Rambler - Gleaning in Fallow Fields

If I should die some night and never see
Dawn's light, my email, and my morning tea,
I face the thought with equanimity,
In fact, it would be worse for you than me.
Not that I want to die and turn to clay.
I'm only half-way through, I want to stay,
I want more years, more books, more chance to say
I love my life, my work, my friends, my day.
But I would know for sure the mystery
Perhaps go on to live again and grow
But even if there's nothing, I would know.
My death I view with calm philosophy
It's other people's death that makes me rage
Weep, grieve, and curse, demand another page.

    – Jo Walton

"The anti-tax stuff came first, and then it grew and grew," said Lindsey Roeder … he became involved with the Freemen movement, an anti-government group that discouraged the paying of taxes.

Today is the 30th anniversary of the White Night Riots, which occurred when Dan White was given a ludicrously low sentence for the murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone.
Tomorrow is Harvey Milk's birthday. He would have been 79. It's hard to imagine.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | May 21, 2009 at 12:22 PM

Underbelly: Back where it all began - SMH TV & Radio - Entertainment:
"Sydney had been corrupt since the Rum Corps, but in the 1970s it exploded. A cell of bent detectives effectively franchised crime using 'pet' criminals. People such as Lennie McPherson, a safebreaker but no mastermind, became a Mr Big after police gave him the 'green light'. Arthur 'Neddy' Smith, a violent thug, became a protected mob leader. The smooth George Freeman made millions — so brazenly he was once photographed at Randwick races with the chief magistrate.

But there were a few honest police — and they had to break the law to prove it..."

* Leviathan: The Unauthorised Biography of Sydney A RIVETING HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY OF A REMARKABLE AUSTRALIAN CITY “Combining intensive research with the pace of a techno-thriller, John Birmingham creates a rich portrait of a city too dazzled by its own gorgeous reflection to care much for what lies at its dark, corrupted heart. … Birmingham drills beneath the cover story of a successful multicultural metropolis and melts the boundaries between past and present … Beneath the shining harbour, amid the towers of global greed and deep inside the bad-drugs madness of the suburban wastelands, lies Sydney's shadow history. … Illuminated by wild flashes of black humour, violent, ghoulish and utterly compelling, Leviathan is history for the Tarantino generation.” ISBN: 0091842034; ISBN: 9780091842031; ISBN: 0091832616

“When I was a kid, I remember it would get so cold we'd throw boiling water out the door and freeze it to make hot ice. Got so cold one night the fire froze--we kept it in the icehouse and chipped pieces off it for years, to warm our coffee.

Gotta handle it with tongs, though.”

www.smh.com.au - A poetic observer, unwittingly, of Hiroshima:
www.smh.com.au/ text/ articles/ 2008/ 12/ 10/ 1228584924971.html
Smyth was on HMAS Norman 160 kilometres east of Japan on August 6, 1945, when another officer called him on deck to see a 'spectacular sunset'. Smyth immediately wrote a poem, of which the second verse says: 'No cloud, I say, but yet the sun did light/ On towering columns all unreal yet huge/ Which waved and shuddered in grotesque delight/ In myriad hues of ghostly subterfuge.' Unknowingly, he was describing the aftermath of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Dacre Henry Deudraeth Smyth, who has died in Melbourne of prostate cancer at 85, was born in London into a family linked directly to the kings of England Henry III and Edwards I, II and III. The family also had some claim to being related to Pocohontas, the Indian who saved the life of Captain John Smith, the founder of Virginia.

Smyth's mother was Anna Maria Story-Maskelyne. His father, Nevill, was awarded a Victoria Cross under Lord Kitchener at the Battle of Omdurman in Sudan in 1898, and was considered unlucky not to have won a second VC during the Boer War. He went on to command the First Australian Brigade at Gallipoli, leading him to emigrate with his family in 1925 and settle on a sheep property, Kongbool, near Balmoral in Victoria's Western District.

Nevill Smyth's first cousin, Lord Robert Stephen Smyth Baden-Powell, was a hero of the 217-day siege of Mafeking in the Boer War, and founded the Boy Scout movement, of which Smyth became a leader in Victoria.

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

     —

1) My home is on a busy & important road, running straight for over a mile along the top of a ridge next to central Sydney. On my first use of Google Street View, like everyone else looking for my place, it was in the only block along the whole length missing.

2) Walking in a new area of the city I discovered a tiny hidden oasis right off a big busy main road. Two little angled lanes of brick terrace houses lined with tubs & pots full of plants, with at least two friendly cats and, in the point of the triangle formed by the lanes, a minuscule park — lawn, flowerbeds, tables & benches. On Google Maps the park is invisible, covered by two leafy trees. Shocked, I realised since the photo was taken both have died, still standing as bare skeletons I'd barely noticed.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian pizza delivery man gave fast food a new meaning when he was caught, and fined, for driving 53 km (33 miles) over the speed limit.

The 20-year-old man, driving on a provisional driver's license, said he was speeding because he was 20 minutes late with his delivery in the tropical northern town of Townsville.</br>
Police clocked him driving at 131 kms (82 miles) in an 80 kph (50 mph) zone on Saturday, but waited for him to deliver his pizza before booking him.

On his return journey to the pizza shop, he was caught speeding at 133 km in the same zone.

Police sergeant Brendan White said on Tuesday the delivery man, who was not named, was fined A$1520 (US$1,226) and lost his license for 15 months.

A as in BREAD
B as in DEBT
C as in INDICTMENT
D as in HANDKERCHIEF
E as in GIVE
F as in HALFPENNY
G as in GNAW
H as in HOUR
I as in FRIEND
J as in MARIJUANA
K as in KNOW
L as in CALM
M as the first M in MNEMONIC
N as in AUTUMN
O as in PEOPLE
P as in PSALM
Q as in COLQUHOUN (a Scottish surnamepron “Cull-hoon”)
R as in FORECASTLE
S as in ISLAND
T as in CASTLE
U as in GUARD
V as in MILNGAVIE (a Scottish place name pron “Mull-guy” or “Mill-guy”)
W as in WRONG
X as in SIOUX
Y as in PEPYS
Z as in RENDEZVOUS

Researchers from the University of Newcastle, Australia have discovered a new type of syndrome affecting potentially thousands of people who have lived through human-made environmental change* such as open-cut mines, and natural disasters such as drought and cyclones.

Researchers, Dr Glenn Albrecht (philosopher, School of Environmental and Life Sciences) and Dr Gina-Maree Sartore, (psychologist, Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health) said 'solastalgia' is a lack of solace in one's home environment caused by the impact of negative environmental change. Dr Albrecht described solastalgia as the "homesickness you have when you are still at home".

They have researched the impact of the drought and open cut mines in rural NSW and say affected people feel melancholia or homesickness, and loss of a sense of place …

The Amazing Adventures of A Man Who Rescued A Million Yiddish Books, by Aaron Lansky "Lansky and his fellow dreamers traveled from house to house, Dumpster to Dumpster saving Yiddish books wherever they could find them—eventually gathering an improbable 1.5 million volumes, from famous writers like Sholem Aleichem and I.B. Singer to one-of-a-kind Soviet prints."

H.I. Pulls the Pin (10th October, 2007)
Raising Arizona's universe exists somewhere between a Sam Shepard play and Chuck Jones' 'Dripalong Daffy.' H.I (Nicolas Cage) and his barren, ex-cop wife, Ed (Holly Hunter), participate in wild car and foot chases, throw roundhouse punches that would have knocked John Wayne's eyeballs out, and speak in courtly sentences that mix pop psychology, cornpone aphorisms and odd, poetic rhythms. ('Biology and the prejudices of others conspired to keep us childless.')

So again I turn and I say to you,
Pass by the Collected Works of Kahlil Gibran,
Touch it not nor gaze upon it,
But go about your ways in peace of heart and with thanksgiving.