poor fellow my country

i'm using the title of Xavier Herbert's significant contribution for good reason. 

"This book is the decisive story of how in those vital years, Australia threw away her chance of becoming a true commonwealth. The dream of Australia Felix, The Happy South Land.The book will long remain in the memory and is undoubtedly Herbert's supreme contribution to Australian literature."

Australia has now been handed to a party of  environmental destructivists.

the Liberal Party, led by someone whose avowed mission it is to cut down the last of the tall trees we have left, is going to be in charge of our sinking ship.

Australia is in deep environmental trouble. each bushfire that burns thousands of acres of forest contributes to reductions in rainfall. reduced leaves, reduced transpiration, reduced clouds, reduced rainfall

and when rainfall reduces, then regeneration does too. or we get massive crops of woody weeds instead of trees. so with the countryside already under threat [and remember we are the driest continent]

and with all the raving about reducing carbon emissions - wouldn't it make sense to leave the last tall trees [which are basically carbon + water + a few other things] standing to get on with the business of converting carbon dioxide to oxygen

rather than being pulped to provide newsprint and toilet paper. 

poor fellow, my country. 

it was so hot i felt like dyeing

these images are for those of you who think 

that eucalyptus

needs to be boiled for hours and hours

when you boil eucalyptus for more than an hour

what happens is

the kino in the leaf is released

making everything

brown

in this instance

brown and also well-boiled felt

is exactly what i wanted

cos

i'm not finished with this object

just yet

dark days

the colours of the dyepot
are reflecting the essence of the season

on the beach

 

while some people somewheres 

may be making snow angels

 

here in the deep deep south

we're making drawings in the sand

handworking with wool and cloth

these are gentle days here in Pennsylvania
though it rains
the air feels warm and soft
elsewhere the weather is not so kind
and there is flooding and mayhem

but for us the conditions are perfect
for making our felted landskins
while we stitch and cut and interweave and grind holes
the wool is absorbing moisture from the atmosphere
which is going to make the felting easier

we begin our day with a quiet moment
and a reading of some kind
open our bundles from the pot-of-the-night-before
and settle to stitching ourselves into a quiet place

smoke gets in your eyes

when i boil cauldrons
over twigs and sticks
people inevitably ask about carbon
my response is that the twigs and sticks
will produce the same amount of carbon-based gas
whether they rot in the woods
or are consumed by flames

in the former case the gas will [i think]
be methane
in the latter
carbon dioxide
[chemists finding flaws while reading this page are invited to correct me]

on balance
probably better than using
coal-sourced electricity...

the driest state on the driest continent

it feels like an exceptionally cold winter here, in the driest state on the driest continent
if i travelled north a bit
to where this image was shot last year
it would be a lot warmer
and not just in terms of the colours...

thanks everyone for your kind thoughts in response to the previous post


also grateful for various kind mentions here and there
Cass Nevada
and a friendly book review from earlier in the year
a lovely image of workshop samples here

off topic, but for the dog-loving readers
Chiengora

for people who like to thoroughly investigate one plant
twelve colours from osage orange by Tali Weinberg

and now
having played with the time vampire for far too long
i'm off out to the studio
to make something warm and felted to wear
when i go  here

[yes, i DO have a big woolly coat, but it's very very heavy
so i don't fancy schlepping it all across America
via San Francisco and New Orleans
on my way to the eastern bit of Canada]

sewing and mumbling

sailing on a silken sea
as forms begin to take shape
one huge dress, with space for two bodies

cut from an entire roll of silk

combines subtraction cutting

with 'zero waste' principles

stitching with a thread made of 35%cotton 65%silk

loaded into the overlocker

although it could be argued that using 48 metres
of cloth
to make one dress for two performers
is hardly frugal
but then, tis theatre
and the garment will have [i hope]
a long and useful life.
it's one thing practicing frugality at home
there are other parameters at play here
so i use materials that will wear well
be comfortable for the dancers

and are from natural sources
the audience doesn't usually expect
to see people dancing in old newspapers
or random retrievals from the ragbag
[ok. some people do. fine.]

[visit  helen lyôn  to see what she has been doing with a smaller version of such a dress]

the bits above are all that i cut away

two circles and a couple of leaf-shaped morsels

[stamps are there to give an idea of scale]

the only other discards were the shreds from overlocking -

they'll be used for making string

above, the beginnings of an other dress
with coral-like pockets
[for ochre, of course]


while sewing there is of course much thinking time
have been musing over the article written by Germaine Greer 
and sent me by Sophie Munns
i don't always agree with Ms Greer's pronouncements
but this time there's something that resonates

the flooding and the aftermath are awful , there's no arguing with that
but
while we continue to clear trees and build houses and roads
we can expect more
if the earth is covered with a hard crust there's simply nowhere for the water to go

consider the township of Mount Barker in South Australia
where the population has been expanding by the thousands each year
this year another development of 6000 houses has been allowed
little dogbox houses without rainwater tanks or verandahs
the mean annual rainfall there is 764.3mm [that's about 2 and a half feet]
most of it falls in winter
and swills about the roads already

now, if there were sensible development
communities built around shared gardens
a catchment for run-off
ponds to water the gardens
provision for filtering surplus water
and pumping it into the ground for storage
corridors of forest maintained for wildlife
and for life in the wild

instead we have lots of little dead-end roads
colourbond fences to keep out the neighbours
and lots more lovely run-off into the reservoirs
that supply the good folk of Adelaide
who for some reason don't realise that they're drinking
doggydoos, tyre scrapings, septic overflows and squashed possums
along with the Murray River cocktail that's pumped into those big holding dams each year

good gracious, i've been ranting again.
must be something in the water.

making something of julia gillard's climate confab

our [for the moment] Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced that she is calling a meeting of 150 interested parties to discuss Australia's potential responses to climate change.
i have some advice for her.
Julia dear, save the airfares and cut lunches and the money and just stop logging the forests.
now we've got that sorted, give the loggers some shovels and seeds and send them out to plant more trees
they'll find it far more satisfying [and less dangerous] than chopping them down
then
legalise the planting of hemp for paper, cloth and nourishing food from the seeds
put systems in place to harvest 'storm water' in the cities
and use it to keep urban trees alive
[they help clean the air]
make safe bicycle lanes AWAY from roads
and then set about tidying up industrial emissions

and on a lighter note
the kind person who writes the 'make something' pages
has put up a bunch of really nice photos of the recent workshop in Toronto
in case anybody would like to see what we got up to there....

Related articles by Zemanta

• Premier's bold plan on climate takes lead (theage.com.au)
• Critics blast emissions forum as more hot air (smh.com.au)

climate change policy

just in case all those delegates in Copenhagen are trawling the net looking for answers in between their bickering

here's my "climate change policy".

STOP logging the forests NOW

take back the chainsaws and give the loggers spades and seeds so they can plant more trees - it'll be gentler on their backs and will mean that their grandchildren might have air to breathe.

[and in case you're wondering, half of that paddock above is now planted to trees]

trees convert CO2 to Oxygen, handy stuff if you want to stay alive

also

no trees = no rain

no rain = no food

now that we've sorted that, we can start tackling the problem of reducing polluting emissions.

the times they are a changing

i rarely feel the urge to run with the pack

but

this year BlogActionDay has climate change as the theme.

there's are several issues i feel are getting insufficient attention.

rainfall in Australia has been shifting in pattern

the mountainous regions are getting less rainfall

other areas are being burdened by excessive falls

over-zealous development plans are chewing up the last remaining

agricultural areas in South Australia

and outrageous irrigation practices will undoubtedly

destroy the world-famous Barossa wine region within 20 years.

if carbon were really the culprit in terms of climate change, we'd be leaving coal in the ground

and STOPPING the decimation of old growth forests NOW.

not chopping down trees would have to be the simplest way of ensuring that the carbon they contain remains stored in a stable fashion.

next time you buy toilet paper, read the fine print on the packet. harvested from forests?

avoid it.

use the recycled stuff

and then

go plant trees

the world needs them.

brilliant beauty [though i say it myself]

ooh and aah seem to be the predominant noises we're hearing in this workshop. the colours from plants seem to be particularly brilliant here on the Kapiti coast. somehow the combination of climate, soil, flora and water conspire to send forth jewel-like brilliance...

above, a bark sample on an old wool blanket, made by a student

a bundle on wool gabardine, by another student

and those last three, details of a fragment of merino jersey, dyed by your correspondent...

how do you bury a cow?

our lovely if slightly mad Jersey GinGin breathed her nembutal-assisted last yesterday afternoon, after a ten-day long battle to survive being bitten by a brown snake.

we'd been hopeful, given seven out of ten large animals have been known to overcome the venom. our vet administered intravenous vitamin C (considered best practice for cattle) and we lugged honey-water and food to her a couple of times a day.

but yesterday morning she gave me a sad weary look that indicated she'd had enough. drinking was becoming a struggle and she couldn't even get a wad of cud up to chew.

so rather than leave her to gradually fade away covered in a million insidious flies, we called for help.

if i'm ever struck with the big C (not the vitamin) or other debilitating condition and if it comes the time when there's no hope for recovery and everything is ghastly...i hope somebody calls the vet to me too. intravenous nembutal seems a fairly gentle way to depart on the next big adventure.

later that evening all the other cows gathered around, singing a low and mournful song. this morning i buried her. so i can tell you now how a cow is buried. one spade-full of dry earth at a time. it took me an hour and a bit. mounding up, as opposed to digging down, given the bone-dry state of the land.

worst of it is, the next big wind we get will probably undo my work...dry dusty soil doesn't have a lot of staying power.   

bowled out

trawling for amusement across the ditch i found this one...a golden typo. anyone with sense would have left it in place as a national monument. click on the picture for the link and the full story...

and now on a more serious note...here's a different angle on the global climate issue, well worth reading

David Evans | July 18, 2008 

I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian
Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting
model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto
Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural
products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite
data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years. 
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused
global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core
data, no other suspects. 
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it
appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific
community were working together and lots of science research jobs were
created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big
budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It
was great. We were working to save the planet. 
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon
emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was
pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main
cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the
facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" 
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and
most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic
salient facts: 
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring
for years, and cannot find it. 
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in
the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an
increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere
over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using
radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the
temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot
spot. Whatsoever. 
If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause
of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a
significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse
signature then I would be an alarmist again. 
When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC
report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde
thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had
gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so
statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot. 
Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers,
but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind
shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the
temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out
the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything. 
2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause
significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global
warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise
temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no
observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant
cause of the recent global warming. 
3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the
warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C
in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature
readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas
encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the
thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite
data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to
1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend
and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of
satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no
warming since 2001 and a recent cooling. 
4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past
half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years
before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something
important about which was cause and which was effect. 
None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with
them, though they would dispute their relevance. 
The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his
movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing
that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context
our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this
dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion. 
Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of
little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global
warming. 
So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show
evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the
implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions. 
In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred
becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed
that the cause was merely asserted, not proved. 
If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global
warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?

The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have
not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming.
Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports
the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and
theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory. 
What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue
not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy
in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be
bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long
time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in
2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or
ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals
support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise. 
The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence
for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going
to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before
wrecking the economy. 
Dr David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from
1999 to 2005

more climatic nonsense

Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was recently quoted as blaming the state of the River Murray and its associated lakes Alexandrina and Albert on climate change.

I'm sorry, but this is arrant nonsense...rainfall in the river catchment area hasn't varied enough to cause the present situation. The root cause of the lack of water in the Murray is GREED. Irrigators are pumping out as much as they can suck while the water is there...meaning not a lot goes downstream. Where's this water going? A lot of it is used to unnecessarily irrigate vines resulting in a glut of cleanskins selling for less than the bottle (that they are contained in) costs. Remember too, that when Australia exports wine a lot of water goes overseas. Water that the driest continent needs to keep at home.

Add to that the complete idiocy of Mike Rann's South Australian Government who happily let 12 Gigalitres of rainwater flow out to sea during a recent bout of precipitation while complaining there isn't enough water in the Murray to supply Adelaide's needs. Twice as much water as Adelaide needs falls on the city every year, but instead of catching it and storing it, the government whines about the Murray and commissions a desalination plant.

new heights of idiocy for beaurocracy

whilst in Canberra (our nation's capital) last week various gems of governmental gossip floated past my shell-like ears. the usual response is to chuckle, stifle a yawn and order another Margharita...but the following piece of nonsense is too ridiculous to be ignored

apparently some bright spark who clearly has too much time on their hands has decided that farmers also need extra entertainment. the plan is that we are to weigh all of our stock individually on a quarterly basis, advise the tax office of the total weight and then be taxed on the estimated methane output.

every farmer i've shared this story with so far has given the same response ...'if that's the plan, we'll sell the sheep/cows/chickens/pigs/wildebeests and plant trees instead'...and that's our plan as well

enjoy eating your tree-flavoured cereal in years to come, washed down with soy 'milk' because there won't be any steaks, chops or bacon and certainly no yummy milkshakes

soylent green, here we come...