#apparently based on a Dutch version (called serious request)

[linguenuvolose]

If you want to listen to music and some Swedish this week is Musikhjälpen in Sweden. It's a huge yearly livestream program on radio and svtplay (linked above) aiming to collect money for different causes (this year it's against child labour). This is done by people requesting songs by sending money as well as digital collection boxes (bössor) being set up by (famous) people/organizations/schools etc where people can donate money, either to compete to "win" something, or to symbolically support the person/org/etc. (who don't get any money themselves, all the money goes to the charity of the year). Here you can read more about it on Wikipedia.

[kimonobeat]

aiko bon “Profile Interview” Chapter 6 (3/3)

ーWhat songs did you contribute to the CD, aiko?

aiko: 3 songs: “Ano Ko e (For Her)”, “more&more”, and “AB-Gata no Futari (Us Two Type AB People)”. “Ano Ko e” ended up being one of the B-sides to “Rosie” later on. “more&more” is also a B-side on “Sakura no Toki”, but I sang it with a completely different sort of bossa nova vibe. Then there’s “AB-Gata no Futari”, which I haven’t included on anything yet. The key of that song is super duper high for me to sing, now. “Once a week I call him out of love~ Even though I’ve never said the words ‘I like you’ out loud~ I call him~” I used falsetto to sing that entire part.

ーYou were just fine singing in that key at the time, though?

aiko: No, it was still pretty high for me even then. (smiles wryly) But singing songs in a high key gave me so much status back then. All I did was write songs in super high keys because it made me so happy to hear people go, “Wow, that’s so high! Amazing!” For example, “Aitsu wo Mukaseru Houhou” starts off with me singing on the CD, but the old version actually started with me libbing some high notesーyou know, “Yeah yeah yeah~”, that sort of thing. It was super high-pitched. I tried to sing it again for real and was like, “Huh!?” (laughs) “AB-Gata no Futari” has this nice jazzy sound to it. It’s a song about how these two people whose blood types are both AB fall in love. It only takes them 3 hours to fall in love, but half a year to express their feelings to each other. I’d love to sing this song again.

ーHow did you arrange those 3 songs? Did you form a band for it?

aiko: They were all really simple, I sang accompanied only by a piano. Like, one of my friends from music school played the piano for me, and I sang.

ーAnd then after that was your very first indies release, “astral box”, which was your first solo work.

aiko: Yes, that’s right. We recorded it in this studio in Machida named Dutch Mama. It was called Dutch Mama because it was in Machida. Get it? Dutch Mama, Machida, Dutch Mama… I-I’m sorry, that was rude. (laughs) That mini-album had 5 songs on it, including “DO YOU THINK ABOUT ME?”, “Hikari no Sasu Ashimoto (Where the Light Hits Your Feet)”, and “HOW TO LOVE”, all of which have yet to make it onto any of my major label CDs. I’ve released the other two, “Power of Love” and “Kiss de Okoshite (Wake Me with a Kiss)”. The director, Mr. Chiba, said I absolutely just had to release “DO YOU THINK ABOUT ME?” right this moment. That said, he’s said that about a lot of songs by now. It’s like, “So Chiba, when is ‘this moment’ exactly?” (laughs)

ーBut since you were writing songs constantly after your talent agency president told you to, I’m guessing it wasn’t that much of a struggle to come up with songs when he asked you to make an album?

aiko: Uhhh, I think I had about 15 at that point. I was painfully slow at writing songs back then compared to the pace I go at now, so I think that was about how many I had in stock. Of those, we chose a few and then Shimayan (Shimada Masanori) recorded the arrangement digitally on a keyboard. I think I might’ve been a little bit nasty to him when I first met him. I mean, that was pretty much the first time I ever had anyone arrange my songs, and it really surprised me when he added all of these different sounds to songs I’d based around a piano. When he asked me what I thought about the arrangement, I didn’t give him very many positive replies. “How come this sounds Chinese?” I’d say. “I don’t get what that sound’s for there.” At the time, I pretty much hated everything about it.

ーWasn’t that the height of MIDI music, though?

aiko: Yeah, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the way it sounds. I was also sick and tired of it because everything under the sun had a MIDI arrangement back then, so I was like, “Wait, MY songs are all gonna have a MIDI arrangement too!?” I had a pretty strong reaction to it. But even though I thought I hated all things MIDI, when we worked on my 2nd indies release there were other times when I thought, “Wow, I had no idea it could sound like that… Cool!” My hate for MIDI arrangements totally vanished right then and there. I still feel like I caused Shimayan a lot of trouble because I just couldn’t accept it the first time. (laughs)

ーDid recording the vocals go smoothly?

aiko: I sang them all so seriously. We recorded 3 songs a day, or something like that. Now that I think about it, it’s pretty incredible that we were able to record so many! We went at a pace of 3 songs a day, choruses and all. I sang the same song over and over and OVER again because I didn’t know I didn’t have to, like, sing the song all the way through. I was so serious about all of themー”I sang a lot today and got it recorded.” (laughs) When I listen to it now, I can’t help but be bothered by the fact that I can hear the pitch wobble here and there, and that I’m not keeping the rhythm well. I’m able to keep a rhythm and sing on pitch now, but not I wonder if I’d be able to sing so animatedly now. It’s so complicated. I feel like I’m asking for too much, you know?

ーSo how was recording as a whole?

aiko: It was fun, but definitely exhausting. You see, I was commuting from Osaka. I still had my radio jobs in Osaka so I came and went in-between. Seeing a CD come together bit by bit made me so happy, though. You know how you get a sample of the cover and such before the CD is complete? I  remember putting it in a color CD case. I put the back cover in the case and was like, “Wow, so that’s what it’s gonna look like!” That made me so happy. We did talk about that cover looking like it had blood all over it though. (smiles wryly) I also didn’t know anything about the ‘eye’ in ‘eye make-up’ at the time, so my eyebrows were bushy, I’d never worn mascara before, and I absolutely hated curling my eyelashes with an eyelash curler. ...Man am I being super harsh. (laughs)

ーYou the followed that up by releasing your 1st indies single “Hachimitsu (Honey)” roughly 5 months later, and then your 2nd indies mini-album “GIRLIE”.

aiko: Right. It all happened so fast after I released “astral box”. And I was really exhausted because I was still commuting from Osaka to Tokyo like always. Of the 5 songs on “GIRLIE”, I’ve released “Ijiwaru na Tenshi yo Sekai wo Warae! (Mean Angel, Laugh at the World!)” and “Rosie” after signing to a major label, as well as “Hachimitsu”. I still haven’t released the 2 songs “Inu ni Naru (I’ll Be a Dog)” and “Sasenaide (Don’t Make Me)” since going major, though. But man oh man, the cover for “GIRLIE”... just yikes. (laughs)

ーI don’t think it’s that bad.

aiko: I haaate it. For real, I do. It’s almost kinda funnyーlike, who is that even? My face is so chubby. (laughs) I made the pants I’m wearing in that picture myself; I cut my hair all by myself too. A friend came over to my house and gave me that bushy perm. We didn’t even use rods to curl my hair, we used pencils. That picture is just SO embarrassing…

ーDid you get the offer to debut under a major label with the movie theme song “Ashita (Tomorrow)” around the time you were working on “GIRLIE”?

aiko: I think so. We talked about it sometime in April, and then I debuted in July. I thought I would just be participating as the vocalist at first, though. I was really shocked to find out that I’d be releasing as a CD under the name ‘aiko’. For real, I was like, “...Wait, what!?” It wasn’t my songーwell, I wrote the lyrics myself, but they had a lot of requests. They said things like, “Kids are going to be listening to this” and “Don’t use difficult words, please”, which I whined about. That was the first time I’d ever listened to a composition and written lyrics for it too, since I tend to write songs starting with the lyrics first. Because of all that, I wasn’t really sure how to feel about it. In the end, I sort of just did it because the president of my talent agency said I didn’t have anything to lose by doing it. I didn’t care much  either way. To be really honest, I didn’t have a clue. I honestly had no clue whether to OK it or not…

ーSounds like you were having a hard time making a decision. It wasn’t even a song you’d composed.

aiko: Yeah, exactly. And when I went to record it, there were people chit-chatting in English to each other, talking about the equipment, and I didn’t get their Tokyo sense of humor at all. It felt like I was in a foreign country. I slept in the corner of the studio with a knitted hat pulled all the way down past my nose. (laughs) They were very painstakingly detailed about choosing which take to use for like, the chorus, so I had to sing the same parts multiple times. It left me so beat that I almost had to hold onto the music stand to stand. Part of it was because I wasn’t used to being in the studio yet, I think, but that was also a pretty demanding recording.

ーBe honest, how did you feel when “Ashita” was released?

aiko: It didn’t really sink in. It didn’t feel like I’d ‘debuted’ at all. It didn’t even feel like it was ‘my’ song. I thought it was just going to be a one-shot thing. A little after I’d made my debut, people at [Pony] Canyon were telling me all the time that they honestly didn’t know who I was. (laughs) I was still living in Osaka, and the only information they had on me was this tiny A4-size flyer. Apparently they weren’t aware I existed even after I’d debuted. The Canyon people in Tokyo of all places were saying, “aiko? What’s that? Oh, she’s debuted? Who is she?”, which meant the locals definitely didn’t know who I was. We did a campaign to help with that, but even then we only went to Okayama and Matsuyama. I went with someone from Canyon since it didn’t cost me anything, did our campaign, ate some food. And then on the way home that person said, “I need to go to another campaign event. You think you can make it home on your own?” I said yes and took a plane home by myself. (laughs)

ーThat sounds like a pretty sad story.

aiko: But then FM OSAKA worked really hard and put “Ashita” on power rotation. There was also this guy over at FM Toyama named Kawakado. He was close to someone named Komorita who promoted my song a lot, so it was played heavily there too. It sold some copies thanks to those 2 stations. It sold maybe 20k or 30k copies in Osaka and Toyama, which got the Canyon people in Tokyo to go, “Hm? What’s this all about? Who’s this aiko girl?” And then it wasn’t a one-shot thing anymore. We started talking about signing a contract. I really feel like FM OSAKA and FM Toyama putting the song on power rotation was huge for me. FM OSAKA in particular really supported me.

ーWere you still the DJ for “Count Down Kansai Top 40” at FM OSAKA when you debuted?

aiko: I was. I even said “I made my debut!” while I was on air. (laughs) The time frame was changed to Saturdays late at night from 2 AM until 5 AMーa promotion! (laughs) The show had to be put on hold every now and then to check the broadcast equipment, but since I was generating some numbers, they decided to give me a live broadcast from 2 to 5 AM on Saturdays. I started getting more and more faxes and emails.

ーSince you’d just debuted at the time, right?

aiko: Right. The radio station was really supportive. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the radio station. That’s how much they all supported me. It felt like I had a bunch of moms and dadsーit still feels that way.

ーIt still feels like you have so many people supporting you, from the radio, to your fans, and all the various members of the staff, you mean?

aiko: Mm-hm. So many people have shown me so much support.　I’m able to continue releasing CDs by… by selling a few copies here and there. I see that now.

Read more: Previous « Index » Next

[holidays-events]

The History of Christmas Traditions

The history of Christmas traditions kept evolving throughout the 19th century, when most of the familiar components of the modern Christmas including St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, and Christmas trees, became popular. The changes in how Christmas was celebrated were so profound that it's safe to say someone alive in 1800 would not even recognize the Christmas celebrations held in 1900.

Christmas Traditions: Key Takeaways

Our most common Christmas traditions developed during the 1800s:

The character of Santa Claus was largely a creation of author Washington Irving and cartoonist Thomas Nast.

Christmas trees were popularized by Queen Victoria and her German husband, Prince Albert.

Author Charles Dickens helped establish a tradition of generosity at Christmas.

 Washington Irving and St. Nicholas  

Early Dutch settlers of New York considered St. Nicholas to be their patron saint and practiced a yearly ritual of hanging stockings to receive presents on St. Nicholas Eve, in early December. Washington Irving, in his fanciful History of New York, mentioned that St. Nicholas had a wagon he could ride “over the tops of trees” when he brought “his yearly presents to children.”

The Dutch word “Sinterklaas” for St. Nicholas evolved into the English “Santa Claus,” thanks in part to a New York City printer, William Gilley, who published an anonymous poem referring to “Santeclaus” in a children’s book in 1821. The poem was also the first mention of a character based on St. Nicholas having a sleigh, in this case, pulled by a single reindeer.

 Clement Clarke Moore and The Night Before Christmas  

Perhaps the best-known poem in the English language is “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” or as it’s often called, “The Night Before Christmas.” Its author, Clement Clarke Moore, a professor who owned an estate on the west side of Manhattan, would have been quite familiar with the St. Nicholas traditions followed in early 19th century New York. The poem was first published, anonymously, in a newspaper in Troy, New York, on December 23, 1823.

Reading the poem today, one might assume that Moore simply portrayed the common traditions. Yet he actually did something quite radical by changing some of the traditions while also describing features that were entirely new.

For instance, the St. Nicholas gift giving would have taken place on December 5, the eve of St. Nicholas Day. Moore moved the events he describes to Christmas Eve. He also came up with the concept of “St. Nick” having eight reindeer, each of them with a distinctive name.

 Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol  

The other great work of Christmas literature from the 19th century is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. In writing the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, Dickens wanted to comment on greed in Victorian Britain. He also made Christmas a more prominent holiday and permanently associated himself with Christmas celebrations.

Dickens was inspired to write his classic story after speaking to working people in the industrial city of Manchester, England, in early October 1843. He wrote A Christmas Carol quickly, and when it appeared in bookstores the week before Christmas 1843 it began to sell very well.

The book crossed the Atlantic and began to sell in America in time for Christmas 1844, and became extremely popular. When Dickens made his second trip to America in 1867 crowds clamored to hear him read from A Christmas Carol. His tale of Scrooge and the true meaning of Christmas had become an American favorite. The story has never been out of print, and Scrooge is one of the best-known characters in literature.

 Santa Claus Drawn by Thomas Nast  

The famed American cartoonist Thomas Nast is generally credited as having invented the modern depiction of Santa Claus. Nast, who had worked as a magazine illustrator and created campaign posters for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, was hired by Harper’s Weekly in 1862. For the Christmas season, he was assigned to draw the magazine’s cover, and legend has it that Lincoln himself requested a depiction of Santa Claus visiting Union troops.

The resulting cover, from Harper’s Weekly dated January 3, 1863, was a hit. It shows Santa Claus on his sleigh, which has arrived at a U.S. Army camp festooned with a “Welcome Santa Claus” sign.

Santa’s suit features the stars and stripes of the American flag, and he’s distributing Christmas packages to the soldiers. One soldier is holding up a new pair of socks, which might be a boring present today, but would have been a highly prized item in the Army of the Potomac.

Beneath Nast's illustration was the caption, “Santa Claus In Camp.” Appearing not long after the carnage at Antietam and Fredericksburg, the magazine cover is an apparent attempt to boost morale in a dark time.

The Santa Claus illustrations proved so popular that Thomas Nast kept drawing them every year for decades. He is also credited with creating the notion that Santa lived at the North Pole and kept a workshop manned by elves. The figure of Santa Claus endured, with the version drawn by Nast becoming the accepted standard version of the character. By the early 20th century the Nast-inspired version of Santa became a very common figure in advertising.

 Prince Albert and Queen Victoria Made Christmas Trees Fashionable  

The tradition of the Christmas tree came from Germany, and there are accounts of early 19th century Christmas trees in America, but the custom wasn’t widespread outside German communities.

The Christmas tree first gained popularity in British and American society thanks to the husband of Queen Victoria, the German-born Prince Albert. He installed a decorated Christmas tree at Windsor Castle in 1841, and woodcut illustrations of the Royal Family’s tree appeared in London magazines in 1848. Those illustrations, published in America a year later, created the fashionable impression of the Christmas tree in upper-class homes.

By the late 1850s reports of Christmas trees were appearing in American newspapers. And in the years following the Civil War ordinary American households celebrated the season by decorating a Christmas tree.

The first electric Christmas tree lights appeared in the 1880s, thanks to an associate of Thomas Edison, but were too costly for most households. Most people in the 1800s lit their Christmas trees with small candles.

 The First White House Christmas Tree  

The first Christmas tree in the White House was displayed in 1889, during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison. The Harrison family, including his young grandchildren, decorated the tree with toy soldiers and glass ornaments for their small family gathering.

There are some reports of president Franklin Pierce displaying a Christmas tree in the early 1850s. But the stories of a Pierce tree are vague and there doesn't seem to be contemporaneous mentions in newspapers of the time.

Benjamin Harrison's Christmas cheer was closely documented in newspaper accounts. An article on the front page of the New York Times on Christmas Day 1889 detailed the lavish presents he was going to give his grandchildren. And though Harrison was generally regarded as a fairly serious person, he vigorously embraced the Christmas spirit.

Not all subsequent presidents continued the tradition of having a Christmas tree in the White House. By the middle of the 20th century, White House Christmas trees became established. And over the years it has evolved into an elaborate and very public production.

The first National Christmas Tree was placed on The Ellipse, an area just south of the White House, in 1923, and the lighting of it was presided over by President Calvin Coolidge. The lighting of the National Christmas Tree has become quite a large annual event, typically presided over by the current president and members of the First Family.

 Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus  

In 1897 an eight-year-old girl in New York City wrote to a newspaper, the New York Sun, asking if her friends, who doubted the existence of Santa Claus, were right. An editor at the newspaper, Francis Pharcellus Church, responded by publishing, on September 21, 1897, an unsigned editorial. The response to the little girl has become the most famous newspaper editorial ever printed.

The second paragraph is often quoted:

"Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS."

Church’s eloquent editorial asserting the existence of Santa Claus seemed a fitting conclusion to a century that began with modest observances of St. Nicholas and ended with the foundations of the modern Christmas season firmly intact.

By the end of the 19th century, the essential components of a modern Christmas, from Santa to the story of Scrooge to strings of electric lights were firmly established in America.

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-history-of-christmas-traditions-1773799

[pearljewelryset]

( Edahngolan.com ) - In a sense, there were no surprises during the week in which De Beers' March site was held, and this in itself should be a surprise. De Beers offered a large supply of rough for its customers - at slightly higher prices - and the market simply could not digest it. Why did the diamond miner offer so many products to the overloaded market? Why were the prices high, even though the prices for diamonds are declining? It's some kind of nonsense.

Stuck in a "loop" worth half a billion dollars

The March site is estimated at $ 730- $ 750 million excluding return and "special" products (very expensive raw materials, from which exclusive diamonds are obtained). Taking into account "special" products, the site is estimated at $ 800 million more. By all accounts, sightholders have refused more than 30% of the goods for the amount of approximately $ 250 million. I call this "commodity", but we could actually call it "assets".

In short, the reason for this large-scale failure is that prices were too high to make the product economically unprofitable, and failures were noted for all product categories - from the cheapest boxes with substandard raw materials to boxes with high-quality large stones. The conclusion is that traders have the financial means to buy what they need, and the refusals were simply due to high prices.

Many of the rough diamonds offered on the March website were first offered to sightholders in January, and sightholders decided to postpone their delivery. In February, the delivery of stones was postponed to March. The deferrals were explained by economic arguments - the rough diamonds offered by De Beers in January and February were expensive, and there was no need for it, and sightholders hoped that in a month or two the demand for polished diamonds would improve. That did not happen.

So, on a large March site, all the products postponed in recent months were collected, in addition to the usual delivery in March. The March website was the last in the contract period, so it was necessary either to buy diamonds, or to abandon them.

Since this was the last site of the contract period, these failures have potentially far-reaching consequences for many sightholders. Some supplies for them in the next period will be based on their purchases during the March site. In these cases, their refusals mean that they will no longer be able to get those boxes with diamonds, from which they refused. For these sightholders, the loss of stable supply proved to be preferable to the currently experienced monetary bleeding. See https://weddingpearlneecklace.tumblr.com/

So who ultimately suffered? De Beers suffered. Consider the following table - these are estimates of sites in the first quarter of this year. The figures are rounded off and given in millions of US dollars.

The sightholders refused a quarter of the volume of diamonds offered to them by De Beers, that is, from the diamonds that they were obliged to buy under the contract. This is an asset worth half a billion dollars, which no one wanted to buy. In the diamond industry, such a commodity stock is called the Dutch word "strop" or "loop". Conclusion make yourself.

Mining is an expensive occupation. This is a production that requires a lot of money, and a mining company that can not count on a very quick sale of the raw materials it produces will face a serious cash flow problem. De Beers has the advantage over companies engaged in gold or copper mining that diamonds suffer less from price fluctuations. All that De Beers needed to be done, according to many sightholders, is to pay attention to the omens. Hence the many jokes circulating in the market in recent days: some about the ability to smell the revolution, others about the ability to avoid train crashes. All of them are about survival.

Nevertheless, this is no laughing matter. De Beers is the best performing company in the parent company of Anglo American. Last year, the value of Anglo's shares fell by about 30%, and over the past five years - by more than 60%. It is clear that the pressure on De Beers in terms of maintaining high prices comes from Anglo. With an asset of half a billion dollars, dusting in a safe, continuing spending money on production and dropping incomes by 26%, insisting on high prices may not have been the right policy.

Maximize profits and lose

Following the policy of maximizing profits, De Beers does nothing exceptionally unusual. This is a valid policy that prevailed after Anglo bought De Beers from the Oppenheimer family and Anglo needed to raise the value of its shares. There was a change in policy, and sightholders were all waiting for the old De Beers - the one that was engaged in type marketing; The one that could not be said "no", because it was unprofitable; The one who wanted everyone to make money.

Ta De Beers left, and sightholders found that it was necessary to adapt. The latest round of failures proves that sightholders have adapted to De Beers' new policy and adopted its key element - to maximize profits - even if it means saying "no" to De Beers. According to one experienced sightholder, his colleagues learned new rules of the game, but he is saddened by the fact that modern thinking has a short-term perspective and, perhaps, short-sighted.

Current prices for diamonds and diamonds

De Beers, apparently, made some decisions to mitigate the situation. For example, it seems that many boxes were not offered at all. In addition, the site had several requests for extra-raw materials. According to one version, the requested boxes included diamonds returned by other sightholders; However, De Beers did not fulfill these requests for extra-scheduled supplies and left the production itself.

That's not all. Among the sightholders who have opened border enterprises in Botswana, there are a number of the largest and most financially wealthy diamond firms in the industry. One by one they close these factories. They were able to support these enterprises even with relatively high labor costs. But with falling prices for diamonds and rising prices for rough diamonds, they can no longer contain these enterprises.

Consider the following chart, reflecting raw material prices and diamond prices last year (ten cycles). In October, prices for raw materials increased, while diamond prices fell and destroyed the small profits that still remained with diamond producers.