canals were used to transport the product inland. It was a large exporter of pottery for about 200 years: roughly from 1760 to about 1960. Plastic crockery after World War II and cheap ceramic production in China largely destroyed the Stoke pottery industry.
Screenwriter
A screenwriter is a person who writes the screenplay (or script) for a movie or television show - that is, a screenwriter writes the words that the actors and actresses speak.
A script conveys the dialogue of the movie, and will briefly describe visuals, although not too much, as this is left up to the director.
There are certain rules as to how to format a movie script. If these are not followed, then it is highly unlikely that it will ever be taken seriously. In order to test the effectiveness of a script, actors will do a first reading of it. If the format is not clear, then it will probably cause the actors confusion, and will make the task very difficult to complete.
Sacramento, California
Sacramento is the capital of the U.S. state of California. The governor and legislature of California are in Sacramento. About 400,000 people live in Sacramento. About 1,700,000 live in and around Sacramento.
Sacramento comes from Spanish and Portuguese for holy rite. A sacrament is a religious act that gives people "divine grace" (being liked or favored by God.)
Sacramento was started in 1848 by John Sutter. It was a very important place during the California Gold Rush. The Gold Rush was the time after gold was found in California. Many people came to California to find gold. They did this to make money. During the Gold Rush, Sacramento was where the railroad ended. It was also where the Pony Express stopped.
Sacramento is near where the American River meets the Sacramento River. This was important when Sacramento was founded. It meant that ships could bring things to Sacramento from the Pacific Ocean. Sacramento was a "railroad town". This made Sacramento a "port town". This made it a "very" important place for business.
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Scriabin (also spelt: Skryabin) (born Moscow January 6 1872; died Moscow April 27 1915) was a famous Russian composer and pianist. He wrote music for the orchestra and for the piano. His music belongs to the Late Romantic period, but his later works sound quite modern, and he was influenced by Impressionism. He had some very unusual ideas about combining all the arts into one work.
Scriabin was the only child in a family which had an aristocratic background. He was always proud of having been born on Christmas Day (6 January is Christmas Day in the Russian Orthodox church). His mother died when he was a year old and his father spent most of his time abroad working as a diplomat. He was looked after by his aunt, grandmother and great-aunt, all of whom fussed over him so that he was a very spoilt child. When he grew up he was very short and his hands could only just stretch one octave (eight notes) on the piano.
Scriabin was educated in the Moscow Cadet Corps. He learned to play the piano and became friends with the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff who was just one year younger. He won the second gold medal ever to be awarded at the Moscow Conservatoire (Rachmaninoff had won the first one). He practised a piece called "Islamey" by Balakirev but damaged his right hand doing it. He still managed to continue his career as a pianist, but he wrote a few piano pieces for the left hand only. In 1895 he toured through many countries in Europe giving concerts and composing a lot of piano music. He married in 1897. He went with his wife to Odessa where he played his Piano Concerto and then spent several months in Paris. He taught at the Moscow Conservatoire and wrote some important orchestral music. Later he left his wife and children and went to Europe for several years with another woman. She inspired a lot of his music. Scriabin continued to travel and play the piano until the end of his life. When he was in London in 1914 he had a boil on his lip, which got steadily worse until he died a year later.
Scriabin liked the music of Chopin and he wrote a lot of short pieces called Preludes which show Chopin’s influence. As he got older his music became more and more personal. He was very egocentric (thought only about himself and not about other people) and he had some strange ideas. He wanted to write a work which combined all the arts and all the senses: music, dance, poetry, colours and even smells. He wanted this work to be performed beside a lake in India. This work was never finished or performed, and we do not know whether he seriously thought it would happen, but he did buy himself a sun helmet.
Scriabin tried using different harmonies in his music. He had a favourite chord which he called his “mystic chord” (from the bottom upwards: C, F sharp, B flat, E, A, D). He used it in lots of ways. His orchestral works include a Piano Concerto, 3 symphonies, "Le poème de l’extase" ("The poem of extasy") and "Prométhée, le poème du feu" ("Prometheus, the poem of fire"). His music which is mysterious and dream-like and shares some similarity French Impressionist composers like Debussy.
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe (21 February 1924 – 6 September 2019) was a Zimbabwean politician. He was the President of Zimbabwe from 1987 to 2017. Before that, he was Prime Minister, the head of government, after being elected in 1980. For many years before he resigned, Mugabe ruled his country in the style of a dictator.