Shakefest 2012
May 26-27th, 2012 * Charleville Castle * Tullamore * Ireland * Shakefest.net *

This year will be Shakefest’s “7th” Annual Dance and multi-cultural festival held at the historic epic Charleville Castle. The festival grounds is starting to bustle with activity as preparations are in the flow to welcome local and international community, visitors, friends, and family to celebrate culture. Since 2006, Shakefest has been bringing together an eclectic mix of Middle Eastern, Cultural Dance, and Artistic Workshops ending with a multi-cultural evening of dance performances. This year, Shakefest is expanding into more folklore, diversity, performance art, crafts, and themes for all ages, sexes, and cultures. This year features numerous workshops, classes, performances, and activities such as a “Faerie Glen” to get lost in, A “Madhatter’s Tea Party”, A bouncy Pirate Ship, Indian Cuisine, Performances by Tullamore’s “The Red Embers”, Galway Bellydance, Appolonia Tribal Bellydance, Sheeoneh, Nicole Volmering, and Aoife Hardiman.

Joana Saahirah ~ photo courtesy of Shakefest

This year’s International Guest Instructor is Oriental Dancer Joana Saahirah of Cairo, Egypt providing authentic education on Egyptian History and Folklore as well as Oriental Dance instruction in Classical, Saiidi and Alexandria of Mellaya styles. Declan Kiely will host a special workshop on how to “Dance like Michael Jackson”. Hip Hop, Jazz, Poi & Ribbon Dancing, Bachata and Argentinian Tango classes are also offered. There will also be African dance, poetry, open-mic sessions, a kid’s gigantic Dragonfly and butterfly hunt, punch and judy, juggling & stiltwalking by Stagecraft Ireland, Drum Circles, and a magic show. This year will also be breaking ground on a live history section with the KHI Medieval Re-enactors treating audiences to combat simulations of the Crusader’s Knight’s Templar with medieval tents, a full try-on armoury and archery for all ages.

KHI Medieval Re-enactors ~ photo courtesy of Shakefest

Featured musical performances by 40′s Swinging The Bugle Babes, Our Annual Multi-cultural Hafla, daring fire show by The Red Embers & Babylon’s Inferno, The North Strand Kontra Band from North Dublin. Dazzling Romanian and Bulgarian instrumental band is expected to finish off the fest with explosive energy and lively dance accompanied by original and traditional tunes from clarinet, saxophone, trombone, keys, banjo, double bass, and drums. If you’re travelling through Ireland this weekend or live in the magical isles, this event is not to be missed. Gates open at Noon on Saturday the 26th with admission only €10 general entry, €10 camping, €20 family day pass or only €15 for evening entertainment.  All proceeds will be going towards Charleville Castle Restoration Fund – Operation ‘Raise The Roof’ project in which money will be raised towards putting a protective roof on the castle chapel. We’ll be covering this event, so come back here for photos, review, and the stories we weave from the experience …

North Strand Kontra Band ~ photo courtesy of Shakefest

The Goddess Arduinna
Arduina, Arduinnae, Arduinne, Ardbinna.

Culture: Gallo-Roman, Gaulish, Celtic Mythology. Belgium; Luxembourg; France; Düren, Germany.

Similiar to: Gallo-Roman Goddess Diana.

Deity of: “Lady of the Forests”. Goddess of the Heights, Moon, Forests, and Hunting.

Sacred Animals, Plants, Stones, Etc.: The Boar.

Description:

Her name is derived from the Gaulish “arduo” meaning “height”. Several place names are named after her. Especially the Ardennes Woods (Arduenna silva), the Forest of Arden (England), and the personal names of “Arduunus” and “Arda”. Eponymous Goddess of the Ardennes Forest and region, represented as a huntress riding a boar especially in the present-day regions of Belgium, Luxembourg, and France – in the Ardennes region. The Goddess Arduinna considers wild boars sacred. There is a asteroid and a plant species named after her. The most popular reference of her comes from a Roman inscription in Rome, Ialy where she is invoked along with Camulus, Jupiter, Mercury, and Hercules. There is a bronze Gallo-Roman statue of a woman bearing a short belted tunic, riding a boar side saddle, and holding a knife assumed to be Arduinna by the 19th century antiquarian who discovered it as the modern symbol of the Ardennes region is a boar. She is known of first by two inscriptions – the Düren, Germany deae Ardbinnae (CIL XIII, 07848) and the Rome, Italy Arduinne (CIL VI, 00046). Her name derivatives are found on coinage of the Treveri and the Galatian Αρδή. It was in 565 C.E. hat Saint Walfroy (Wulfilaïc) preached to his local parish and community in Villers-devant-Orval forbidding them to worship Arduinna any longer.

Bibliography/Recommended Reading:


• Celt.net. “Arduinna”. Website referenced May 2012. http://www.celtnet.org.uk/gods_a/arduinna.html.
  
  
• Delamarre, Xavier; Lambert, P.Y. 2003 “Dictionaire de la Langue Gauloise (Dictionary of the Gaulish Language)” Paris.
  
  
• Green, Miranda 1986 “The Gods of the Celts”. Stroud: Sutton Publishing.
  
  
• Gysseling, M. 1970 “De Vroegste geschiedenis van het Nederlands: een taalkundige benadering in Naamkunde 2″
  
  
• Pantheon.org. “Arduinna”. Website referenced May 2012. http://www.pantheon.org/articles/a/arduinna.html.
  
  
• Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. “Arduinna”. Website referenced May 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduinna.
  
  

Articles can be purchased for use in magazines, print, or for reproduction on web sites. Photos are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without permission of authors Tom Baurley or Leaf McGowan. Photos can be purchased via Technogypsie.com at Technogypsie Photography Services for nominal use fees. Restaurants, Businesses, Bands, Performances, Venues, and Reviews can request a re-review if they do not like the current review or would like to have a another review done. If you are a business, performer, musician, band, venue, or entity that would like to be reviewed, you can also request one (however, travel costs, cost of service (i.e. meal or event ticket) and lodging may be required if area is out of reviewer’s base location at time of request).

Edible Exhibit: The Taste of Things To Come


* The Naughton Institute / Science Center *
* Trinity College * Pearse Street * Dublin 2 Ireland *
* http://www.dublinscience2012.ie/2012/02/edible/ * February 10 – April 5, 2012 *

Fermentation

One of the most brilliant natural processes, fermentation is the heart of indulgence, addiction, altered states, cooking, and chemistry. The word comes from the latin “fervere” meaning “to boil” and thought to have come from the science of alchemy in the late 14th century, though not used in modern science until the 1600′s. In food production, it is the conversion of carbohydrates into alcohols, carbon dioxide, and organic acids utilizing yeasts and/or bacteria under anaerobic conditions which is simply put “converting sugar into ethanol”. The process is so brilliant, there is a science totally dedicated to it called zymurgy or zymology. Converting sugars and carbohydrates led to transforming juice into wine, grain into beer, vegetable sugars into preservative organic acids, and carbohydrates into CO2 to leaven bread. In the liquor cabinet, it is used to create cider, mead, grappa, sake, beer, and wine. In the food cabinet, it is utilized for the leavening of bread, creating vinegar, yogurt, sauerkraut, pickling, kimchi, and preservation of some meats. Some popular fermented by-products are alcohol; amazake; asinan; atchara; bai-ming; belacan; burong mangga; bread; cheese; chiraki; com ruou; cultured milk; chicha; dalok; doenjang; douchi; elderberry wine; fermented millet porridge; garri; hibiscus seed; hot pepper sauce; injera; jeruk; lambanog; kefir; kimchi; kombucha; kumis (mare milk); leppet-so; miang; miso; nata de coco; nata de pina; nato; lupin seed; oilseed; chocolate; vanilla; naw-mai-dong; narezushi; Nattō (Japanese soybean food); oncom; pak-siam-dong; paw-tsaynob; prahok; pickling; ruou nep; sake; sauerkraut; seokbakji; shubat (camel milk); soju; sourdough bread; soy sauce; stinky tofu; tabasco; pulque; szechwan cabbage; tai-tan tsoi; tape; tempeh; totkal kimchi; wine; yogurt; yen tsai; zha caivinegar; salami; prosciuto; quark; poi; sago; and many others.

It is an ancient technology, preceding human history, as it naturally occurs in nature. One of the earliest recorded uses of it by humans was found in the Zagros Mountains of Iran, where 7,000 year old jars were found containing “wine”. Archaeological finds of Beer fermented in Ancient Egypt as early as 3,150 BCE and Babylon in 3,000 BCE. The first recorded evidence of the living nature of yeast comes from three publications appearing between 1837-1838 where Cagniard de la Tour, T. Swann, and F. Kuetzing concluded it was a result of microscopic investigations that yeast was a living organism that reproduced by budding. In the 1870′s it was a common term especially in connection with baceria and largely connected with studies of diseases and germs. The world’s first zymologist, was the chemist “Louis Pasteur” who made the connection that yeast was involved in fermentation and labelled the process as “respiration without air”. He theorized that the fermentation of sugar to alcohol by yeast was catalyzed by a vita force called “ferments” that existed within the yeast cells. He originally believed them to funcion only within living organisms and hypothesized that “alcoholic fermentation” was an act correlated with the life and organization of the yeast cells, not with the death or putrefaction of the cells. The truth however, yeast extracts can ferment sugar even in the absence of living yeast cells. This was proved in 1897 by Eduard Buchner who found hat sugar was fermented even when there was no living yeast cells in the mix by a yeast secretion called “zymase”. His theory led him to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research and discovery of “cell-free fermentation” in 1907 as well as the discovery of NAD+. The benefits of this process is 5-fold, in that it (1) enriches the diet with a variety of flavors, textures, and aromas in food substrates; (2) preserves large quantities of food through alcohol, lactic acid, acetic acid, and alkaline fermentations; (3) biologically enriches food substrates with essential amino acids, protein, fatty acids, and vitamins; (4) Eliminates anti-nutrients; and (5) Decreases fuel requirements and cooking times in food preparation.

It has however been involved in cases of botulism, especially in Alaska which is caused by a process of fermentation used by the Eskimo allowing animal products such as walrus, sea lion, whale flippers, beaver tales, whole fish, fish heads, seal oil, and birds to ferment for an extended period of time before eating them. In the modern era, this is intensified by the use of plastic containers in the process instead of the tradition grass-lined holes as the botulinum bacteria thrives in the anaerobic conditions created by air-tight enclosures such as plastics.

Fermentation is also used popularly in bio-chemistry, creation of fuels, industry, bio-chemicals, and chemistry. It can be used to create more exotic compounds such as butyric acid and acetone. It naturally occurs in mammalian muscle structures during periods of intense exercise when oxygen supply is limited and thereby creates lactic acid. The Chemical Formula for Ethanol is C2H5OH (C6H12O6 → 2 C2H5OH + 2 CO2). Hydrogen Gas is also produced in many forms of fermentation, especially mixed acid, butyric acid, caproate, butanol, and glyoxylate fermentations which regenerates NAD+ from NADH.

Bibliography/Recommended Reading:


• Berg, Linda R. 2007 “Introductory Botany: Plants, People, and the Environment.
  
  
• Dickinson, J.R. 1999 “Carbon metabolism”. Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis.
  
  
• Klein, Donald W.; Lansing, M.; Harley, John. 2006 “Microbiology”. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  
  
• Soyinfocenter.com. “A brief history of fermentation, East and West”. Website referenced May 2012.
  
  
• Technogypsie.com “The Spirituality of Alcohol”. Website referenced May 2012. http://www.technogypsie.com/reviews/?p=1080.
  
  
• Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. “Fermentation”. Website referenced May 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermentation_(food)

Edible Exhibit: The Taste of Things To Come


* The Naughton Institute / Science Center *
* Trinity College * Pearse Street * Dublin 2 Ireland *
* http://www.dublinscience2012.ie/2012/02/edible/ * February 10 – April 5, 2012 *

Edible Exhibit: The Taste of Things To Come


* The Naughton Institute / Science Center *
* Trinity College * Pearse Street * Dublin 2 Ireland *
* http://www.dublinscience2012.ie/2012/02/edible/ * February 10 – April 5, 2012 *

Photos are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without permission of authors Tom Baurley or Leaf McGowan. Photos can be purchased via Technogypsie.com at Technogypsie Photography Services for nominal use fees. Articles and Research papers are done at the Author’s expense. If you donate below, you’ll help contribute to the costs of the research that provided this article. Any Reviews can request a re-review if they do not like the current review or would like to have a another review done. If you are a business, performer, musician, band, venue, or entity that would like to be reviewed, you can also request one (however, travel costs, cost of service (i.e. meal or event ticket) and lodging may be required if area is out of reviewer’s base location at time of request).

Current Mood:  impressed

Photos are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without permission of authors Tom Baurley or Leaf McGowan. Photos can be purchased via Technogypsie.com at Technogypsie Photography Services for nominal use fees. Restaurants, Businesses, Bands, Performances, Venues, and Reviews can request a re-review if they do not like the current review or would like to have a another review done. If you are a business, performer, musician, band, venue, or entity that would like to be reviewed, you can also request one (however, travel costs, cost of service (i.e. meal or event ticket) and lodging may be required if area is out of reviewer’s base location at time of request).

Current Mood:  bouncy

Photos are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without permission of authors Tom Baurley or Leaf McGowan. Photos can be purchased via Technogypsie.com at Technogypsie Photography Services for nominal use fees. Restaurants, Businesses, Bands, Performances, Venues, and Reviews can request a re-review if they do not like the current review or would like to have a another review done. If you are a business, performer, musician, band, venue, or entity that would like to be reviewed, you can also request one (however, travel costs, cost of service (i.e. meal or event ticket) and lodging may be required if area is out of reviewer’s base location at time of request).

Current Mood:  groggy

Cabin in the Woods ~ (Rated R: 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259521/ * Director: Drew Goddard. * Written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard. * Starring: Kristen Connolly as Dana; Chris Hemsworth as Curt; Anna Hutchison as Jules; Fran Kranz as Marty; Jesse Williams as Holden; Richard Jenkins as Sitterson; Bradley Whitford as Hadley; Brian White as Truman and many others.

Within the last several years Hollywood and the film industry has been evolving and expanding the classical monster tale, as we watched through the ages meandering from Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Werewolf, and Count Dracula towards a whole different species of Werewolves, vampires, and zombies. Then came the serial killers obsessed with pain, torture, maiming, and realistic grotesque murder sprees self styled after Ted Bundy, Fred West, or Jeffrey Dalmer only to exaggerate to supernatural tales of Halloween, Friday the 13th, and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now a new sense of horror, going back to supernatural beliefs on Witches, Druids, Spirits, and creatures from the races of Darker Faeries come crawling out from their sidhe with vicious mermaids and mer-men, leprechauns, gremlins, goblins, orcs, giants, and titans. The Old God/desses are being brought back to life. What one would imagine would be a typical hack n’ slash film by the title of “Cabin in the Woods” turned to a conspiracy theorie, Dark ancient Deities tale of human sacrifice at a high corporate level ploy to satiate the “ancient ones”. None other than a tale weaved by Buffy’s Joss Whedon to give that twisted plot some fantastical depth. These five friends go on vacation to a remote cabin in the woods, only to find them trapped and manipulated in a pseudo-realm where they are lined up to voluntarily sacrifice themselves to the dark spirits.

The five college-aged kids head off to a friend’s cabin in the woods and lose all communication with the outside world. During “party time” and unwinding, the cellar door mysteriously flips open, only to involved a truth or “dare” to investigate the darkness. Within is a treasure trove of artifacts, each with a secret and a beast to unleash. Meanwhile they are monitored by a high tech secret lab where the white coats bet on which creature they will face – Pinhead, the Mer-man, flesh eating zombies, a ghoul, or a prehistoric monster of dinosaur proportions. Dana reads from the diary of an imbred hillybilly family thereby awakening the now family of deadly murderous zombies. But this is not the only laboratory experiment of what supernatural creatures will be unleashed, as the lab coats are monitoring similar setups from around the world, hopeful of a successful stint with the cabin. As each of the college kids get knocked off, the ploy backfires as the “virgin” saved for the last, teamed up with the brainy pot-head discover the conspiracy and find their way down into depths uncovering an ancient temple lair holding back the ancient Titans from destroying the Earth – satiated by an annual sacrifice that was planned. None of the scenarios work out for the guardians and literally “all hell breaks loose” as magical and supernatural beings, creatures, and monsters look at the lab coats and armed forces as a smorgasboard brunch. The Director of the agency, played by Sigourney Weaver, tells them the truth that the ritual involving sacrifice of the Whore (Jules), the Athlete (Curt), the Scholar (Holden), the Fool (Marty), and the Virgin (Dana) was to appease the “Ancient Ones” who lived beneath the facility. They had to die in archetypical order until the virgin remained. Werewolves, mer-creatures, unicorns, ghouls, zombies, and a giant serpent take their wraith. The Ancient ones rise to destroy the facility and the cabin. While an element of “kitch” and whacky elements loomed over the film, the special effects and deep mythical supernatural plot humored and entertained me. [Rating:4] Rating of four stars out of five. ~ Reviewed by Leaf McGowan.

Photos are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without permission of authors Tom Baurley or Leaf McGowan. Photos can be purchased via Technogypsie.com at Technogypsie Photography Services for nominal use fees. Restaurants, Businesses, Bands, Performances, Venues, and Reviews can request a re-review if they do not like the current review or would like to have a another review done. If you are a business, performer, musician, band, venue, or entity that would like to be reviewed, you can also request one (however, travel costs, cost of service (i.e. meal or event ticket) and lodging may be required if area is out of reviewer’s base location at time of request).