Conversations@Intersections

A Pukeko in a Ponga Tree

2009-12-22T00:15:00.001+13:00

Sung to The Twelve Days of Christmas, but Kiwi Style by Kingi Ihaka 1981
Check the links for humourous or informative tangents
Remember to slow down the line " Five - big - fat - pigs ! "

On the first day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
A pukeko in a ponga tree

On the second day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
two kumera
And a pukeko in a ponga tree

On the third day of Christmas
....
and so on, until...

On the twelfth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Twelve piupius swinging
Eleven haka lessons
Ten juicy fish heads
Nine sacks of pipis
Eight plants of puha
Seven eels a swimming
Six pois a twirling
Five - big - fat - pigs !
Four huhu grubs
Three flax kits
Two kumera
And a pukeko in a ponga tree!

The Waiata group sang this at the Massey University staff Christmas party and then I asked Paul to lead it for us at Carols in the Park @Little Shoal Bay. Super crowd pleaser both times!

Jesus Twitter

2009-12-22T00:06:00.000+13:00

Comments?

Joseph Shopping for Jesus

2009-12-21T00:26:00.004+13:00

Talk about blasphemy & controversy! Last year at about this same time I posted a humourous, though probably offensive to some, spoof on Joseph Christmas shopping for Jesus. The following is an excerpt, but click the link for the full version.

Don't go there if you're going to be offended and

don't be offended if you go there! I warned you!

Joseph to Mary on his iPhone?

"So I'm here now and, let me tell you, the whole concept of hell we've been working with up 'til now - it's all changed babe. I am standing in the middle of it and in hell, I know now, they play Feliz Navidad over and over again.

And there are angry people everywhere and everyone is stressed out and this is not doing my blood pressure any good. And, just to top things off on this most joyous day of days in the season, I have totally forgotten to bring the Lego list with me. I think I left it on the kitchen bench - can you go and have a look for me?

"Yeah, yeah, I'm still here. And guess what, they're not playing Feliz Navidad anymore - hallelujah! Instead we're being treated to Do They Know It's Christmas? Brilliant, when you consider Christmas is the only sodding reason we're all here, so I think we're pretty bloody well aware what time of the year it is, thank you very much! And if 'they' aren't, then they're the lucky ones.

"No, I am approaching this with an open mind and, yes, I did agree to do the boy's shopping this year - even though, as God knows all too well, he's not strictly 'my' boy, is he? No, I'm not harping on about the stepfather-of-the-Son-of-God thing again, I'm just saying, that's all. Can we stick to the Lego wish list issue, please?"

". . . and now they're playing I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus so just really don't tell me, right now, that you knew Santa Claus as well, because I can't be dealing with that stuff right now!

"Look, yes, I'm well aware that I'm buying for both Christmas and his birthday - funny how that turned out - but Christmas isn't all about our son! Okay, yes, on one level it is, but that's not what I'm talking about!"

Originally from James Griffin's, Seeking gifts, I traverse afar, New Zealand Herald, 15 December

Identity Questions

2009-12-20T00:05:00.002+13:00

Identity is an interesting concept to contemplate.

Am I more than my DNA? More than my ideas? More than my output or usefulness?

Am I more than my bank balance? More than the sum of my years, experiences or friends on Facebook?

How do you measure who you are?

An update on my profile:

my flower pots - needing attention & repotting.
neglected brushes - still neglected.
that stack of books - growing, sometimes toppling over.
traveling - done that and a bit tired of it right now.
Schooling . . . thinking about it.
Journalism - writing a blog and updates to project partners
InterCultural Communications - everyday in multi-cultural Auckland
Theology - focused on a dodgy billboard and the meaning of Christmas
last Gig - As Boots, Dora the Explorer's monkey, in a Christmas parade where I didn't mean to bean people with candy, but think I musta as I couldn't see except thru the mouth of the money suit!
next Gig - M.C. for L'il Shoal Bay's Carols in the Park on Sunday. What to wear?

Does this give you insight as to who I am?

Who are you?

The Grammar of Christmas

2009-12-20T00:03:00.001+13:00

Saint Nicholas is the main Clause.

His wife is a relative Clause.

His children are dependent Clauses.

Their Dutch uncle is a restrictive Clause.

Santa’s elves are subordinate Clauses.

Can you do better with a clever Christmas joke? There's a prize for the winner.

Santa's Mobile Shop Assistants

2009-12-19T11:07:00.006+13:00

According to the New York Times Technology page, the mobile phone is quickly becoming Santa’s biggest helper in the US. Not sure how widespread this is for use around the world. Read on.

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

The ShopSavvy application.

"Online retailers are revamping the mobile versions of their sites so consumers can make purchases without tedious typing. And offline retailers, battling for every last dollar, are sending cellphone users electronic coupons to lure them away from competitors.

One in five shoppers said they intended to use their cellphones to shop this holiday season, according to an annual survey by Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm. Of those, 45 percent said they would use their phone to research prices, 32 percent said they would use it to find coupons or read reviews and 25 percent said they would make purchases from their phones.

“We are at the cusp of this technology really driving a lot of activity during the shopping season,” said Stacy Janiak, United States retail practice leader at Deloitte. “It is both an opportunity and a challenge for a retailer, because you can have a consumer who can cross-shop your store with other bricks-and-mortar stores or online, all from the convenience of your aisle.”

Heather Reed, a mother in Cypress, Tex., is one of those mobile power-shoppers. She uses several apps on her Samsung Moment phone to whittle down her spending. She was recently considering a $29.99 Hot Wheels video game for her son at Wal-Mart. With a quick scan of the bar code, an application called ShopSavvy found it at Target, just across the freeway, for $19.99. Another app from MyCoupons.com provided a Target coupon that sliced off $10 more.

“It went from $29.99 to $9.99, all in five minutes, no searching the Internet or spending hours trying to find a deal or a coupon,” she said. “It’s all right there in your hand.”

Of course, mobile shopping technology is still somewhat clunky, between erratic Internet connections, outdated pricing data and balky product scanners.

But smarter phones and a heightened bargain-consciousness among consumers are spurring a level of innovation in e-commerce last seen during the height of the dot-com boom a decade ago."

Continue on NYT's Tech page.

Joseph & Mary: Gone! Noah's up?

2009-12-19T08:24:00.006+13:00

First the Auckland billboard portraying Jospeh & Mary in bed was controversial, scandalous to some. Then it was defaced, literally, as brown paint was applied across the words, "Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow." and the faces of Joseph and Mary.

Then it was stolen! Yep. gone.

Another skin went up to restore the image for all to see only to have an elderly woman rip parts of it off the bottom, leaving it in tatters and raising the stakes to a whole new level. Later, it was totally ripped down.

The Bishop of Auckland, the Right Reverend John Paterson, says he is "disappointed" that St Matthew's has chosen to go ahead with displaying the replica.

"Discussion of theological perspectives and diversity is encouraged in a respectful way, but this approach is insensitive to communities across the Anglican Church as well as other denominations," he says.He says there are a multitude of other issues for a city and the wider church to focus on than a billboard.

But the Vicar of St Matthew's, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy, says having debate is always positive.

Worldwide attention

The billboard has gone viral with thousands seeing the billboard via the internet and overseas news broadcasts.

CNN's anchor and weatherman discussed whether it was amusing and emails are coming into the church from as far afield as Sweden, the Netherlands, Britain, Costa Rica and India.

People have been talking about Mary & Joseph as real people in a real place. That somewhat surprises me in the biblically illiterate age in which we live!

A letter on the church's website reads as follows:

Dear friends,

I regret to say that tonight our billboard was attacked by a knife wielding Christian fanatic who was then
apprehended by a group of homeless people who care about our church. Later in the evening another group of fanatics ripped it down.

When knives are wielded in the name of God I have two responses. One is to act to ensure the safety of the public and parishioners. We will therefore not be replacing the vandalised billboard with an identical one. My second response is one of deep sadness at those in the Christian Church who don’t want to offend any faith position, even the most literalistic view of a male god. By having unity as their priority they inadvertently feed fanaticism.

We have no regrets about bringing this discussion about Jesus’ origins and the nature of the Christian God into the public sphere – into homes, workplaces, universities and the internet. We are glad that discussion about Santa, food, and present buying was momentary usurped by a discussion about Jesus.

Thank you to the hundreds of people who sent us messages of support, encouragement, and respectful engagement from all around the world.

Merry Christmas
Glynn

Hmm. While we can all find points of agreement with Glynn, and with his critics, my sadness is due to the attitudes brought out by this controversy.

Controversy is good. Healthy discussion is excellent! People have been talking about Mary & Joseph as real people in a real place. That somewhat surprises me in the biblically illiterate age we live in!

Cardy's expressed intent was that people would be aware of real miracles all around them. That they would consider the relevance of Jesus today, that they would get their heads out of the Malls, and out of history, and get involved in living the gospel message in ways that benefit hurting people around them. I can agree with that whole heartedly. Whether he went about it in the right way will be discussed over many a table for a while to come.

LATEST: I just received a text from a friend who says she drove by and there is a picture of Noah's Ark on the billboard now. Wonder if that's just what was handy or another attempt at lampooning the fantastical!

Write a Book!

2009-12-19T00:01:00.000+13:00

Give the title of the book you would write.

A brief summary:

The Setting:

Main characters:

Conflict/resolution:

Joseph & Mary Billboard Stolen

2009-12-18T09:12:00.004+13:00

According to TVNZ, the billboard has been stolen. A new skin costs only a about $250 so we'll see if it goes up again.

NEWS: Vicar says it will
go up again today!

What do you think will happen next?

If this was a fiction novel, "The plot thickens . . . ."

Mary & Joseph Defaced, literally.

2009-12-18T08:11:00.007+13:00

Much of Auckland's conversation on talkback radio yesterday was about this billboard in the city, and supposedly, the meaning of Christmas.

When it was put up the vicar asked some street people to keep and eye on it overnight. It didn't last 5 hours.

Talk about defaced!

Interesting thing is that some people commented on the radio in the afternoon that if this was an offense to Muslims it woulda been set alight in no time. Those radicals!

Then look what happened.

While the conversations on radio yesterday were heated at times, the comments on the church's website are ugly in places.

Talkback ZB nighttime host Kerre Woodham, said that she just plain didn't get it. "What's this got to do with the meaning of Christmas?" As I listened to her, I agreed and gained another view. Kerre didn't think it was funny, controversial or informative. She lamented the ire it caused and suggested that was not in the spirit of Christmas at all.

I do think the conversation is good. Anytime we can get Christmas tied back in to the historical events of real people living in a real place where miraculous things happened, we have a chance of reclaiming Christmas from the retailers.

Kerre's point though reflected one of the great things about visual representation of an issue, whether we want to call this particular billboard art or not. People interpret what they see differently.

It'd be great if we had several people write in and comment on differing potential

interpretations or stories behind such a billboard.

Was Joseph possibly daunted by being in the same bed with the woman whose statue would adorn many a vestibule, nave and chapel?
Was he considering the task of caring for the mother and baby upon whom so much depended?
Was he . . .

You get the idea.

Weigh in, preferably on Conversations@Intersections so others can read too.

Others are weighing in elsewhere around the Web:

NZ church's Joseph and Mary billboard stirs debate - San Jose ...

Joseph and Mary billboard provides provocation - CathNews

NZ church's Joseph and Mary billboard stirs debate | World news ...

NZ church's Joseph and Mary billboard stirs debate -

World AP ...

Does the billboard offend you? Joseph, Mary in bed billboard ...

Joseph, Mary in bed billboard set for NZ

NZ church's Joseph and Mary billboard stirs debate - Wednesday ...

Joseph and Mary in bed billboard decried by Family

First ...

NZ Church's Joseph And Mary Billboard Stirs Debate - kdka.com

Joseph, Mary in bed billboard set for NZ - Yahoo!Xtra News

Even last night, Reuters ran a story and

it's showed up in The Huffington Post today.

Jesus is making headlines again!

I'll keep you posted as to developments.

Advent Conspiracy!

2009-12-18T00:04:00.000+13:00

The story of Christ's birth is a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love.

So, what happened? What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists.

And when it's all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt that will take months to pay off, and this empty feeling of missed purpose. Is this what we really want out of Christmas?

What if Christmas became a world-changing event again?

Welcome to Advent Conspiracy.

[Give More]

God’s gift to us was a relationship built on love. So it’s no wonder why we’re drawn to the idea that Christmas should be a time to love our friends and family in the most memorable ways possible. Time is the real gift Christmas offers us, and no matter how hard we look, it can’t be found at the mall.
Time to make a gift that turns into the next family heirloom.
Time to write mom a letter. Time to take the kids sledding.
Time to bake really good cookies and sing really bad Christmas carols.
Time to make love visible through relational giving.

Sounds a lot better than getting a sweater two sizes too big, right? Need a few ideas? Just click here and see what others have done to give more during the advent season.

Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow.

2009-12-17T13:02:00.002+13:00

What do you think?

This billboard has created a ruckus in Auckland. People calling in to talk radio and complaining to the church that sponsored it.

Your response?

I'll give follow up tomorrow.

St Matthew in the City website.

"emotional education”: What curriculum?

2009-12-17T00:26:00.000+13:00

In a New York Times essay called The Other Education David Brooks reflects on what he terms his “emotional education”.

Brooks writes:

“…We don’t usually think of this second education. For reasons having to do with the peculiarities of our civilization, we pay a great deal of attention to our scholastic educations, which are formal and supervised, and we devote much less public thought to our emotional educations, which are unsupervised and haphazard. This is odd, since our emotional educations are much more important to our long-term happiness and the quality of our lives…”

Brooks continues with reference to an emotional awakening when he first heard a Bruce Springsteen concert on the radio.

"This second education doesn’t work the way the scholastic education works. In a normal schoolroom, information walks through the front door and announces itself by light of day. It’s direct. The teacher describes the material to be covered, and then everybody works through it.

The knowledge transmitted in an emotional education, on the other hand, comes indirectly, seeping through the cracks of the windowpanes, from under the floorboards and through the vents. It’s generally a byproduct of the search for pleasure, and the learning is indirect and unconscious."

Christmas Parade, Birkenhead

2009-12-17T00:11:00.001+13:00

So, can you find me in this cast of characters?

I'm blue with a yellow tummy and think I'm supposed to be a monkey.
My friends are Dora, Max, Donald and the gorgeous princess in yellow, Amy.

The things we get up to when not at the university or geocaching or . . .

Last year I was a starfish, which is not technically a fish at all, but is now called a sea star. This year a blue monkey. Next year? What then?

What is sage?

2009-12-16T00:11:00.000+13:00

sage: \ˈsāj\

a mentor in spiritual and philosophical topics who is renowned for profound wisdom
aromatic fresh or dried grey-green leaves used widely as seasoning for meats and fowl and game etc
having wisdom that comes with age and experience
any of various plants of the genus Salvia; a cosmopolitan herb
of the grey-green color of sage leaves

“The sage speaks of what he sees; the fool, of what he hears.” Turkish Proverb

“The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.” Lao Tzu

Santa knows who Christmas is all about.

2009-12-16T00:01:00.000+13:00

Are you on Facebook? Check your settings!

2009-12-15T14:54:00.002+13:00

As of today, Facebook will automatically index all your info on Google, which allows everyone to view it.

To change this option, go to Settings at top right of your FB page.

Then --> Privacy Settings --> Search --> then UN-CLICK the box that says 'Allow indexing'.

Facebook kept this one quiet.

Words

2009-12-15T14:46:00.001+13:00

The peacemaking meeting scheduled for
today has been canceled due to a conflict.

Becoming Who We Are

2009-12-15T10:16:00.001+13:00

"Now, with God's help, I shall become myself."
- Soren Kierkegaard

"Results from people in your social circle."

2009-12-14T19:06:00.004+13:00

Being part of something new and experimental can be fun! Here's an opportunity to participate with some of the most creative people online, the Google team.

I thought it was great too that the example in their demo video used a search for New Zealand as an example.

Check it all out over at Google.

There's so much more under the engine! Great apps I use, especially while traveling. because I wear different hats and work on three or more computers in different offices in Auckland, I can link all my bookmarks, notes, contacts, etc, via Google.

No, I do not own stock in the company, but when I find tools that help me work better and more easily, I'll gladly share them with my friends.

More easily find relevant blogs, reviews and other public content from your social circle.

Sign in to Google and do a search. If there's relevant web content written by people in your social circle, it will automatically show up at the bottom of your search results under a section called "Results from people in your social circle."

To see even more social content you can click the "Show options" link at the top of the results page and then click on the "Social" link.

What is your social circle? It's a combination of your Gmail chat buddies, your Gmail contacts friends, family and co-worker groups, and people you're publicly connected to on other social sites (such as Twitter and FriendFeed). Learn more about social search.

This experiment is only available for searches from the google.com domain,

and your interface language must be set to English.

With Social Search, you'll be able to more easily find relevant public content from your social circle, such as the following:

Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends' Google profiles.
Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from social services that your friends have listed in their Google profiles.
Relevant articles from your Google Reader subscriptions.

Watch a video explanation of social circles

Expand your social circle to improve your social search results.

You can improve your social search results by expanding your social circle and encouraging your friends to publish content online. Expand your social circle by doing the following:

Create a Google profile.
Add content to your Google profile, including links to other social services you use.
Subscribe to your friends' content in Google Reader.
Add people you know to your network of contacts in the various social services you use.
Tell your friends to start tweeting, blogging, and share more web content.

Create a Google profile to improve how you appear in other people's social search results.

Make yourself more discoverable in social search results by creating a Google profile. Then do the following:

Add links to content you want to share, such as your blog or YouTube channel.
Publish additional web content and make sure it's all linked to your Google profile.

My iGoogle homepage has the following header across the top. My dad's is equally personalised to suit him. I think it was Mastiffs at last glance.

Acappella Christmas - Indiana University

2009-12-14T00:01:00.002+13:00

MARY AND MAX

2009-12-13T00:05:00.002+13:00

Auckland was bustling tonight as a couple of friends and I ventured out for a film and some geocaches. We walked down several flights of stairs in to the nether regions of the Auckland Central Library to the Academy Cinema. Academy is known for it's art films, marginal and often with cult followings. Tonight, most of the weirdos were on the street level drinking and obviously feeling the affects of the ones that had gone down earlier.

Anyway, here's a review of the film we saw. It has humour but the storyline is far more serious than you might expect. I was with two people who work in mental health. They both laughed and felt the situations more deeply than the average moviegoer.

This review is an excerpt written by Paul Byrnes and taken from The Sydney Morning Herald

MARY AND MAX is sublimely good. Not just good animation, which it certainly is, and not just good because it's Australian (as a lamington). Mary And Max is original, personal, funny and moving; a film of warmth and compassion from a major artist. It could only be done as animation but it transcends that, too, to become a film of great seriousness, unlike most films in that form. It's not for kiddies, either, unless you want to explain what prostitution, condoms and alcoholism are.

Adam Elliot won an Oscar a few years back for his 22-minute film, Harvie Krumpet. He began his rise 12 years ago with a brilliant trilogy of short tragi-comedies - Uncle, Brother and Cousin - the first of which was made while he was still a student at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. Mary And Max has all the brilliance of the early work and a lot more ambition. It's like a Russian short story, shot by Diane Arbus (her photography was one of the inspirations).

Elliot has crossed the creek from short, wry and pungent, where many animators build their houses, to the darker and scarier lands of feature animation. The way is littered with the bones of good animators who failed to heed the dangers. Quirky doesn't work for 90 minutes; charm won't hack it, either. The only thing strong enough is a well-built story, with a solid structure and characters made of oak - or in this case, various polymers, clay, plastic and metal. It has to hold an audience because it's a story, not because it's animated.

Elliot based the film partly on his own life. For 20 years he has corresponded with a New York man who has Asperger's syndrome. In the movie, this is Max Jerry Horovitz, a 44-year-old Jewish man (voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman) who weighs 150 kilograms and lives on chocolate hot dogs. Elliot is now 37 so he must have been about 17 when the pen-pal relationship began. In the movie, his alter ego is a lonely eight-year-old girl, Mary Daisy Dinkle (voiced as a child by Bethany Whitmore, later by Toni Collette), which allows Elliot to bring greater innocence to the character.

Mary lives in Lamington Avenue, Mount Waverley, a street full of modest brick houses with the odd Sherrin footy stuck on the roof. It is 1976 and her dad, Noel, works in a factory attaching strings to tea bags; her mother, Vera (voiced by Renee Geyer), lives in a permanent haze caused by sherry and fags. She's a chronic shoplifter in ribald red lipstick and Edna Everage glasses. When the garbos come crashing through the dawn, Vera staggers out to catch them. "You got room for one more bag?" she shouts. "Sure Mrs Dinkle, hop in," says the garbo.

Mary is short and myopic. The narrator (Barry Humphries) tells us with little mercy that she has eyes the colour of muddy puddles and a birthmark on her forehead "the colour of poo". No one is kind to her since her grandpa died a year earlier, after drinking ammonia. At school, one of her classmates pees in her lunch box. She retreats to her bedroom to ponder life's many questions, such as where babies come from. She has been told that in Australia, they come from beer glasses. She decides to write to someone in New York for a comparison. The name she picks at random from a phone book is that of Max Horovitz.
From the sunny, sepia-coloured streets of Mount Waverley, the design changes to a scarier monochrome for Manhattan. Max waddles through mean streets to a tiny, shabby apartment in a scummy building. His sad eyes pop out of his odd-shaped head like a frog's and he's even lonelier than Mary. He's fat, ugly and friendless, with no one except the ancient neighbour Ivy and a goldfish called Henry the Eighth (the first seven died). Max is so nervous that he has an anxiety attack when he reads Mary's first letter. After he recovers, he replies to her inquiries with candour and chocolate and so begins a beautiful friendship.

Elliot's imagination is childlike and impish, hence all the jokes about bodily functions, but it's matched by a keen intelligence and sense of compassion. Everyone in the film is damaged; a few are suicidal and don't make it, so there's a sense of life's traumas. Max is a heartbreaking character, a gentle spirit trapped in an unkind body and ruled by an unquiet mind. His loneliness is terrifying. And yet, this is a love story, too, because Mary is capable of making him feel friendship through her letters. It's a story that might not be expected to work but it does because Elliot in turn loves his characters and their worlds. He has learned how to tell big stories in miniature settings. The quality of the animation here is outstanding; the quality of the filmmaking is even better.

The Other Wise Man

2009-12-12T00:05:00.001+13:00

Before Christmas, find time to read a short story by Henry Van Dyke, The Other Wise Man.

The link takes you to a free online version you can print for yourself.
13 pages + or -

Best Bookstore in Your Town?

2009-12-11T00:23:00.001+13:00

“Leaving any bookstore is hard, especially on a day in August, when the street outside burns and glares, and the books inside are cool and crisp to the touch; especially on a day in January, when the wind is blowing, the ice is treacherous, and the books inside seem to gather together in colorful warmth. It's hard to leave a bookstore any day of the year, though, because a bookstore is one of the few places where ll the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order and the avid reader is as free as a person can possibly be, because she is free to choose among them.” -Jane Smiley

Where's your favourite bookstore?

In Denver it must be the Tattered Cover.

Noblesville, Indiana might like an alternative to the big shops out on 37. Try The Wild Book Store on the square. Cafes and pubs are handy too.

In Sarasota, FL it's gotta be Sarasota News & Books with a cafe thrown in to boot!

In Auckland, is it Jason's Hard to Find But Worth the Effort for secondhand and Unity Books or TimeOut for new?

Unity Books challenges us thus:

If every bookshop tells a story...

If bookshops are compared to a summer's day, which one comes up
smelling of roses? If bookshops were horticulturalists, which one knows its
onions? If bookshops supported literary magazines, it'd make a big
difference. If your choice of bookshop could make a difference, which
bookshop brings you the small town closures? If small is beautiful, Unity is
still very attractive. If God does not play dice with the universe, which
bookshop keeps Wild Swans in the pet section? If you can keep your head
when all about you are losing theirs, meet me by the philosophy shelves. If
Jeffery Archer was trading inside, which bookshop would you be outside? If
Dorothy Parker shopped at Unity, I wouldn't be surprised. If a picture's
worth a thousand words, that's a hundred and twenty-eight of them and
are you getting the picture?

UNITY BOOKS

If you care about books...

Sydney has Glee Books for secondhand and Berkelouw for both. I find Sydney's bookstores seem to cluster in certain areas, making it easier for visitors to fossick through several in morning. Usually there's tea or coffee readily available. So check out Glebe or Oxford when you're in town.

I especially love independent bookstores. Nothing like browsing and being surrounded by so many others and the choice is all mine!

Nominate your favourite and tell us why.

Lemon: 1

2009-12-10T11:41:00.001+13:00

Why does my lemon tree have only 1 lemon on it?
Fairly mature and right up top.
It'll probably be 1 terrific lemon!

Lemon Recipes