but that bain't no 'obbit, zurr...

geographies: Hedlow

Out from Otoliths—Nicholas Manning's Homo Sentimentalis

Now out from Otoliths.

Homo Sentimentalis: A Guide In Verse To Modern Emotional Intimacy
Nicholas Manning
116 pages
Otoliths, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9872010-4-1
$15.95 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/shop/nicholas-manning/homo-sentimentalis/paperback/product-20166234.html

"In a civilization of hysteria, the sentimental man is king. Troubadoured constructions have laced our European balconies with a string of rotting roses. Emotion’s event horizon is the condensation of cliché. Love is both an autonomous quality of the world and a conditional quality of our language. Extend a convention far enough and one arrives at life. Shall we explore love then as rhetorical device? The flowers among your hair are mere metaphors. Upper limit hyperbole, lower limit litotes. Kitsch and the commonplace set up the steps of the dance. To then trip over tropes is to attain a glittering singularity among stars: a stasis amidst the movement. Rhetoric and sincerity do not cease to be distinguishable; rather, their distinction no longer matters. Beyond the baroque and the rococo lie the limits of this spectrum, where all passion is at once passion and its show, all pathos at once ethos and its mask of Venetian glitter. The aesthetic posture and persona of our over-the-top Romeo takes then to moving while still sobbing in a comical cabriole. Let the tropes dance then, the ones amidst the others, and interchange forever their silken, saddened arms." —Nicholas Manning

Homo Sentimentalis: A Guide In Verse To Modern Emotional Intimacy is probably the greatest single-poet book of love poems in the field of “avant” poetry since For Love, by Robert Creeley. –Kent Johnson

geographies: Marmor

he boned up
on osteo-
logy

The Great (Media Tarts) Race, #6

Creativity is rarely shown by the competitors these days. Rather, it's predicability.

& so ...

Bono

& the Dalai Lama

both seek out Aung San Suu Kyi for a photo-op.

The Race judges are split on how to allocate points for this stage. Half wish to reward the two competitors for the speed with which they reacted. Half wish to penalize them for exactly the same thing, for taking what was easily obtained rather than something more difficult.

In the end, only a single point is awarded, to the Dalai Lama since he also is a Nobel Laureate & therefore has an excuse.

In the summation of their deliberations, the judges commented on the frenzy of media attention that has greeted Aung San Suu Kyi in her journey beyond the borders of Myanmar, & noted that, should she ever become a formal participant in TGR, she will be hard to beat.

Eventually

I got all the colors of Google to appear...

b
Instead of a long chain
of nucleotides, think of
the body as being
comprised of an infinite
tape divided into cells,
a finite number of which
contain a symbol drawn
from a finite vocabulary.

To breath life into it
add a moving head to scan
the cells as they pass; &
depending on the present state
& the present symbol
to overwrite or delete what
it finds there & move
one cell further on. It is not
a sequence of purine or
pyrimidine bases but of
ordered quintuples. Birth
is the initial state; the subset
of final states includes
assassination with an icepick
suicide through cyanide
& the

crash of white plumes
in the night sky.

from At Trotsky's Funeral

Everything old is new again

Scientists have unearthed the biggest find yet of pre-historic "giant wombat" skeletons, revealing clues to the reasons for the species' extinction.

The find, in Queensland, Australia, of about 50 diprotodons - the largest marsupial that ever lived - has been called a "palaeontologists' goldmine".

The plant-eating giants, the size of a rhinoceros, weighed up to 2700 kilograms & had backward-facing pouches big enough to carry an adult human. Scientists equate them as genetically relative to today’s wombats.



The fossils are believed to be between 100,000 & 200,000 years old.

The "mega-wombats" appeared to have been trapped in boggy conditions while taking refuge from dry conditions.

The pigeon-toed animals were widespread across Australia about 50,000 years ago, when the first indigenous people are believed to have lived, but they first appeared about 1.6 million years ago.

Read more...

************

There are many things that could block a stormwater drain.

But a wombat?

Imagine the surprise on the faces of the people at the Launceston City Council when they stumbled across a furry critter while viewing video from a stormwater pipe survey recently.



Imagine the surprise on the faces of the people at the Launceston City Council when they stumbled across a furry critter while viewing video from a stormwater pipe survey recently.

The shy little squatter was discovered by engineering development officer Sonia Smith. Ms Smith said that one of the tasks council asked developers to undertake when building a new subdivision was to ensure all their stormwater pipes were working.

"They do that by conducting a remote video camera survey, and they then send the videos into us," Ms Smith said.

"The equipment they use is basically a remote controlled camera, driven by a joystick.

"Sometimes in these videos you see the odd rat or spider, but this is the first time I've seen a wombat."

Ms Smith said the wombat found his or her way into the pipe because it was open at one end.

"It's a 300mm pipe, which is the smallest we use, but it appears that it might be a perfect size for a wombat burrow," she said.

Ms Smith said the wombat will be respectfully nudged on to a new burrow and access to the pipe will be blocked.

Read more...

A line from Arthur B. Reeve

He felt happy & pain-free only
on stage, immersed in his music.
String Theory & the Geometry of
Hydroponic Strawberries. Listen

to, download, play & stream the
song. The elders only smile sadly.
I've bought eight t-shirts from
this guy. Californian worshippers

chose blindfolds. There is scepticism
in the mainstream media. Luxury
limousines drove up the stairs.
I have his posters on my wall. Will

he be able to go back to the boy
band life? Don’t forget to watch A
Thousand Kisses, Episode 37. In the
blank space alongside the photograph,

an anonymous letter-writer had
scribbled a shocking & hate-filled
message. Does it bother you that
tennis doesn't get that kind of adulation?

A line from Basic Geometry

____________________

geographies: Fairy Bower

geographies: Stannage Bay

Today the
postman brought
me a walking
stick. Now all I
need are a back
fence & a fruit-
filled apple tree
just inside it but
not too far out
of reach for the
young kids of
the neighbor-
hood. Those who
can remember
the past are also
condemned to re-
peat it. I never did
like Santayana.

ten pwoermds from the past two months

idiosynchronicity

beligeriatric

zootgoost

metabicycle

Tai Chic

mnemorize

contretemperatures

casualdehyde

pastalence

stringth


from won des laits

geographies: Cape Town

a review

geographies: Kiev

criss-crossing the weeken'd mind

Pablo Picasso
The Old Guitarist

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”

The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”

Wallace Stevens
The Man with the Blue Guitar

Out from Otoliths — James Maughn's These Peripheries

Now out from Otoliths

These Peripheries
James Maughn
Cover image by Susan Harlan
100 pages
Otoliths, 2012
$14.95 + p&h
ISBN: 978-0-9872010-3-4
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/these-peripheries/12841058

In a kaleidoscope of shifting voices, James Maughn embraces world poetry in his immensely creative new collection. Maughn's poems unlock new ways for us to think about voice, poetic interactions, and the structures of free verse. Each poem is written 'following' the work of another poet, either a contemporary writer or a recent translation from earlier literature. "These Peripheries" tenderly and with great skill, create a formal and nuanced conversation on contemporary poetics. Maughn's poems, traversing geographies and cultural locations, unsettle the concept of translation as a concrete, fixed mirror and opens it up, like the door of a bird cage, to immense possibilities, infinitely expanding the journey of both the new poems and the source poems. It is a stunning collection which takes a new shape every time I come to read it. —Judy Halebsky

from today ...

 
 
 
passive
active
 
 

from some years back . . .

 
 
 
passive
active
 
 

geographies: Callide

s t r a t a s
t r a t a s t
r a t a s t r
a t a s t r a
t a s t r a t
a s t r a t a

geographies: Byfield

Youth Illustrated

                         Now that reality shows
              have developed some
                                 sort of deep metaphysical 
                    connection with live-action 
                            games where players 
                  dress up in costume & 
                                        get involved in areas 
                           derived from the Greek 
                       like weapon trajectory 
                                   calculations & image 
                                 processing, renting 
                                 Camelot on DVD &
               singing along with it
                               just doesn't register
                       any more. The competition 
                   to narrow down the
                                  pool is heating up—
                         not the contestant pool 
                           but the wannabe guest
                 judges all dressed 
                                  up & running behind 
                             the circus trucks.

Issue twenty-five

of Otoliths has just gone live.

a view from the moon
(from a music of the spheres)
Andrew Topel

This, the southern autumn, 2012, issue, marks the sixth birthday of Otoliths; & lined up in the impressive May Day parade are Charles Freeland & Rosaire Appel, Joshua Comyn, Sam Langer, Scott Glassman, Emmalea Russo, Ed Baker, Enola Mirao, Charles Borkhuis, Aaron Crippen, Louie Crew, Kristine Snodgrass, Bobbi Lurie, Jim Meirose, John M. Bennett, Anne Gorrick, Philip Byron Oakes, S S Prasad, Eszter Takacs, Christopher Brownsword, Tony Brinkley, R/B Mertz, Lakey Comess, Adam Fieled, Keith Higginbotham, Sandy McIntosh, Les Wicks, Raymond Farr, Joe Bussiere, Kirk Marshall, Walter Ruhlmann, Connor Stratman, Gary Barwin, Sarah Crewe, Joel Chace, Michael Ruby, Paul Pfleuger, Jr., Eryk Wenziak, Sam Truitt, Andrew Nightingale, Jeff Harrison, SJ Fowler, Catherine Vidler, Andrew Topel, Howie Good, Jill Chan, David-Baptiste Chirot, Leigh Herrick, Yoko Danno, Scott Bentley, Reed Altemus, Mathew Abbott, Tony Beyer, Sheila E. Murphy, Thomas Fink, Thomas Fink & Maya Diablo Mason, John Martone, Anne Elvey, Daniel Y. Harris, J. D. Nelson, Andrew Topel & Márton Koppány, Bogdan Puslenghea, Bob Heman, Elizabeth Welsh, Samit Roy, Jordan Lofton, Scott Metz, Paul Dickey & Ira Joel Haber, Spencer Selby, Stuart Barnes, Ali Znaidi, Kathup Tsering, Tim Gaze, Michael Brandonisio, John Pursch, Marcia Arrieta, & Alexander Jorgensen.

Color me naïf

but I believed we were a civilized people, at one with nature.

& then I come across this.

Now lets show support for our future Radio Free Texas members (our kids). If your kids like to hunt or fish post pics of them killing there first deer or there fishing trip. Dont forget to keep adding pics to "Got hunting or fishing pics " forum everybody wants to see and read about your trips.

"My 9 year old daughter H.... took her first deer last Saturday."

geographies: Kabra

Out from Otoliths — Sheila E. Murphy's American Ghazals

Now out from Otoliths.

American Ghazals
Sheila E. Murphy
68 pages
Otoliths, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9872010-2-7
$14.45 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/american-ghazals/18929550

The ghazal is a time-honored literary form dating from 6th century Arabic verse. Successive versions of the form attest to its appeal across numerous cultures and periods of time. Focal themes associated with the form have encompassed divine and earthly love to those of loss, longing, and isolation. Ghazals are voiced and sung in many languages, including Persian, Turkish, and Urdu.

Despite highly specific rules governing the form in its early centuries, more contemporary versions have relaxed such practices. In contemporary English, the self-containment of each couplet offers an appealing potential for discovering subtle relationships among the (minimum of five) different couplets within a single piece. Subliminal echoes of perception and emergent contextual linkages provide a renewal of sensibility for readers of the ghazal.

The pieces in this collection represent a selection of works written as ‘American Ghazals,’ based upon the distinctly American idiom in which the pieces have been developed. The more I read the form in translation and in English, the more apparent the fit of pivotal shifts in language, thought, and content. The American ghazal offers rich practice, replete with political, social, psychological, and meditative states that redefine perceptions in a new century.

Sheila E. Murphy

geographies: Wowan

geographies: The Caves

The / philistines are / back in charge

Campbell Newman, the newly-elected Queensland Premier, has, as the first act of his new government, scrapped the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, arguing the $244,000 saving was part of the Liberal National Party's promised cost-cutting drive.

more

geographies: Te Aroha

the citadel

geographies: St. Lawrence

another headline hay(na)ku

Sonnet
jailed for
failed contract killing.

Eight facts about Tatang Island

1.
On Tatang
Mountain
the birds
build hives.

2.
Pomegranates
grow in
profusion.

3.
Day is
one hour
long, night
fifteen minutes.
Nobody notices.
It has always
been that
way.

4.
There are
five
colours
in the local
spectra.

5.
Organized
religion.
Individual
opium.


6.
He left his child-
bride behind.

7.
Everyone
is
related.

8.
Music &

9.
melancholy.

Out from Otoliths—Resinations by Javant Biarujia

Now out from Otoliths

Resinations
Javant Biarujia
72 pages
Cover design by Sheila E. Murphy
Otoliths, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9872010-1-0
$13.95 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/shop/javant-biarujia/resinations/paperback/product-18929536.html

Javant Biarujia’s latest collection, “Resinations”, takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through, mostly, Western (pop) art, culture and politics, from Kant to Dorothy Lamour, the Inquisition to “Leave It to Beaver”, Tallahassee to Drancy, and much more. Resinations, itself a neologism, is echoic of resonations — every pun is intended in this collection — as well as resignation, at once an Eastern concept and a Western reality for many an employee. In sixty-four numerologically significant “pantoums” (Biarujia’s idea of such at any rate), in which “all pastiche and no parono- / masia makes the past a dull Lautréamont” (“Labdanum”), he mirrors the world back at us, always startling, distinctive, original. His poetry is at times complex and multilayered, but it is always rich, witty and meaningful, what Charles Bernstein has called “quixotically alluring,” and Gig Ryan, “fun and mock bawdiness.” Or, as Biarujia himself says: “through levity to levitation.”

“A subversive master craftsman, [Biarujia] propels the language through a cultural and political labyrinth”— Jaya Savige

“This is a poetry that leads the reader not only in and down but also, through re-sounding, across, crossing boundaries, making unthought of connections, exploring the fertile errata of translation. Biarujia sends out sounds that skip from language to language in a series of transformations/ interactions” — Geraldine McKenzie

“[‘Calques’] is a compelling, stimulating, intricately wrought, sometimes hauntingly beautiful and often very funny book, written in styles at once globalised and hermetic, archaic and futuristic” — Chris Edwards

“Decadence and postmodernism collide and combine in texts which are inimitably Biarujia” — Kris Hemensley

geographies: St. Paul

The Curse

                               When run through any
                      English-Icelandic 
                                     translation app, the 
                                  atomic hypothesis & 
                           its concept of cloud comes 
                                             out resembling a gothic 
                                horror screen-play. No 
                        consideration for classical 
                                         theory. No sensitivity 
                                      toward sociological 
                            phenomena. Persons 
                                   under the age of 18 are
                               included only if they
                                     play in a marching band 
                            or Drum & Bugle Corps.

geographies: Westwood

geographies: Vancouver

geographies: Gavial

geographies: Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi

Victims of the Spanish
trade monopoly in-
clude radical writers,
idealists, advocates of
1990s style populism,
& anyone with a fond-
ness for those musty
old artefacts of Russian
culture found in most
of the Black Sea cities.

geographies: Lammermoor Beach II

geographies: Lammermoor Beach

Up until

a few days ago, a Google search for

charischematic
would have returned no hits.

geographies: Bajool

Private equity muscles in

A man sleeps amidst the genome of the killer disease that is driving the remaining wild populations of investors betting on a Greek bailout by Monday.

Hexagram #65

斑馬
The Zebra

America's got a Darwin problem -- and it matters.

"According to a 2009 Gallup poll taken on the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, fewer than 40% of Americans are willing to say that they "believe in evolution." When another study asked if humans had developed from earlier species of animals, the American public split right down the middle. 40% said they had, while 39% rejected any suggestion that our species had emerged from the process of evolution. Even more worrisome is the fact that rejection of evolution correlates closely with political views, with a majority of the members of one of our major political parties casting themselves as Darwin rejectionists. In this election year, the strength of anti-evolution sentiment has been on full display in the presidential race, as one candidate after another declared their distrust of the scientific consensus around evolution. One member of the group, however, broke ranks with the others and boldly declared, "I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming." How'd that turn out for him? Jon Huntsman's early exit from the race confirmed something else he said at the time. "Call me crazy" for trusting science, he tweeted. And sadly, it looks like he was right.

. . .

"In American today, anti-evolutionism matters because it has become the vanguard of a genuine anti-science movement. To be sure, opposition to evolution isn't new. State laws against the teaching of evolution actually go back nearly a century, and the famous Scopes trial took place 87 years ago. However, if you thought such things were behind us, guess again. Laws designed to encourage the teaching of non-scientific "alternative" theories to evolution were introduced in 11 state legislatures last year. This year, Darwin's 203rd birthday, on February 12th, will see an anti-evolution bill, already passed by the Indiana State House of Representatives, awaiting action in the State Senate. Its fate there is uncertain, but there are plenty of reasons to be concerned."

Kenneth R. Miller The Huffington Post 2/10/2012

geographies: Midgee

geographies: Karehana Bay

Now out from Otoliths — Mark Cunningham's Helicotremors

Mark Cunningham
Helicotremors
88 pages
Cover image by HoMeBoY
Otoliths, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9872010-0-3
$13.45 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/helicotremors/18793906

The piece/pieces here (a single long poem, or 220 separate poems? both at once? each alternately?) sit (move) somewhere (sometime) between a series of otoacoustic emissions (hair cells in the cochlea of the inner ear, moving in response to waves generated in the fluid of the ear by two frequencies simultaneously, often create a third tone) and a series of deferred actions (“our psychic mechanism has come into being by a process of stratification: the material present in the form of memory traces being subjected from time to time to a rearrangement in accordance with fresh circumstances—to a retranscription,” Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fleiss, December 6, 1896).

It/they wait for your inner/outer ear/voice to hear/remember/complete the next extension of their incompleteness.

geographies: Rarotonga

post-Arthurian hay(na)ku

She'll
be right
on the knight.

The new issue of Otoliths is live

Cadlift
Spencer Selby

Issue twenty-four, the southern summer issue of Otoliths, is now live.

It's as eclectic & full of energy as ever, has as a special feature Michael Gottlieb's new essay, Letters to a Middle-Aged Poet, & contains new work from Grzegorz Wróblewski, Noha Al-Badry, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Tom Beckett, j/j hastain, Arhm Choi, John Martone, Philip Byron Oakes, Bobbi Lurie, John M. Bennett, Raymond Farr, Donna Kuhn, Calvin Pennix, Cecelia Chapman, bruno neiva, Travis Cebula, Theodoros Chiotis, Adam Trawick, Sean Ulman, Ana Viviane Minorelli, Lakey Comess, Spencer Selby, James McLaughlin, Katie Berger, Caleb Puckett, Stephen Nelson, Andrew Topel, Jeff Harrison, Claramarie Burns, Zachary Scott Hamilton, Marthe Reed, Kit Kennedy, Jill Jones, Márton Koppány, Andrew Taylor, Stu Hatton, SJ Fowler, David Harrison Horton, Daniel f Bradley, Susan Gangel & Terry Turrentine, Howie Good, John Pursch, Joseph Cooper, D.J. Huppatz, Cherie Hunter Day, Stuart Barnes, Bill Drennan, Charles Freeland, Adam Fagin, Marty Hiatt, Eva Heisler, Helen White, dan raphael, Bob Heman, Tim Wright, Michael Brandonisio, J. D. Nelson, & Mark Cunningham.

geographies: Emu Park

The Pitch Drop Experiment

Something better — or worse — than watching grass grow!

"The first Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland, Professor Thomas Parnell, began an experiment in 1927 to illustrate that everyday materials can exhibit quite surprising properties. The experiment demonstrates the fluidity and high viscosity of pitch, a derivative of tar once used for waterproofing boats. At room temperature pitch feels solid — even brittle — and can easily be shattered with a blow from a hammer. It's quite amazing then, to see that pitch at room temperature is actually fluid!

"In 1927 Professor Parnell heated a sample of pitch and poured it into a glass funnel with a sealed stem. Three years were allowed for the pitch to settle, and in 1930 the sealed stem was cut. From that date on the pitch has slowly dripped out of the funnel — so slowly that now, 80 years later, the ninth drop is only just forming.

"Professor Parnell lived long enough to see the first two drops descend from the funnel, which took a total of 17 years."

More from the UQ website, including live(?) video of this exciting event, can be found here.

My annual Australia Day post

On 26 January, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip, on behalf of the Crown of Great Britain, took formal possession of the colony of New South Wales and became its first Governor.

However, for Aboriginal Australians and many others, the 26th of January is not a day for celebration. To them the date signifies invasion and dispossession. As Thomas Keneally noted in his 1997 Australia Day address -

"A majority of Australians can see why today cannot be a day of rejoicing for all, and that therefore there may be grounds for ultimately finding an Australia Day, a celebration of our community, with which we can all identify."

The choice of 26 January as the day of celebration for all Australians has been queried and argued from a historical and practical viewpoint from the 1800s. That the day might symbolise invasion, dispossession and death to many Aboriginal people was a concept alien to the average Australian until even the latter half of the 20th century. The Editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald of 2 January 1995, arguing for a change of date, stated that January 26 "can never be a truly national day for it symbolises to many Aborigines the date they were conquered and their lands occupied. This divisive aspect to 26 January, the commemoration of the landing at Sydney Cove, will never be reconciled".

Involvement of the Indigenous community on Australia Day has taken many forms - forced participation in re-enactments, mourning for Invasion Day, peaceful protest through to an acknowledgment of survival and an increasing participation in community events at a local level.

By 1888, the year of the centenary celebrations, the white population had increased significantly while the Aboriginal population had declined from at least 750,000 in 1788 to a mere estimated 67,000. (Aboriginal people were not counted in the census until after 1967). The 1888 Centenary events overwhelmingly celebrated British and Australian achievement and as Nigel Parbury writes in his book Survival: ”In 1888 Aboriginals boycotted the Centenary celebrations. Nobody noticed.”

By 1938, the Aboriginal community was becoming well organised in the white ways and able to make strong demands for political rights and equality. An Australian Aborigines League (AAL) had been formed in 1932 and this was followed in 1937 by the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA), a group that began to achieve publicity in the press and addressed a variety of groups such as the NSW Labor Council.

The AAL leader William Cooper and the APA's leader William Ferguson, were instrumental in organising the Day of Mourning Committee for the 1938 Sesquicentenary celebrations. A manifesto, Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights, was published and on Australia Day a conference and protest were held in the Australian Hall, Sydney. Five days later, the APA led an Aboriginal delegation to meet with the Prime Minister and soon after Australia Day, the Committee for Aboriginal Citizen Rights was formed.

The Aboriginal community's push for recognition was highlighted by the 1938 official Australia Day celebrations. Due to a refusal to cooperate by city-based Aborigines, the government imported Aborigines from western communities, locking them up in a stable at Redfern Police Barracks. Immediately following the re-enactment, the group featured on a float in the huge parade in Macquarie Street. The following day they were “sent back to their tin sheds on the Darling River”.

Re-enactments of Phillip's landing continued to be an accepted part of Australia Day ceremonies around the country and it wasn't until the Bicentennial in 1988 that the New South Wales government refused to condone a re-enactment as part of their official proceedings.

On January 26 that year, 40,000 Aboriginal people (including some from as far away as Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory) and their supporters marched from Redfern Park to a public rally at Hyde Park and then on to Sydney Harbour to mark the 200th anniversary of invasion.

From this march grew the concept of "Invasion Day" and "Survival Day", marking the anniversary of the beginning of land loss, but also recognising the survival of a race of people who had been expected to die out. In 1992 the first Survival Day concert was held at La Perouse and in 1998 the event moved to Waverley Oval near Bondi Beach.



The Aboriginal Flag was designed by Harold Thomas, an artist and a Luritja man from Central Australia, in 1971. The flag was designed to be an eye-catching rallying symbol for the Aboriginal people and a symbol of their race and identity. The black represents the Aboriginal people, the red the earth and their spiritual relationship to the land, and the yellow the sun, the giver of life.

In the late 1960s, Aborigines stepped up their campaign for indigenous land rights through protest marches, demonstrations, banners and posters. The protests increased in the early 1970s and Harold Thomas noticed they were often outnumbered by non-Aborigines with their own banners and placards. He decided they needed to be more visible and the idea of the flag was born.

The Aboriginal flag was first raised in Victoria Square in Adelaide on National Aboriginal Day in 1971, but was adopted nationally by Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in 1972 after it was flown above the Aboriginal "Tent Embassy" outside of the old Parliament House in Canberra.

It is perhaps the only symbol commonly accepted by the diversity of Aboriginal people.

The Aboriginal flag is increasingly being flown by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. In view of its increasing importance in Australian society, the Government initiated steps in 1994 to give the flag legal recognition. After a period of public consultation, the Government made its own decision in July 1995 that the flag should be proclaimed a "Flag of Australia" under section 5 of the Flags Act 1953. The flag was so proclaimed by the Governor General of Australia, William Hayden, on 14 July 1995.

(compiled from various sources, all of which, except for the one below, have succumbed to the endemic web disease of link rot)
http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/barani/themes/theme6.htm

recycled from pelican dreaming, 1/26/06.

Frost out

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And make gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there,
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

A New American Poet

A SHORT time ago I found on a London bookstall an odd
number of The Poetry Review, with examples of and
comments on "Modern American Poets," — examples which
whetted my curiosity. But the few quotations given appeared to
me literary bric-à-brac, the fruit of light liaisons between
American dilettantism and European models. Such poetry,
aesthetic or sentimental, — reflections of vagrant influences,
lyrical embroideries in the latest designs, with little imaginative
insight into life or nature, — abounds in every generation. If
sufficiently bizarre its pretensions are cried up in small
Bohemian coteries; if sufficiently orthodox in tone and form, it
may impress itself on that public which reads poetry as it looks
idly at pictures, with sentimental appetite or from a vague
respect for "culture." Next I turned to some American
magazines at hand, and was brought to a pause by discovering
some interesting verse by modern American poets, especially
by women whose sincerity in the expression of the inner life of
love compared well with the ambitious flights of some of the
rivals. I learned indeed from a magazine article that the "New
Poetry" was in process of being hatched out by the younger
school; and, no doubt, further researches would have yielded a
harvest, had not a literary friend chanced to place in my hands
a slim green volume, North of Boston, by Robert Frost. I read
it, and reread it. It seemed to me that this poet was destined to
take a permanent place in American literature. I asked myself
why this book was issued by an English and not by an
American publisher. And to this question I have found no
answer. I may add here, in parenthesis, that I know nothing of
Mr. Robert Frost save the three or four particulars I gleaned
from the English friend who sent me North of Boston.

Edward Garnett
^THE Atlantic, August, 1915.

life drags on

Gong Xi Fa Cai

what else to do on a Saturday night?

"There must be exactly as many things distinguishable

as there are in the state of affairs which it represents."
Wittgenstein.

geographies: Ciudad del Carmen

The Drop of Water

A microchip im-
plant is placed
under the skin.

Nicotine patches
are spread upon
it. A free hand

selection tool that
includes an inter-
active game is

used to specify
the region of inter-
est. Whether that

be the mechanics
of water or the
flow of mythology

begin by drawing
a circular object
on your canvas.

geographies: Yamba