Just before Christmas our news was full of the incomprehensible – the mayor of a country town (Tamworth (Google Earth31° 5’58.45″S 150°55’22.31″E)) here in Australia declared a group of Sudanese families unwanted in his town. Some rolled their eyes and simply put it down to our redneck community. Others, including many in Tamworth, were outraged.…
Sharing something here from my Christmas Day. Love is bornWith a dark and troubled faceWhen hope is deadAnd in the most unlikely placeLove is born:Love is always born. From “When I Talk to You A Cartoonist Talks to God“By Leunig. A brilliant cartoonist, satirist, and social commentator. His website is worth a visit.
Our newspapers are reporting a downturn in tourists visiting Bethlehem at this time of the year. Just as they reported last year. I visited Bethlehem a few years ago when tensions were escalating and getting across the border into Palestine was problematic. The checkpoint was a flux of tension and a crossroads of hate. Those…
A remarkably evocative clip. Sung by Quynh Anh, an expat Vietnamese living in Europe. Having been to Vietnam I found it an evocative piece of video and music. All the more so for their disastrous past and their passion for the present. The English words contain none of the magic of the lyric French, or…
Cafe in Lane Cove, on Longueville Road. Two days before Christmas and the sweat sticks to my skin The day is overcast and threatens, then delivers, even more humidity as the sky lets loose a light shower, closes up, then releases another once the pavement has dried off. The heat is exacerbated by a furious…
Well, so “they” say. At this time of the year we are inclined to believe that is the case. We usually take what we have at our doorstep for granted. Until someone visits and we take them to the beach. And wonder why we don’t do it more often. Nephew Monty, out from England with…
Well, the Joseph Sherfy story is starting to piece itself together. The material is a little thin at this point but the Library of Congress has been helpful, so too some resources at Carlisle Army War College and also a very hospitable group of on-line enthusiasts at militaryhistoryonline.com This is by no means definitive or…
Family is having a handicapped kid.Family is having a handicapped kid, who some close to you want locked up.Family is having a handicapped kid who prompts parishioners to shift to different pews.Family is having a handicapped kid which means siblings friends won’t stay over.Family is having a handicapped kid who community services don’t want to…
The Peach Orchard at Gettysburg is understood by military historians to be significant in this particular battle for the Confederate breaking of the Union line. Under General Sickles the Union line had been drawn from the Devils Den, anchored at the Peach Orchard and then drawn up Emmitsburg Road. A map always helps, so here…
The pair of us landed in San Francisco and had four hours to spend before connecting to our flight across the Pacific and home. We had been on the road for a couple of weeks and were in no mood to hear from a clerk that, having checked in, we were not to leave the…