Flamingo Dancer’s blog

Vatican refuses to rule out alien life!

[http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/vatican-refuses-to-rule-out-alien-life/2008/05/14/1210444477504.html?sssdmh=dm16.314841 ]

 

Not surprised  - they have lived in an alien world for centuries!

Flamingo mother (me!) to 2nd daughter:

• Why is that when you take a couple days off work, someone writes a melodrama at work and has you as the main character but forgets to tell you? I was away from work 2 days and the headless chicken dancing began and a few minor people decided that instead of speaking directly to me on a minor issue they would run straight to the top and act as though I was responsible for world debt and the rice shortage. I guess it made them feel important, but all I could mutter to Mega Boss was "people never talk to me" and if they did I could explain the mechanics of the process and the huge number of people involved - not just them. Plebs.
• Why does the underwire in my bra, after what seems like only a very short time, start to poke into my armpits? Who ever thought underwire was a good idea anyway? Would a guy wear an underwire in his jock strap?
• When I have an egg on toast, I not only butter my toast, but I have jam on my toast as well. I place the egg on top of the jam toast and eat together. My sister does the same thing. I think It is a throw back to our German genes - the sweet and savoury thing German's love so much. I also like jam with wurst /sausage.
• Last night my husband said that things were quiet at work. I said that things always get busy when he hits the road checking the troops. He said he did not have time to hit the road. This morning he woke up and said he will   be away for the next two nights. ??? This he knew when he was telling me he was too busy to be away....then tonight he phones after dinner and says he is still at the office and will actually be home tonight and will go on the trip tomorrow. And they say women are unpredictable!
• Not only is most of my body heading south but it is shrinking as well. Maybe that is why the underwire in poking my armpits...and sadly there wasn't much to work with in the first place.
• I hadn't heard from 2nd daughter for a few days ( a text message for Mother's Day while I was away). I sent her an email this morning saying 'Remember me, I used to be your mother" and she emailed back "I have an opening for a new mother if you care to apply" I replied "send me the criteria sheet and I will see if I can fit it into my schedule". I am still waiting.
• We have a woman in our office who is pregnant. Her body is a temple. She is acting like no one has ever had a baby before and that she is carrying the Christ child. I want to tear her arms and legs off and gnaw them like a rabid dog. She is leaving at the end of June to await the blessed event... not too soon. I will hold the door open for her as she exits. I may even hire a marching band.
• I have three new jackets for winter but the weather is still hot. If I had nothing to wear but last year's outdated coat it would be blowing a bliazzard. I also treated myself to a new handbag and that I did use today. I am a one handbag girl - one basic colour and I take it everywhere. I get tired of switching the kitchen sink from bag to bag so stick with one. I think I am short a girl gene or two.
• At what age do you stop getting hair growth on your legs? I am sick of doing my legs. Old ladies never seem to hairy legs. Probably because Mother Nature knows then can't bend over to shave them anymore so she takes pity on old ladies. There has to be some plus for looking like a prune.
• If I was Queen of the World I would give me a 7 day weekend. I would consider giving you one too.
• If I went to New Zealand tonight I would get $1.24NZ for every $1AUS I exchanged. New Zealanders drive too fast and have mutiple little white crosses by the side of the road wherever you go, marking spots where people die. It is so depressing it makes you cry, It doesn't slow them up though. What else could you expect from the people who invented Bungy Jumping except a strong death wish. Beautilful country, crazy mind set.
• I think Obama should invite Caroline Kennedy to be VP. No one would dare vote against her.
• Why do motorcyclists think they don't have to follow the road rules and can weave in and out of the traffic from lane to lane without indication? And then I would feel bad for ever if I hit them. Sometimes I day dream of opening my car door so that they slam into it as they try to pass me. I have many evil thoughts as I drive my car.
• If I am watching tv in bed I expect my husband to not complain and just to try and sleep with the noise and light. If he is watching tv and I want to go to bed I expect him to switch the tv off immediately. I think that is the correct order of things.
• Tomorrow is going to be another long day. I sense these things.I may stop at the store and buy a new life on the way to work. This one doesn't really work for me. I deserve better.

I actually went to University for the first time at the age of 36. After a number of years at home raising our children we were finding it more difficult to make ends meet, and so I tried to re-enter the work force.  Doors shut in my face. It was made too obvious that they considered that my brain could only have solidified and my skills all but vanished.  So I applied to University and was accepted.

The first literature assignment I handed in came back with a mark of 12 out of 20. I stood in my lecturer’s office and cried because I thought I was never going to make it. Obviously I was stupid and was never going make it to ever graduate. Right in that moment it was all or nothing to me. This one setback, a low mark,  was enough to jump start my defeatist mind set and have me on the verge of running all the way back to my home sweet home.

However, I was able to muster the right or more positive responses to allow me to continue and even to flourish at University. I managed a credit for that unit in the first semester, and a High Distinction for following.

A friend had a similar experience when she embarked on journalism studies. One of the lecturers was an abrasive man who worked the students hard. Each week he made them do a general knowledge test and would be dismissive of anyone who would fail. His real method was to make the students aware that journalism was in fact a nasty business and you had to be tough to make it. If not there was the door. She ran for that door as fast as she could and for the past 15 years has blamed the lecturer for her “career loss”. She did go back to university but chose a course that had little hope of actually leading to a real career in Australia. She has worked in food service or retail every since.

So why did she default to helplessness so readily? She appeared not to be able to see that everything was not all or nothing. There is more than one way open to us. I assessed my options and decided that I had to work  smarter, she looked around and decided there were no options for her except to run away. Passivity, fear and depression have ruled her life ever since.

My friend decided that she wouldn’t just give up on this specific battle but with the tape on repeat in her head continually, she embraced the decision to capitulate on every issue. This feeling of helplessness that she took as her mantel  has allowed her to shun real responsibility for choices and the frustrations she experiences continuously.  My friend blames fate, circumstances and particularly other people for what befalls her. Somehow she never mobilized her own energy to overcome roadblocks to her goals.

How has she done this? She makes long lists of the negatives or disadvantages. Catastrophe  thinking.  I never hear her speak of positives. No little train that thinks it can. All defeats are so serious that she rehashes them continuously. Years after the fact, she is still generalizing it to her entire existence.

Why can I see these tendencies in her and she can’t see them herself? She willingly gives into them but never stops to think why is it so? Her frustrations bring her down and she sees all defeats as permanent and long term. She lives an immobilized life always waiting for the next hit which of course does come because she sets herself up in the crosshairs every time.  She surrenders before the first shot, when she perhaps should be singing I think I can, I think I can as she goes over the top of the trenches.

 

Like birds on the water. That’s how one survivor described the sight of over 300 bodies of fathers, mothers, and children, scattered over kilometres of ocean when the sun came up on October 20th 2001.

These people, mostly refugees from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, had travelled in some instance for years in search of somewhere safe to live their lives. Many of the women and children were on the boat because their husbands had come on ahead to Australia, only to be caught in our changing political tide and locked in detention or a newly devised Temporary Visa system which took away their rights to re-unite. Left without support, these mothers and young children were easy prey for people smuggling operators.

Crowded onto a fishing boat only 19.5 metres long, packed so tightly that teenagers had to climb on the roof and mothers hold children on their laps, the passengers were terrified even before they left port. One man attempting to take his family off was pistol whipped and forced back.

Armed Indonesian military supervised the boarding. A patrol boat escorted the leaky vessel out of the port of Lampong. Another sped by the vessel later that day. As the boat got into difficulties, passengers heard a twin engine plane overhead and set fire to clothing to try and signal for help.

When the engine failed in heavy seas, the SIEVX tipped over and sank. Over a hundred people survived the sinking, but no rescue came through a whole afternoon and night. But something appalling and inexplicable took place; reported by all survivors later to United Nations interviewers in Jakarta. Two large military vessels arrived in the night, shining spotlights on the water. A Zodiac style boat was launched. The people in the water started calling and swimming towards the lights, but the boats restarted their engines and sailed away. Dozens more people died, some giving up in despair and just allowing themselves to drown.

Eventually, the next day, after 20 hours in the water, fishing boats came across survivors, including Faris Kadhem a father whose wife and seven year old daughter had drowned, and Amal Basry, a mother who had lost sight of her teenage son when a big wave dragged them apart. Both begged the fishermen to search, and about forty more survivors were eventually found. Amal’s teenage son was among those found alive. But 353 others had died, either in the original sinking, or during the long night without rescue. Rescuers reported an awful sight, the body of a tiny baby, born during the nightmare of the sinking, still joined by its umbilical cord to its dead mother, afloat in the water.

The people of SIEVX were brave people, trying to give their children a decent life. They could so easily have been safely living among us now, their kids at school with ours. In a modern era, with planes going overhead, satellites, radar, GPS, such a mediaeval tragedy should never have been allowed to happen. And in an era of serious climate change, when millions more refugees will be created in coming decades, we need to have systems in place to manage this more competently. 

The SIEVX Memorial takes a simple first step. It says - these lives were sacred. We won’t forget them. Over a thousand Australians, most of them children but also churches and community groups from every corner of the country, have made something beautiful, haunting, and full of power, to try and bring about a better Australia.

http://www.sievxmemorial.com/about-sievx.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

yes he did sit with his back to the window - which was not bullet proof, and was often open for fresh air - so many missed chances....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those two booths in the corners are indeed "cone of silence" sound proof booths for trading state secrets and general gossip. We often though Agent 86 was running our country and we were right!  This room was used until 1988! please don't laugh....

 

 

 

 

Where we celebrated Mother's Day lunch - fitting for Queen of the World don't you think - only parliament will do, dahling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

some of them are a little masucline looking - well we know poor Margret Whitlam is but we love her all the more for that- I am sure that SOME of them must have been somewhat attractive?

Notice Sonia McMahon (Billy McMahon/Liberal Party) was absent. Sonia (Julian's Mum) probably thought she was too beautiful to be there with the rest of the herd, but after so many years "doing lunch" and driving while under the influence charges her bloom has faded somewhat!

[more panel photographs in my photo library]

Commemorative Courtyard

In front of the Hall of Memory is the Pool of Reflection, crowned by the Eternal Flame. To left and right, at a mezzanine level, visitors can see stone cloisters, where dark, bronze panels of the Roll of Honour record the names of over 102,000 Australian servicemen and women who have died in wars since the late nineteenth century. These names, listed alphabetically and by unit, do not include rank or honour. Many visitors insert paper poppies in the niches of the Roll of Honour, next to a name that has personal or group connections. .http://www.awm.gov.au/virtualtour/commemorative.asp

 

 

 

 

 

 

The focus of the Memorial is the Hall of Memory, a quiet place for contemplation of the efforts of ordinary Australians in war and for the remembrance of those who suffered and died. The Hall is a complex symbolic area, consisting of a number of pieces.

 

 

 

old and new Parliament House, Canberra

The Man From Snowy River - Andrew Barton "Banjo" Patterson

THERE was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
    That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses — he was worth a thousand pound,
    So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
    Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush horses are,
    And the stock-horse snuffs the battle with delight.

There was Harrison, who made his pile when Pardon won the cup,
    The old man with his hair as white as snow;
But few could ride beside him when his blood was fairly up—
    He would go wherever horse and man could go.
And Clancy of the Overflow came down to lend a hand,
    No better horseman ever held the reins;
For never horse could throw him while the saddle-girths would stand,
    He learnt to ride while droving on the plains.

And one was there, a stripling on a small and weedy beast,
    He was something like a racehorse undersized,
With a touch of Timor pony—three parts thoroughbred at least—
    And such as are by mountain horsemen prized.
He was hard and tough and wiry—just the sort that won’t say die—
    There was courage in his quick impatient tread;
And he bore the badge of gameness in his bright and fiery eye,
    And the proud and lofty carriage of his head.

But still so slight and weedy, one would doubt his power to stay,
    And the old man said, “That horse will never do
For a long and tiring gallop—lad, you’d better stop away,
    Those hills are far too rough for such as you.”
So he waited sad and wistful—only Clancy stood his friend —
    “I think we ought to let him come,” he said;
“I warrant he’ll be with us when he’s wanted at the end,
    For both his horse and he are mountain bred.

“He hails from Snowy River, up by Kosciusko’s side,
  Where the hills are twice as steep and twice as rough,
Where a horse’s hoofs strike firelight from the flint stones every stride,
    The man that holds his own is good enough.
And the Snowy River riders on the mountains make their home,
    Where the river runs those giant hills between;
I have seen full many horsemen since I first commenced to roam,
    But nowhere yet such horsemen have I seen.”

So he went — they found the horses by the big mimosa clump —
    They raced away towards the mountain’s brow,
And the old man gave his orders, ‘Boys, go at them from the jump,
    No use to try for fancy riding now.
And, Clancy, you must wheel them, try and wheel them to the right.
    Ride boldly, lad, and never fear the spills,
For never yet was rider that could keep the mob in sight,
    If once they gain the shelter of those hills.’

So Clancy rode to wheel them—he was racing on the wing
    Where the best and boldest riders take their place,
And he raced his stock-horse past them, and he made the ranges ring
    With the stockwhip, as he met them face to face.
Then they halted for a moment, while he swung the dreaded lash,
    But they saw their well-loved mountain full in view,
And they charged beneath the stockwhip with a sharp and sudden dash,
    And off into the mountain scrub they flew.

Then fast the horsemen followed, where the gorges deep and black
    Resounded to the thunder of their tread,
And the stockwhips woke the echoes, and they fiercely answered back
    From cliffs and crags that beetled overhead.
And upward, ever upward, the wild horses held their way,
    Where mountain ash and kurrajong grew wide;
And the old man muttered fiercely, “We may bid the mob good day,
    No man can hold them down the other side.”

When they reached the mountain’s summit, even Clancy took a pull,
    It well might make the boldest hold their breath,
The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full
    Of wombat holes, and any slip was death.
But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head,
    And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer,
And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed,
    While the others stood and watched in very fear.

He sent the flint stones flying, but the pony kept his feet,
    He cleared the fallen timber in his stride,
And the man from Snowy River never shifted in his seat—
    It was grand to see that mountain horseman ride.
Through the stringy barks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground,
    Down the hillside at a racing pace he went;
And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound,
    At the bottom of that terrible descent.

He was right among the horses as they climbed the further hill,
    And the watchers on the mountain standing mute,
Saw him ply the stockwhip fiercely, he was right among them still,
    As he raced across the clearing in pursuit.
Then they lost him for a moment, where two mountain gullies met
    In the ranges, but a final glimpse reveals
On a dim and distant hillside the wild horses racing yet,
    With the man from Snowy River at their heels.

And he ran them single-handed till their sides were white with foam.
    He followed like a bloodhound on their track,
Till they halted cowed and beaten, then he turned their heads for home,
    And alone and unassisted brought them back.
But his hardy mountain pony he could scarcely raise a trot,
    He was blood from hip to shoulder from the spur;
But his pluck was still undaunted, and his courage fiery hot,
    For never yet was mountain horse a cur.

And down by Kosciusko, where the pine-clad ridges raise
    Their torn and rugged battlements on high,
Where the air is clear as crystal, and the white stars fairly blaze
    At midnight in the cold and frosty sky,
And where around the Overflow the reedbeds sweep and sway
    To the breezes, and the rolling plains are wide,
The man from Snowy River is a household word to-day,
    And the stockmen tell the story of his ride.

The walls and dome of the hall are lined with one of the largest mosaics in the world, also the work of Waller, unveiled in 1959. The mosaic inside the dome depicts the souls of the dead rising from the earth towards their spiritual home, represented by a glowing sun within the Southern Cross. The figures on the walls – a soldier, a sailor, an airman and a servicewoman – recall the Australian experience of the Second World War. Over six million pieces of glass tesserae, or tiles, imported from Italy, were used in the composition; the installation was overseen by Italian craftsmen and took three years to complete. http://www.awm.gov.au/virtualtour/commemorative.asp

 

 

 

 

 

Every year I have the same dilemma - choosing a card for MIL, husband's mother. The evil accursed one. I refuse to give her one of those cards that say what a great mum you are and how much we all love you (my Mum gets that one) so I have to sift through endless cards until I find the one that I can give and still retain my self respect.

This year's effort simply said Mum on the front and inside it said "hope you have a nice Mother's Day".

 

Two wrongs may not make a right, but I don't have to like doing the right.

My first mother's day was spent in hospital lying on my left side trying to lower blood pressure so Baby could go the final month. A very shy little boy scout came into the room and gave me a white handkerchief as a Mother's Day gift. He was so sweet and I was so full of panic and hormones I burst into tears. At least I had a handkerchief for the tears!