Grant Pearce

Thank you to all who supported this wonderful fundraising event. It's 5 minutes to midnight. I just reached my amended target and now I will get us all over the fundraising target with an additional amount for good luck

Going back to my childhood years the third R in my challenge stands for Arithmetic. I basically used the four functions to ultimately come up with two figures and related amounts. One was the revised total of my pledge ($2700.00) and the other was the amount that I put up for matching week ($5400.00 – simplified to $5000.00 for promotional purposes). To get there I started with the numbers 900, 750, 450, 150 and 30. A calculation using two of those led to the figure 25. Using that number and another of the starting numbers I came to 6. Then after two separate calculations using 6 and other numbers, I came to the above two amounts. I then used the remaining two functions to work out what needed to be added to the existing donations on my page to come up with the pledge amount and also the actual matching amount. I knew roughly where I wanted to go and the calculations fitted. This reminds me of those number puzzles where you ask someone to think of a number and then they go through a series of calculations before writing down the answer without telling you what it is. Then you tell them what their answer is because it will always be the same number whatever number you start with. In the science book I am reading was a chapter on Eratosthenes of Cyrene who lived in the third century BC. He was in charge of the extraordinary Library of Alexandria. He wanted to work out the size of the globe. He knew that on the summer solstice the sun was directly overhead in town to the south of Alexandria because its reflection could be seen in the bottom of a well. He knew that the sun was not overhead in Alexandria. Knowing the distance between the two places he worked out the angle between the two and then did some calculations to work out the circumference of the earth. And he was not that far off. But he had made the calculation more involved than he needed to because knowing that the angle was one fiftieth of a circle, he could have simply multiplied the distance by 50. One of the main characters in the stories I am writing is a fictional girl who was born in Circassia which was a country on the Black Sea which is now part of Russia. The inspiration for her came from Sacagawea. My character was brave and adventurous and inquisitive just like her. She wanted to know why the sky was blue and where the stream went that powered her father’s mill ended up. When she left her village and after a series of life changing events she ultimately sailed to England, she saw a globe for the first time and could not believe that it represented the world. The chap who showed her the globe told her that men had gone up in hot air balloons and observed the curvature of the earth. She laughingly said that perhaps they had been on the bottom of the world and had fallen off. The character also meets King William IV and Queen Adelaide. She is introduced by her English husband whose grandfather had met the young William Guelph and Horatio Nelson on the fictitious island of St Ai (Cornish for St Ives) in the Caribbean. From when she was a little girl and watched the water wheel turn the stone to grind the corn, she was fascinated by mechanical things, and she lived to a ripe old age seeing the early automobiles and planes. Note that William IV’s niece, Alexandrina was named after the Russian Tsar Alexander. Fun fact: Ulysses S Grant, Civil War General and President of the USA said that when he studied Algebra at West Point it was Greek to him. His bestselling autobiography was published by his friend Mark Twain who was initially know for his travel books and lectures rather than his now more famous works of fiction. Twain actually came to Adelaide on a world tour and another of the books I am currently reading is the account of his trip to Australia. And back to the Pledge, this donation is my matching amount rounded up.

We are almost at the end of April and whilst my writing has not met my target - I have now amended the overall target to read enough pages to cover the balance. The significance of the third R will be revealed in the next post. And now to answer the question posed in my last post: Lieutenant William Guelph who sailed around the Caribbean with his good friend Horatio Nelson was at heart a sailor. He rose in rank and fought at the Battle of Cape St Vincent. He was given the comic opera sounding title of Lord High Admiral by his brother and in that role did some good in improving conditions for ordinary sailors. For one thing he abolished the cat o’ nine tails for most offences. He lived with an Irish actress who bore him 10 children – 5 boys and 5 girls. The children bore the surname FitzClarence which designates that they are children born out of wedlock to an aristocrat – in this case the Duke of Clarence. He was born in Buckingham House (now called Buckingham Palace) and down the Mall he later built Clarence House which was the home of the late Queen Mother and now of the King. He was the third son of King George III and younger brother of George IV. When it became clear that he might inherit the throne he married a German princess as did his younger brother the Duke of Kent. On the 26th of June 1830 he came to the throne and from then was known as King William IV. His princess became Queen Adelaide. When he died on the 30th of June 1837, the colony of South Australia was barely 6 months old, but his name and the name of his queen is forever connected to our state. At the end of his life his one aim was to live until his niece Princess Alexandrina who was by then the heir to the throne, turned 18 to avoid her mother, the Duchess of Kent becoming regent. His own children by the actress were ineligible. He succeeded in his aim and and he passed away less than a month after Princess Alexandrina, as she was called, turned 18. When Alexandrina was informed that she was now queen she chose to use her second name which was Victoria. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Great work Grant

My writing is a saga that cover the time from the 1770s to the 1980s and ranges from the Caribbean to Circassia and from Gloucestershire, Devon and London to Australia. It is fictional but occasionally real people appear. One is Nelson who sailed around the Caribbean as a young man. In the other ship was one Lt William Guelph who is probably not known by many of you. But in fact, he is very well known, particularly here in South Australia. More on him later. As a young sailor in his early teens Nelson went on an expedition of exploration to the Polar regions. Sacagawea does not appear in my story but she like Nelson went on an expedition in her early teens. On a number of occasions her courage and loyalty saved the Lewis and Clark Expedition sent by President Jefferson to explore the land unexpectedly sold to America by Napoleon. Two teenagers facing challenges and overcoming them. An inspiration to those children facing their own challenges with the help of this association.

IT does not want me to logon so here is my update. My reading is going well. I have gone back to my school days re-reading "A History of South Australia" that I first read in 1969. At that time, I was also reading "Sun on the Stubble" and I am reading another book in that series as well as a biography of Colin Theile the South Australian author. Science was not my best subject, but I am reading a history of science in 100 experiments, Ancient History was and I am ready a book on ancient cities. Also on the list is a biography of Horatio Nelson ad a historical fiction work on Sacagawea the extraordinary native American girl. But more on them later. Writing is a bit behind schedule, but I cannot write on demand so that was to be expected. Until next time. -