WFMU (click here)

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Production crew at bLOGOS/HA HA listen to wfmu
and to it's many years of program audio archives.

Favorite programs include
Stochastic Hit Parade with Bethany Ryker (click here)
and Kenny G (click here)

Kenny G is wfmu's court jester. He (Kenneth Goldsmith) is also
the founder of UbuWeb, another great heap/archive/resource
much appreciated at bLOGOS/HA HA

If you haven't checked out UbuWeb, do yourself a favour (click here).

Illuminated Shroud : The Viewing

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(advertisement)

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A beautiful sight

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This photo of last week's Musk Vale fire was taken by local resident Pete Woods. Daylesford township is in the foreground, the fire is five kilometres south.



Perhaps the detail below will provide a better sense of scale in the image above : the old chimney (visible in both images) is in the grounds of the Daylesford Museum, home and archive of the Daylesford and District Historical Society. The Post Office is on one side, the Primary School on the other.



Yesterday all Victoria was on emergency alert with Fire Danger Index ratings off the scale, many times the 'extreme' index number. We were warned that strong north winds would blow all day, with gusts up to 12okm/hour, to be followed by a dangerous SW change late in the day. The winds did get to 12okm, and did blow all day, but by good fortune and great management the major fires still alight since Black Saturday were held and the few new starts were stopped.

Today is cool and there has been some rain. C and J and Susie the dog have returned from their third evacuation in two weeks. There is much general relief. Tonight, at the Daylesford Town Hall, I'll attend my seventh fire safety meeting since February 7.

The caption to this post refers to the beautiful sight two days ago of a team of Canberra firefighters (below) on the road opposite our overgrown gully - yes, we've been lobbying for more than ten years! - as they took up a waiting position to the north of Hepburn Springs. Big thanks, guys! The same to all the crews we've seen around town over the past week. Seeing one from Wallan, for instance, I realised that crew have probably been in the thick of their own massive fire for the last three weeks.

3 Mar 2009 ... The Kilmore East - Murrindindi Complex North fire is still going and is currently about 165,000 ha in size. The weather forecast for today is ...

The best sight of all was my brother 'Red' at the door yesterday morning. He'd come from Bendigo (where 50+ houses were lost on Black Sat) to face the day's potential with me. He ain't heavy!

Act & Re-Act

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Theatre of the Actors of Looking is proud to present Madame Marie Curie as the Actor of Looking.

Theatre of the Actors of Looking is also proud to present Master Junior's "meta-Act after Madame Marie Curie: Actor of Looking".

THANK YOU

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Victoria's savage fire season continues. Five days ago it visited upon this district too, with an outbreak at Musk Vale, 5 kilometres south of Daylesford. This grab from The (Ballarat) Courier shows the initial plume as it rose over Daylesford's former projection-house, The Rex.


In a few hours it grew to more than 2000 hectares. Only by the Herculean effort of the many teams of firefighters, including aerial water bombers and fixed wing spotters, plus a great number of support bodies, was the fire officially contained before the predicted return today of another peak weather event.

It is now Friday night. Five days of 24 hour-a-day preparations have proven successful: so far today there have been no breakouts from any of the ongoing fires. The photos below show the window display of the Daylesford Pharmacy (to the left of the NewsAgency shown above) and the all encompassing THANK YOU that so many, including yours truly, very gratefully endorse.

HOW TO...

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Today, a bLOGOS/HA HA special!
to inaugurate our new HOW TO... category.



Next time, .HOW TO... Build a Billboard

_art

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On the occasion of the 100th bLOGOS/HA HA post,
this enlightenment-wish haiku for D and all :



from Wikipedia :

Alternative spellings
sparrowfart; sparrow fart; sparrow's fart

Etymology
Has the folk etymology of being the time of day when the birds (including sparrows) first wake up, and presumably fart.

It has sometimes been thought to have originally been an Australian expression, and 'A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English' by Eric Partridge and Paul Beale does list sparrow's crow as an Australian euphemism. They list sparrow-fart as both daybreak, in colloquial use since before 1910, and popularised during WWI. Also as used in James Joyce's Ulysses meaning an inconsequential person.

It is included in Carr's Craven Dialect (1828) as from Yorkshire, with the definition given as 'break of day', according to Nigel Rees in 'A Word In Your Shell-like'.

Probably originates from an incorrect translation from the Urdu sawayray, meaning early, as used by members of the British Army since time immemorial.

Noun
sparrow-fart
(Australia, slang) Very early in the day; dawn.

PREVENT BUSHFIRES

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Have stayed away until now from any reference to Victoria's tragic bushfires of 7 February. It seems the day will be known as Black Saturday.

This morning, as I replaced in its envelope a courting letter my father wrote to my mother (Melbourne 4 Feb 1948), I noted the additional postal imperative: PREVENT BUSHFIRES

"I still wish you were with me my darling,
because I love you so much and always will."

An Allegory of Mind

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From eighth Century Japan comes this image of a projection-space held at arm's length and a loaded brush at the ready.

The first character is a movement across then down.

The second mirrors the first: down and across.

Together they form a new double character variously known as two-by-two; the prisoner and the guard; projection-space; self-grasping; dualism; self and other and so on. As a character that shows no sign of its cause and appears to know (echo) only itself, it is also sometimes translated simply as ignorance.

The image above is a detail of a larger image in which a brightly garbed calligrapher looks at this character he has drawn.

The journeyman projectionist is mounted on a galloping horse. Distracted from the uncontrolled rush of his charge, he faces backwards and looks at his projection-space with painted double. His vehicle, meanwhile, gallops on with its wild determined look.

Bound in the distinctive red harness of afflictive emotions, the horse is the untamed mind. Rider and vehicle alike: wild, divided, distracted and unstable.

A white-robed bodhisattva looks with compassion at the horse and rider as they career by. He is diligent awareness, and carries a rope, symbol and reminder of interconnectedness. He offers the rope to the rider.

"Samsara is mind turned outwardly, lost in its projections;

Nirvana is mind turned inwardly, recognising its true nature."
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche