Put another shrimp on the barbie

1986 In a profound politico-cultural act, following the success of the "put another shrimp on the barbie" ads, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley declared April 30 'Paul Hogan Day'. The practice of barbecuing prawns (known as 'shrimps' in the USA) was not a custom in Australia before an advertising agency invented it, but soon life imitated ad (although I've yet to see it ever done in the hundreds of barbecues I've attended).

The Paul Hogan ad campaign has yet another irony. Australians tend to believe that the barbecue is as Australian as the gum tree. In fact, the word has Caribbean roots in Taino (one of the Arawak family of languages). In one form, barabicoa, it indicates a wooden grill, a mesh of sticks; in another, barabicu, it's a sacred fire pit. The practice of barbecuing was known in Australia before WWII but generally referred to as a 'picnic', and sometimes other terms were employed. The barbecue of Australia is actually an import from the USA, probably following the presence in the war of thousands of American service people.

Categories: australia, pr, advertising, urban-legend, media

Ross Wilson to produce 8 Ball Aitken's next album

We've talked a bit lately about 8 Ball Aitken (this post, for example). Well, here's some more, because there's some great news for this rising young star of country-roots-rock music.

Ross Wilson
"In June / July 1974 Wilson took time off Daddy Cool and produced Skyhook's breakthrough debut album Living in the Seventies, which overtook Daddy Cool's first album to become the biggest-selling Australian LP."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Wilson_(musician)

PRESS RELEASE: 29 April, 2009

8 Ball Aitken To Record New Album With Ross Wilson

Tamworth country musician 8 Ball Aitken will be recording his next album with Aussie music legend Ross Wilson. Wilson, the Australian roots music icon who authored much-loved hits as ‘Eagle Rock’ and ‘Come Back Again’ over a career spanning four decades, from Daddy Cool to Mondo Rock and even The Wiggles, will be working with the young red-headed guitar-slinger from FNQ to produce 8 Ball’s new album, “Lucky”, in 2010. “We love the sounds of classic Aussie country, blues, & rock,” Aitken explains. “Ross is definitely the producer who can deliver this sound -- I think ‘Eagle Rock’ could be our new national anthem!” The project is eligible for tax-deductible donations for funding by fans, further adding to the excitement. Potential donors are now invited to contact 8 Ball’s manager to discuss their involvement.

8 Ball Aitken’s most recent tour went across America from California to Nashville, and Texas to Toronto, including attending SXSW in Austin, Texas, USA and performances at Canadian Music Week in Toronto, Canada. 8 Ball notes, “Performing at Canadian Music Week was a big deal for me. I felt very honoured to be selected to play there – it’s Canada’s most prestigious music industry event, and it receives major media coverage nationally.” The red-head’s unique blend of down-home Aussie swamp music hit the right note with enthusiastic Canadian audiences at the festival. He has already been invited back to Canada for more shows this year. Even ex-US President George H. Bush is fan – after meeting each other in Texas, he told 8 Ball that he was bringing his ‘Rebel With A Cause’ CD to his wife, Barbara.

8 Ball’s song ‘Yellow Moon’ won the EMI Q Song Blues & Roots Award 2008 and his recent single, ‘Hands On Top Of The Wheel’, made the top ten in the Australian Country Tracks Top 30 for two weeks in a row. The video clip for ‘Hands On Top Of The Wheel’ is also receiving considerable airplay on the Country Music Channel, Rage, CAAMA, and several international broadcasters. His previous single, ‘Cyclone Country’, reached number six in the charts for several weeks and earned him a Golden Guitar Nomination. 8 Ball released his new single ‘Outback Booty Call’ to radio on April 27.

8 Ball is now accepting tax-deductible donations to fund his Ross Wilson-produced new album Here's how it works. People interested in helping 8 Ball can make a tax deductible donation to ABAF, the Australia Business Arts Foundation, specifying that they would like their donation to be directed to 8 Ball's new CD production via ABAF's Australia Cultural Fund.

The Australia Cultural Fund is a unique facility which enables people to make tax deductible donations to ABAF, and nominate an individual artist as the recipient of the gift. ABAF has enabled many Australian artists to raise funds for the development of their work. One such musician is John Butler, whose JB Seed program is also a recipient of grants from the Australia Cultural Fund. 8 Ball was very honoured to receive a JB Seed grant in 2006, enabling him to study pedal steel guitar with internationally-respected pedal steel guru Michel Rose in Sydney. To find out more about ABAF and the Australia Cultural Fund, please visit: And if you'd like to donate some money today (and thereby help to minimise your tax bill!), please contact his manager, Bird Jensen:
bird@phoenixmovement.com, phone: 0408 075 959.

8 Ball Aitken is currently available for interviews. A full-length radio feature, produced by CMR Nashville presenter Daryl Kirkup, includes all the songs from Rebel With A Cause, and in-depth interviews with 8 Ball about the stories behind each song. This interview CD is available free of charge to all music broadcasters and journalists. 300 dpi photos are also available for publication. To order a copy, or to arrange an interview with 8 Ball Aitken, please contact management on 0408 075 959 or bird@phoenixmovement.com.

www.8ballaitken.com

www.myspace.com/8ballaitken

www.sonicbids.com/8ballaitken.com

www.youtube.com/user/8ballaitken

See also Bird Jensen at FaceBook.

Categories: music, rock-music, australia

Solar alignment at Teotihuacan, City of the Gods

The city of Teotihuacan, Mexico, settled in the 2nd Century BCE, was ancient when the Aztecs found its ruins. They named it 'place of the creation of the gods'.

The entrance of a ritual cave there was aligned to a point on the western skyline where the sun set on August 12 and April 29. These days are separated by day counts of 260 and 105 (making 365 in all). The ancient Mesoamerican system had a 260-day ritual calendar and a 365-day standard calendar.

The same horizon position is the setting point of the Pleiades, the star cluster that makes its initial annual appearance on the first of two days each year when the noon sun passes directly overhead at the latitude of Teotihuacan ...

This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with many more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date (or your birthday) when you're there.

Categories: aztec, mexico, calendar-customs

Port Arthur Massacre

1996 Port Arthur Massacre: At at the ruins of the Port Arthur Prison Colony, Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia, the world’s worst ‘spree killer’ of all time, Martin Bryant, killed 35 innocent men, women and children, and wounded another 22 (some sources say 18).

The only good thing that came out of it was that the Australian government decided to bring in strict laws against long-arm automatic weapons, and since then there has been a dramatic decline in gun deaths in Australia, although there is still a problem with still-legal firearms including handguns ...

Port Arthur Massacre - Deceit Or Terrorism? (Google Video)
"This video has a first hand witness to the massacre and she tells of her ordeal and the events that happened that day as she recalls them. Also a former Police Member goes through the detail and proposes some questions that challenge the official story."

Categories: australia, crime, law, legal

Für Elise or Für Therese?

1810 Ludwig van Beethoven gave the world a romantic piece for piano, with the dedication, 'For Therese, as a remembrance'.

Nowadays not a lot is known about Therese, though she was possibly Therese von Malfatti, the daughter of a Viennese medical doctor, and at the time the focus of Beethoven's affections. When the work was published in 1865, the discoverer of the piece, Ludwig Nohl, quite possibly mistranscribed the illegible title as 'Für Elise'.

Hear the tune at Google Video

Categories: music, history, biography

The beautiful math that links coral, crochet and hyperbolic geometry

"Margaret Wertheim leads a project to re-create the creatures of the coral reefs using a crochet technique invented by a mathematician -- celebrating the amazements of the reef, and deep-diving into the hyperbolic geometry underlying coral creation."
Watch her presentation on TED

Categories: science, mathematics, art, aquatic, video

Robert Owen gets the 3rd degree for liberating children

On April 26, 1816, Robert Owen (1771 - 1858), Welsh-born philanthropic social reformer, pioneer of the cooperative movement, founder of New Lanark and New Harmony communities, appeared before Sir Robert Peel's House of Commons Committee, UK.

Question: At what age to take children into your mills?

Robert Owen: At ten and upwards.

Question: Why do you not employ children at an earlier age?

Robert Owen: Because I consider it to be injurious to the children, and not beneficial to the proprietors.

Question: What reasons have you to suppose it is injurious to the children to be employed at an earlier age?

Robert Owen: Seventeen years ago, a number of individuals, with myself, purchased the New Lanark establishment from Mr. Dale. I found that there were 500 children, who had been taken from poor-houses, chiefly in Edinburgh, and those children were generally from the age of five and six, to seven to eight. The hours at that time were thirteen. Although these children were well fed their limbs were very generally deformed, their growth was stunted, and although one of the best schoolmasters was engaged to instruct these children regularly every night, in general they made very slow progress, even in learning the common alphabet. I came to the conclusion that the children were injured by being taken into the mills at this early age, and employed for so many hours; therefore, as soon as I had it in my power, I adopted regulations to put an end to a system which appeared to me to be so injurious.

Question: Do you give instruction to any part of your population?

Robert Owen: Yes. To the children from three years old upwards, and to every other part of the population that choose to receive it.

Question: If you do not employ children under ten, what would you do with them?

Robert Owen: Instruct them, and give them exercise.

Question: Would not there be a danger of their acquiring, by that time, vicious habits, for want of regular occupation?

Robert Owen: My own experiences leads me to say, that I found quite the reverse, that their habits have been good in proportion to the extent of their instruction ...

Early progressives in the Book of Days

Categories: utopian, cooperative-movement, labor, progressive, labor-history, radical, radical-history, history, child-labor

US to reveal alleged prison abuse photos

"Defense Department officials worry that the Bush-era images will prompt a backlash in the Middle East.

Washington, DC - "The Obama administration agreed late Thursday to release dozens of photographs depicting alleged abuses at U.S. prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush White House.

"The decision will make public for the first time photos obtained in military investigations at facilities other than the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Forty-four photos that the American Civil Liberties Union was seeking in a court case, plus a 'substantial number' of other images, will be released by May 28.

"The photos, examined by Air Force and Army criminal investigators, are apparently not as shocking as those taken at Abu Ghraib, which became a symbol of U.S. mistakes in Iraq. But Defense Department officials nevertheless are concerned that the release could incite another backlash in the Middle East.

"Some of the photos show U.S. service members intimidating or threatening detainees by pointing weapons at them, according to officials who have seen them. Military officers have been court-martialed for threatening detainees at gunpoint.

"'This will constitute visual proof that, unlike the Bush administration's claim, the abuse was not confined to Abu Ghraib and was not aberrational,' said Amrit Singh, a lawyer for the ACLU, which reached the agreement as part of a long-running legal battle for documents related to anti-terrorism policies under President George W. Bush ..."

Source

Categories: torture, usa, bush, abu-ghraib, obama

The Band Played Waltzing Matilda

For Anzac Day:

The bloody toll: how Australia's young men paid
for the adventurism of European politicians and arms traders

Total population of Australia in WWI: 5 million
Total population (approx.) of males of service age: less than 1 million
Total enlisted 300,000
Wounded 159,171
Killed 59,330
Total Casualties 218,501
Percentage of Casualties 72%

Categories: anzac, australia, war, peace, video, music, youtube

Anzac Day, public holiday, Australia, New Zealand, Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa and Tonga

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives.
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours ...
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.
After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, commander of Turkish forces at Gallipoli, 'father of the Turkish nation', showing great magnanimity to his former enemies

Today we mourn the dead and the criminal stupidity of those who send them to their fate. It is the anniversary of the Allied invasion of Turkey at the Battle of Gallipoli on this day in 1915. (The Anzac covering force, the 3rd Brigade of the Australian 1st Division, began to go ashore shortly before dawn at 4.30 am on April 25.) An estimated 131,000 Allied soldiers were killed and 262,000 wounded (sources vary widely); about 250,000 (some sources say 450,000) Turkish men were killed or wounded in an area measured in a handful of square kilometres.

Anzac (or ANZAC) Day, named from the acronym of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, commemorates the landing of British and ANZAC forces on the beach at Gelibolu (Gallipoli), Turkey, on this day in 1915, in a failed invasion of Turkey in World War One. In Australia, it is generally commemorated with more reverence and enthusiasm than practically any public holiday, including Australia Day and Easter. Perhaps only Christmas is as widely commemorated ...

Liam Clancy

Categories: war, peace, australia, new-zealand, turkey, wwI, calendar-customs

Bellingen cenotaph, Anzac Day (April 25), 2009

Bellingen cenotaph, Anzac Day (April 25), 2009, 4
Originally uploaded by Pip_Wilson.

A touching message at the cenotaph in Hyde Street, Bellingen, at the Anzac Day dawn ceremony this morning.

I'm a member of the Rainbow Region Flickr group for North-eastern New South Wales.

More on Anzac Day in the Book of Days

Categories: bellingen, anzac, australia, flower, war, peace

The auction of possessions of Oscar Wilde

1895 Many of Oscar Wilde's personal possessions -- books, crockery, furniture, and so on -- were auctioned in London to pay the solicitor's bills that he owed and was unable to pay during the infamous trial in which he was convicted.

Imagine, if you will, what might have happened to one of Oscar Wilde's books that was auctioned. See 'Walt Whitman Shall Not Sleep', in the Wilson's Almanac Poetry section for a speculative poem by your almanackist, which follows the book from England to Australia.

Categories: literature, poetry, history, biography

Early French settlement on Tasmania

1792 Australia: While on an expedition to find Captain Jean François De La Pérouse, who had vanished after departing Botany Bay on March 10, 1788, French admiral, Joseph-Antoine Raymond de Bruni d’Entrecasteaux (1739 - 1793) and crew set foot on Tasmania.

The mission was also fitted out with scientific instruments, and accompanied by a selection of some of France’s finest scientists, and was in fact the largest and best-equipped scientific expedition dispatched from France in the 18th century. Aboard were botanists, hydrographers, astronomers, artists – even a gardener, who left his mark on the island.

Two landfalls were made on the Tasmanian coast at Recherche Bay – in April, 1792 for 26 days, and again in January, 1793 for 24 days. Records show that the French and Australians enjoyed each other's company in very respectful ways, which was not altogether usual in the annals of European colonisation. The French entertained the locals with music, including the performance of excerpts from a popular opera of the day ...

He was a she
In the ship’s company was a steward, Louis Girargin, aged about 38, who was in fact a woman disguised as a man – the first European woman in Tasmania. Her name was Marie Louise Victoire Girgarin ...

Categories: australia, france, sexuality, history, australian-history

Tapping your mobile phone

How your cell phone can be secretly hijacked and used against you -- and how to protect yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCyKcoDaofg

I dips me lid to Lynn Fux for sending me this link.

Categories: technology, privacy, surveillance, internet

The Wilson's Almanac Articles Page

Hundreds of articles for your pleasure are at the Wilson's Almanac Articles Page. As they say in the Classics (Illustrated) -- "check it out".

Give yourself a few hours ... The Articles Page also leads to many millions of words of material, including the big Book of Days, where you can look up folklore, events and birth dates related to you, your family's and friends' birthdays. Stuff you can print out at no charge to give as a birthday present instead of a pair of socks.

I've had a ball writing nearly 9 million words (even though I still type with two fingers that are getting RSI!), and I hope you have fun surfing the Articles Page for free. Go to http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/articles.html . Don't tell your boss you're goofing off. Tell him you're researching something that will help the company, and help him get richer. As he's a boss, he's probably unutterably stupid and will believe whatever you tell him. Bear in mind that his motivation is primarily for himself, not for the company itself. That's called 'human nature'.

It's worth a shot, anyway. See you at the Articles Page. Drop me a line.

Abundance and gratitude,

Pip Wilson, your almanackist:
http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/resume.html

Categories: almanac, folklore, calendar-customs

The Wandering Jew: A curious medieval legend

1774 The Wandering Jew appeared in Brussels. In the Middle Ages, it was believed that there was a Jewish man still alive who had been alive at the time of Jesus Christ; the belief persisted as late as 1868, which is perhaps the last notice we have of 'the Wandering Jew'. The tale has obviously anti-Semitic origins and the central character of the enduring legend may be seen as a sort of medieval Ancient Mariner or Flying Dutchman, with racist overtones.

Cartaphilus, who was about thirty years old then, has remained the same age ever since (despite Gustave Doré's representation of him as an old man). Having insulted Jesus Christ on the last day of the latter's life, he is condemned to wander the earth until Judgement Day ...

Categories: legend, folklore, jesus

Unveiling the Sixth Sense

This is a must see! A cheap, wearable device with a projector that interacts with the Net and other modern technologies.

Thanks Diana Schuetz for the tip off.

From http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blBohrmyo-I



Note to Feedblitz subscribers to daily posts from Wilson's Blogmanac: videos embedded in your subscription emails don't play, but you can click on the headline above to see today's video.

Categories: internet, technology, future, video, youtube

Introducing H. Fish, consummate artist

H. Fish, the brilliant artist who worked with Robert Crumb and Rick Griffin at ZAP comix, worked on cover art for Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, and got the contract for designing the Batmobile 2, at last has his own website http://www.hfish.com.au/ for us all to enjoy. I strongly recommend you check it out, Bookmark it, and share it with your friends -- and view Fish's huge Gallery.

If you're a regular reader and/or subscriber of this blog (and I hope you'll subscribe HERE), you might remember my post of January 12, 'A breakfast never to be forgotten', in which I introduced Mr H. Fish, a new friend who greatly honoured me with a painting called 'Just After Meeting Pip Wilson'. Go and take a look if you have time.

But, most importantly, make time to visit the new H. Fish Studio, Bookmark it, and drop him a line -- tell him Pip sent you. He lives not far from my Bellingen home, 'The Ponderosa'.



Also check out Fish's impressive resumé from his Profile page. Wow!

Prices on his site are in Australian dollars, so that's like 30 per cent cheaper than $US.



Then you might like also to visit the Wilson's Almanac Articles page for two lists: (1) Cartoonists and comix artists, and (2) the BIG 'Hiplist' (go on, Almaniacs, test your hip knowledge).

Categories: art, usa, australia, psychedelia, erotica, bellingen, comix

Folklore from the fair-day of Tenbury Wells, UK

In Worcestershire, England, there was a saying that in that county you never hear the cuckoo before Tenbury fair-day, or after Pershore fair-day, which is June 26.

Note the traditional rhyme:

In April the cuckoo shows his bill;
In May he sings all day;
In June he alters his tune;
In July away he'll fly;
In August fly he must.

Categories: uk, folklore, calendar-customs, phenology

New song by 8 Ball Aitken, Outback Booty Call!

Another great song from my mate 8 Ball Aitken who's back in Australia after a successful overseas tour. http://www.8ballaitken.com.

His manager the lovely Bird Jensen can be found on Facebook, and you can watch the video of 'Outback Booty Call!' there, or on my Pip Wilson Facebook which is http://www.facebook.com/people/Pip-Wilson/1086601036.

Categories: music, video, australia

Michael Franti and Spearhead : Hey World (Don't Give Up)

Categories: music, video, youtube

Benjamin Tucker struggled for individual freedom

1854 Benjamin Tucker (d. June 22, 1939), American publisher, journalist, propagandist, theorist, leading proponent of individualist anarchism in the 19th Century, born at South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, USA. Tucker translated into English Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s classic work What is Property?

Benjamin Tucker's contribution to American anarchism was as much through his publishing as his own writing. In editing and publishing the anarchist periodical, Liberty, Tucker both filtered and integrated the theories of such European thinkers as Herbert Spencer and Proudhon with the thinking of American individualist activists, Lysander Spooner, Ezra Heywood, Stephen Pearl Andrews, William Greene (William Batchelder Greene) and Josiah Warren, as well as the uniquely American free thought and free love movements in order to produce a rigorous system of philosophical or individualist anarchism.

Tucker shared with the advocates of free love and free thought a disdain for prohibitions on non-invasive behaviour and religiously-based legislation, but he saw the poor condition of American workers as a result of four state-maintained monopolies: the money monopoly, the land monopoly, tariffs, and patents ...

Early progressives in the Book of Days :: CounterCulture Wiki

Categories: progressive, anarchism, radical, history, radical-history

Positively Misguided: The Myths & Mistakes of the Positive Thinking Movement

Beware of New Age gurus.

Positive thinking obviously has its benefits, and so do affirmations. But, as Anthony Robbins perspicaciously once said, no amount of 'affirming': "My garden has no weeds, my garden has no weeds", is a substitute for getting on your hands and knees and pulling out the weeds. Robbins also quoted from an old Arabian proverb, which apparently says, "Have faith, but don't forget to tie up your camels".

I commend the following article:

Positively Misguided: The Myths & Mistakes of the Positive Thinking Movement

"The 'zero limits' subculture argues that anything is possible through the sheer and single-minded application of will. Lampooning the idea, management consultant Payson Hall writes: 'The other day I broke a 12" x 12" x 1" pine board with my bare hand after listening to a 90-minute motivational talk about breaking barriers to achieve goals. [But] the inspirational message, "you can do whatever you are committed to,’ troubled me ... I suspect the session facilitator would have agreed, particularly if I had produced a 12" x 12" x 1" steel plate.'

"Then again, common sense never deterred a PMA guru intent on making his point. Nor did good taste."
Source: eSkeptic

Categories: skepticism

Wacky Spike Milligan

1918 Today is Burmese New Year, a day of jokes and foolery, like the Western April Fools' Day and the Indian Holi festival. So it's appropriate that April 16 is also the birthday (1889) of British comedian Sir Charles Chaplin, and another Knight of the Realm, Indian-born Spike Milligan (Terrance Allan Milligan, d. February 26, 2002), Irish comedian and poet.

Milligan almost single-handedly wrote all the scripts for The Goon Show, which, remarkably, is still broadcast, and listened to by millions about fifty years since it began ...

Categories: uk, humour, ireland, biography, burma

Seditionist Tom Mann was ahead of his times

1856 Tom Mann (d. March 13, 1941), noted British trade unionist. Largely self-educated, Mann became a successful organiser and a popular public speaker in the labor movement. He was acclaimed as the greatest labor agitator and orator of his time.

His political awareness began at public meetings addressed by Annie Besant and John Bright. He was an associate of Henry Hyde Champion (who. like Mann, emigrated to Australia). Mann formed an organisation, the Eight Hour League, which successfully pressured the Trades Union Congress to adopt the eight-hour day as a policy goal. In 1894 he helped found Britain’s Independent Labour Party and became its first Secretary. In 1901, Mann emigrated to Australia where was arrested twice and charged with sedition but in both cases was acquitted. In Melbourne he was active in Australian trade unionism and became an organizer for the Australian Labor Party ...

Mann was charged with sedition several times, including on two occasions in Australia. In England in 1911 he was found guilty of sedition and sentenced to six months imprisonment ...

Categories: uk, australia, labor, history, labor-history, biography

Darkwood Poems by Brian Hawkins

http://www.darkwoodpoems.com/

This site contains material relating to the book 'Darkwood Poems', by Brian Hawkins, published by Topknot Books.

"Darkwood Poems is about the Dorrigo/Bellinger area of New South Wales, specifically Thora and the Darkwood Road. The land is a treasure-trove, a biological jewel, an ancient refugium for thousands of amazing plants and animals that hark back to our ur-continent, Gondwana. When I arrived, I found it hard to believe that I could be lucky enough to live in such a place: all the riches of creation seemed to glitter before me. Many of these poems make up a sort of nature-diary, chronicling the events of a year (in truth, a couple of years, though the bulk of the book was written between January 2006 and February 2007) – though I hope they are more than that."

Brian Hawkins and Pip Wilson publicly read poetry together in Bellingen

Categories: australian-poetry, australian-literature, australia, literature, bellingen, poetry

Josiah Warren, the Peaceful Revolutionist

1874 Death of Josiah Warren (b. date unknown, 1798), American reformer, inventor, musician, printer, typographer, author (True Civilization; Equitable Commerce; Manifesto, written at Robert Owen's community, New Harmony).

He was a co-founder, with Stephen Pearl Andrews (1812 - '86), of Modern Times community. Warren is sometimes called "the first individualist anarchist in America".

From January 1833, Warren published The Peaceful Revolutionist, arguably the first anarchist paper in the world. Philosopher John Stuart Mill, an admirer of Warren, in his Autobiography adopted Warren's phrase, 'sovereignty of the individual' ...

Categories: radical-history, usa, biography, history, community, anarchism, progressive

The Future of Journalism

I'm reminded of the C&W song, 'Mama, Don't Let Your Sons Grow up to be Cowboys'. Don't let them grow up to be journalists, either.

This radio forum on the demise of print media, radio and TV, and the rise of the Internet (but with less employment for journalists and writers) is important listening, albeit scary for those who have tried to build a career with scribbling.

"The Brookings Institution forecasts that in coming months, about 11 American cities will be left without newspapers. So what's the state of play here in Australia? Should we envisage altogether new models to ensure that mass, quality journalism remains viable? Or is this alarmist?"

Source (with audio)

Categories: journalism, media, internet, australia

Easter Monday customs & folklore

At my home town of Bellingen, NSW, Australia, it is an ancient Easter Monday custom (dating from a recent year) to put away the washing, microwave Good Friday's hot cross buns, make a cup of tea and write to one's friends abroad with tales of ancient folk customs ...

However, Australia is not the only country with a heart-warming sense of culture and community: thankfully there are other places of the world where Easter Monday is commemorated just as richly. Poland is one of these, and Dyngus Day is its Easter Monday. It is also called: Smigus, Smingus, Smyngus, Splash Monday, or Wet Monday (Mokry Poniedzialek or Lany Poniedzialek).



Poland's Dyngus, or Smigus, Day is said to hark back to the baptism of the founder of Polish Christianity, Prince Mieszko I (c. 935 - 992), and his entire court, on Easter Monday, 966. Dyngus is an ancient celebration which is still observed both in country villages and the big cities, with singing, pranks, visiting friends' houses, and the custom of dousing.

The custom of pouring water is an ancient spring rite of cleansing, purification, and fertility – at this time of year there are drenching customs enacted in Sri Lanka and Thailand during their respective New Year celebrations. In a Spring custom of pagan (pre-Christian Slavic) times, the Poles 'confronted' (dingen) Nature with their pouring of water and switching with pussy willows to purify themselves for the year ahead. The alternative name for the day comes from smiganie, meaning 'switching' ...

More at our Easter Monday page

Easter at Wilson's Almanac

Categories: calendar-customs, easter, new-year, poland, australia, sri-lanka, thailand, bellingen, water

Extreme LED sheep art

Categories: youtube, video, humour, humor

Back online today

Hi, everyone. I have every hope that I will be properly, fully online by this afternoon (Monday afternoon). -- Pip Wilson

Getting back online after big flood

Dear Almaniacs from every continent on this beautiful planet,

My town of Bellingen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingen,_New_South_Wales is
in flood for the third time since September.

[Update: according to authorities, the March 31, 2009 flood was a 100-year flood. I have photos and some footage at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pipwilson/sets/]

Please see
http://www.coffscoastadvocate.com.au/story/2009/04/02/bellingen-awash/

My friend, Baz le Tuff, has kindly lent me a little laptop and taken Esmeralda
the Computer back to his place to see if he can fix her because of
lightning/water damage.

I'm slightly at a disadvantage, because my spectacles are also broken and can't
be repaired until I can get to the larger town nearby -- on Monday, I hope. I'm
doing the best one can under the circumstances -- the biggest flood since 1974,
and Wilson half blind. The rain is again tumbling down. It's possible 'Bello'
might continue to be flooded; however, although I live near the river, I live
just above the floodline, and I have plenty of provisions, so all is well for
me. Some people have emailed and phoned, showing concern. Thank you very much, but all is OK. However, there's been lots of damage for my neighbours.

Google News will keep you updated on the Bellingen situation, if you are
interested or concerned, as will http://www.bom.gov.au/

If I can do nothing else, I'll try to use this site, http://wilsonsalmanac.blogspot.com/ as my information centre, so please check here if you want news of me and Wilson's Almanac ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wilsonsalmanac/ ).

It's not too easy for me to type, because of busted glasses, and the laptop
isn't quite as easy to use as Esmeralda. Please bear with me. All will be right in a few days,
but it will definitely be a few days. Bye for now, and take care. I'll talk to
you soon after Bellingen is dry again and I can see properly.

Thanks to my brother John for kindly posting news on this site while I've been out of action.

Meanwhile, enjoy this old poem about my country of droughts and flooding rains:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Country

Categories: bellingen, weather, water, australia