Originally this site was only a mirror of Sellassie Family Web @ www.angelfire.com/ak/sellassie, but with time each webpage gets it own life and forms. There are many new pages here and the entire direction is different -- it's not just our family place anymore. One year of cyber existance proved that Sellassie Family is big and indeed is world wide.
If you want to stay in touch and know about the changes and news, please subscribe to SELLASSIE LIST, FORUM or/and BOOK CLUB.
The site does not represent the entire Sellassie family. Thanks.
We started this site in May of 1998 as a family page, but now we list Haile Sellassie Family Web under Culture, History, Education or Arts and Humanity, because it's a cyber museum of Haile Sellassie, an electronic memorial. There are pages about family, a few generations, including our family in Alaska. There are pages about History and Art of Ethiopia and pages for the big Haile Sellassie family around the world, people who remember him and consider his life a source of inspiration. We'll continue to improve the place; please come back!
2005 * After so many years of webbing I cannot change the nature of my webpages -- they are what they were from the start; notes, thoughts, points I make for myself for classes and productions. Do they have an independent existence? Maybe, somewhere in the future... And my writing interests, of course. Anatoly
In an age of rockets and revolution, monarchy rarely receives its due. Not so last week in the mountainous realm of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia. The Lion of Judah knows how to roll out a red carpet — and indeed when Queen Elizabeth II's bellowing VC-l0 jetliner appeared over Addis Ababa last week, an Ethiopian army truck was still nudging its way through the airport crowd with yards and yards of the stuff.
Potholes Paved. There was only one word for all the preparations for Elizabeth's eight-day visit: imperial. Haile Selassie knew that it was the Queen's first call in East Africa since her father, King George VI, died in 1952 while Elizabeth was visiting Kenya's Royal Aberdare Game Preserve. As if to ease the memory of that painful experience, the Emperor had paved the pot-holed road from the capital to the British embassy compound on the outskirts of Addis, set 600 laborers to work planting trees and laying acres of sod to tidy up the city's new, U.S.-financed, $2,500,000 Municipal Center.
The Emperor added an entire wing to his splendiferous Jubilee Palace so that Elizabeth and her entourage of 31 could be properly housed. Meanwhile, fire engines roared through town hanging royal portraits from every lamp post. The Emperor's lions, which usually roam the palace grounds unattended, were hosed down, dusted with flea powder, and chained tight to avoid embarrassment.
Precarious Trail. The tour itself went off like African clockwork. Delays were commonplace. Vast crowds surged around Elizabeth and Prince Philip as they were whirled through Addis in the Emperor's Rolls-Royce, which broke down only once. At one point they transferred to the silken cab of a green and scarlet imperial coach pulled by a team of six Lippizaner horses. They dined on lamb, watt (Ethiopia's excellent meat and vegetable stew), tedj — a honey-based mead, and Taitinger champagne. The imperial touch was also present when Elizabeth journeyed over the dusty plain to Asmara, where she was greeted by dancing spearsmen and was delightfully dive-bombed by an Ethiopian army plane. The bomb load was flower petals.
Elizabeth visited the Wingate School, named for Britain's mystical guerrilla leader Major General Orde Wingate, whose troops had liberated Ethiopia from Italian occupation in 1941 and permitted Haile Selassie to return home from his London exile. The Queen also visited Gondar and hiked a mile up a precarious mountain trail to look out over Tisisat Falls, a breathtaking scene near the source of the Blue Nile. Less than a century ago, a 32,000-man British force under Sir Robert Napier had crossed the same kind of trails (along with some 30,000 beasts of burden, including 45 elephants) to defeat Haile Selassie's famous predecessor, Emperor Theodore. Quite naturally, none of that imperial adventuring was recalled last week.
What we seek is a new and a different way of life. We search for a way of life in which all men will be treated as responsible human beings, able to participate fully in the political affairs of their government; a way of life in which ignorance and poverty, if not abolished, are at least the exception and are actively combatted; a way of life in which the blessings and benefits of the modern world can be enjoyed by all without the total sacrifice of all that was good and beneficial in the old Ethiopia. We are from and of the people, and our desires derive from and are theirs.
Can this be achieved from one dusk to the next dawn, by the waving of a magic wand, by slogans or by Imperial declaration? Can this be imposed on our people, or be achieved solely by legislation? We believe not. All that we can do is provide a means for the development of procedures which, if all goes well, will enable an increasing measure and degree of what we seek for our nation to be accomplished. Those who will honestly and objectively view the past history of this nation cannot but be impressed by what has already been realised during their lifetime, as well as be awed by the magnitude of the problems which still remain. Annually, on this day, we renew our vow to labour, without thought of self, for so long as Almighty God shall spare us, in the service of our people and our nation, in seeking the solutions to these problems. We call upon each of you and upon each Ethiopian to do likewise......
Above all, Ethiopia is dedicated to the principle of the equality of all men, irrespective of differences of race, colour or creed.
As we do not practice or permit discrimination within our nation, so we oppose it wherever it is found.
As we guarantee to each the right to worship as he chooses, so we denounce the policy which sets man against man on issues of religion.
As we extend the hand of universal brotherhood to all, without regard to race or colour, so we condemn any social or political order which distinguishes among God's children on this most specious of grounds.
Liberty is always unfinished business. --anonymous
