Urban mining: revitalized recycling that goes beyond electronics

Remember when recycling, re-using, re-conditioning, refurbishing, and revitalizing were the

environmental buzzwords?  It started a long time ago when families were recycling vegetable scraps to feed their chickens or to make a compost pile to renurture the soil. Then soft drink and beer bottles were recycled, and then cans. Government offices and businesses installed boxes to recycle paper.

 

Now urban mining is the introduced concept to handle recycling in a rapidly changing technological age. Urban mining generally refers to the resources in cities that can be recycled and reused. It includes virtually everything, but most often refers to small electrical and electronic items, such as phones, laptops, i-pads, and the like. It can also refer to large structures, such as buildings.  

 

Where old computers and electronics were gathered in cities and shipped to developing countries to be used by communities – thus recycling the items – they are more likely now to be collected for separation and re-use within the city they originated from. Sorting outdated and abandoned technological equipment so that the valuable metals and materials can be recycled is becoming more popular. This type of mining reduces costs in the city of origin and saves on transportation costs to ship them elsewhere. The extraction of metals and chemicals for clean use has long term positive impacts on the environment, but it is still in its infancy.

 

Mining equates to exploration and extraction, as well as prospecting for worthy and useful minerals. Urban mining is exactly that, as well as recycling, but it is also much more. Companies are being urged to think about the life of a product, and its reuse or multiple use, at the design stage. Can the product be broken down safely into individual substances? Is it sustainable?

 

And it applies to chemicals and by-products and waste, and not merely to the hard shell of a product, or its metals (such as gold, copper etc.). Urban water – kitchen and bathroom and cooking water – can be “mined” or recycled for further use. So can steam, and gas, and chemicals, and waste (just like worm castings can be reused in the garden, manufacturing and production waste can be considered for reuse). All forms of energy are also being included into the concept of urban mining. Everything from bones to feathers, from paper to plastic, from metals to manure, from eggshells to human hair, can all be considered as part of urban mining. So urban mining is more than electronic recycling, it encompasses a holistic approach to sustainable living.

http://urban-mining.com

http://urbanmining.org

Lost Luggage by Jordi Punti: book review

Lost Luggage (2010) is an interesting tale of a man with four sons to four different women.

 

Gabriel Delacruz Exposito, an abandoned child who grew up in an orphanage, lives in a boarding room in Barcelona and works as a furniture removal truck driver. Always on the move, he was able to live a peripatetic and secretive life. Along the way, he met four women and had four sons, none of whom knew about each other.

 

Sigrun in Frankfurt, Germany, gives birth to Christof (in show business) in October 1965. Sarah in London, England, is the mother of Christopher (a second-hand records dealer), born in 1967. Mireille, in Paris, France, has a son Christophe, a quantum physics lecturer, in 1969. In 1972, Rita in Barcelona, Spain, has a son Cristofol, a translator.

 

Gabriel was organized. He never mixed up the women’s or his sons’ names, or even their pronunciations. He learned to pace his relationships with his “equidistant women” and sons. About every three months or so, he’d turn up. “When he arrives, he’s on his way out. When he leaves, he stays behind,” said one of the women.

 

But after Valentine’s Day of 1972, three of the women and their sons never hear from him again. The last woman, Rita, too never hears from Gabriel again when her son is about three years old – in 1975.

 

About 20 years later, the police in Barcelona inform Cristofol that his father is missing (officially). Cristofol’s name was found in Gabriel’s boarding room when the police invited him to collect his father’s belongings or to pay the landlady the rental arrears. Cristofol never even knew that his father lived so close in the same city. Rummaging around his father’s room, he finds the names of three women and three sons.

 

The four sons meet in Barcelona. Christof, Christopher, Christophe, and Cristofol bring to the meeting photographs of their father. Together they try to understand the life of their father, and whether he is still alive. They even invent reasons why they have the same name. They meet regularly, always in Barcelona, to find their missing father.

 

The narrator is predominantly Cristofol, the Barcelona son. Each of the other sons adds their interpretations to the story, although Cristofol is the “translator” such that the tone of the novel is rather like a collaboration of efforts. They compare photographs, their mother’s impressions of their father, their memories, and items found in their father’s boarding room. Sometimes jumping around in time, and other times, chronological, it is the tale of four sons coming to terms with being abandoned, yet curious about their father’s character, and his missing years. But they are also curious about each other – are they the same, are they different, have they assumed their father’s characteristics, and was it destiny that they eventually meet. Once divided by geography, but united by genetics, the four half-brothers discover the truth, like piecing together all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

 

The novel is a wonderful mixture of human psychology, itinerant relationships, father and son bonding and abandonment, humour, sadness, and intrigue. The novel is due for re-release in 2013.

Reader statistics: Myanmar and Cuban readers gain internet connectivity

French readership entered the top ten "Feast or Famine" audience replacing readers from the Netherlands. French readers entered the top ten briefly in July 2011, with a six-monthly increase of 259%, ousting Chinese readership, but dropped out a month later. From mid-2012 they appeared to have settled into tenth position.

The top ten readers (January 2013) were from: (1) USA, (2) Georgia, (3) Russia, (4) United Kingdom, (5) Australia, (6) India, (7) Germany, (8) Canada, (9) Pakistan, and (10) France.

Over the past year, United Kingdom readers dropped from third to fourth position, Indian readers dropped from fourth to sixth, and German readers dropped from sixth to seventh position. In addition to French readers, increased readership included Russian readers (from seventh to third position) and Pakistan readers (from tenth to ninth position).

The greatest increases over the past year from January 2012 to January 2013 are: (1) Papua New Guinea (93.8% increase, mainly due to my work in the country in 2012), (2) Russia (89.5%), (3) Taiwan (87.1%), (4) Norway (85.7%), (5) Nigeria (81.3%), (6) Vietnam (80.0%), (7) Australia (75.0%), (8) USA (73.6%), (9) Pakistan (73.2%), and (10) India (69.2%). Nepal also made a substantial increase of 68.2%, with France at 66.7%. Other upward moving readerships include Peru (66.7%), Colombia (63.6%), Hungary (63.6%), Turkey (59.3%), Thailand (53.3%), Singapore (39.4%), Azerbaijan (37.5%), and Ukraine (34.5%).

 

Newcomers during the year, from January 2012 to January 2013, were readers from Aruba, Cook Islands, Cuba, Ethiopia, Gabon, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Laos, Mali, Moldova, Myanmar, Senegal, Slovakia, Somalia, Syria, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe.

Port Douglas flora: Australian biodiversity

Port Douglas, in northern Queensland, 70 kilometres from Cairns, is well known for its reef and also its rainforest.

 

Around Port Douglas, 80% of the land is protected as national parks, state forests, and timber reserves, and forms part of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. In addition to mammals, reptiles, and bird species, 13 of the world’s remaining 19 primitive flowering plants are found here.

 

The township of Port Douglas is surrounded by nature, such as the Coral Sea and Great Barrier Reef, the Daintree and Cape Tribulation rainforests, the Mt. Lewis and Windsor-Carbine Tablelands, and the Captain Cook section of the heritage area.

 

http://www.anhs.com.au/region.htm

The red mangroves of Port Douglas, Queensland

Apart from the spectacular Four Mile Beach, Port Douglas in northern Queensland has an interesting network of mangroves.

 

Cruise tours take tourists into Dickson Inlet to see the wildlife of the unspoilt mangrove channels. The estuarine habitat includes saltwater crocodiles, but also many birds, such as sea eagles, kites, ospreys, kingfishers, herons, and waders. Barramundi fish and mud crabs also live in the mangroves.

 

Dickson Inlet is an Estuarine Conservation Zone of the Great Barrier Reef Coast Marine Park and an area of state significance. The inlet has red mangroves and other salt-tolerant vegetation. Red mangroves (Rhizophora stylosa) are common across coastal northern Australia. They grow up to 20 metres high with a straight trunk covered in rough, reddish-brown bark. They also have distinctive roots that are thick and arching. On the roots there are numerous lenticels (air pores) that help the plant breathe in the saltwater. Their leaves are oval and quite thick. Small white flowers can also be seen.

 

 

http://www.daff.qld.gov.au/28_9227.htm

Dragon fruit: fruit of the cactus

The cactus plant is typically known to grow in the desert. However, in tropical Queensland, a

native cactus produces a delicious fruit.

 

The pitahaya-producing cacti are native to Mexico, Asia, South America, Israel, China, Cyrpus, and northern Australia. Commonly called dragon fruit, or dragon scale, or fire dragon fruit, its outer leathery skin is red. The inner pulp can be white or red, both with small black seeds. The flower, or fruit, blooms only at night. Each fruit can weigh between 150-600 grams. They rely on nocturnal animals, such as bats or moths, for pollination. They like temperatures up to 40C (104F) and dry tropical climates.

 

The variety in northern Queensland (in the Port Douglas area) is the Hylocereus costaricensis, or Pitahay roja, meaning red-fleshed pitahaya. Its fruit is sweet and creamy. Cut in half, the fruit flesh can be scooped out easily (like a kiwi fruit). The taste is not strong and is a bit like a melon. Low in calories, it is a refreshing summer fruit, and can be juiced or added to yoghurt or ice-cream for flavouring.

 

Rainforest and reef: Port Douglas, Queensland

Port Douglas in north Queensland, Australia, is the hub for tourism with rainforest and reefs at people’s doorstep.

 

Situated 70 kilometres north of Cairns, Port Douglas, is an idyllic haven in the tropical north. Established in 1877, due to the discovery of gold, Port Douglas developed into an area renowned for its tin, silver, sugarcane and logging.

 

In 1911 a tropical cyclone demolished everything except two buildings. From a population of 12,000 in 1877 to just 100 in 1960 (and now a small fishing village), it has slowly re-developed. Over time, it refined its appearance into a picturesque township. In 2011 the permanent population of Port Douglas was 4,772. Keeping the quaintness of the town, it has no traffic lights and no parking metres. Instead, it has wide streets, lush green areas, kilometres of beach, award-winning restaurants, art galleries, markets, and scenic dive and reef tours.

 

Four Mile Beach does stretch for four miles. It was a perfect spot for entrepreneur and investor, Christopher Skase, to finance the construction of the Sheraton Mirage hotel and Marina Mirage shopping precinct in the 1980s, transforming the area into a tourist haven.

Close, but not that close: Asteroid passed by Earth on May 31, 2013

Asteroid 1998 QE2 made its closest pass to Earth yesterday on May 31. The BBC reports that it measured nearly 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) across and is so large that it is orbited by its own moon. It passed by Earth at 20:50 GMT, but it was not dangerously close. There was never any likelihood that it would hit Earth. It was 5.8 million kilometres (3.6 million miles) away.

 

However, coming so close to Earth gave scientists the chance to observe it. Using radar telescopes (it was not visible to the naked eye), scientists recorded a series of high-resolution images. It appears to a relatively dark asteroid, said Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, astronomer at Queen’s University, Belfast, Ireland. The small moon that is orbiting the asteroid is about 600 metres (2,000 feet) across (in diameter). It is not unusual for an asteroid to have a moon (known as a “binary” system) – about 15% of asteroids have a moon. Astronomers have already seen more than 9,000 near-Earth asteroids, and they see about 800 new space rocks on average each year.

 

Friday’s fly-by will be the asteroid 1998 QE2’s closest approach for at least 200 years.

 

Comet ISON is also being tracked by astronomers. At the moment, the comet is near the planet Jupiter. By October 2013, the comet will be passing by the planet Mars. It will be very close to Mars’ Moons on October 5. On November 3, 2013, Comet ISON will be passing Earth (but not near it) before heading toward Venus about a week later. Near November 28, the comet will go around the Sun.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22736709

Happy Little Vegemites: OECD rates Australia number one for good living in 2013 – for the third year in a row

For the third consecutive year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development (OECD) has rated Australia top of their Better Life Index. The top three nations include Sweden and Canada.

 

The OECD says there is no such thing as an absolute number one because all criteria are treated equally and people have their own opinions about what matters most to them.

 

Each year OECD ranks 34 developed nations (members of OECD) on 11 criteria for “good living.” Each criteria, such health, work-life balance, civic engagement, natural environment, urban air pollution, and education, is given equal weighting. Each criterion is marked out of a maximum of 10 points. When all points are added, Australia comes top of the ranking.

 

Australia rates first in civic engagement. More than 70% of Australians trust their political institutions and about 93% vote (the highest proportion in the OECD). This is higher than Canada which also has compulsory voting. Not only do Australians trust their political system, but 94% of Australians have someone they could rely on (the OECD average is 90%).

 

Australia is the second healthiest nation of the 34 developed nations, below New Zealand, with 85% of Australians describing their health as good.  Australians have an average life expectancy of 82 years (a year longer than the English and three years on average longer than Americans).

 

Australia’s income is mid-range, although still above the OECD average. The country rates fourth in terms of access to housing, and spend 19% of their income on accommodation (which is less than the OECD average of 21% for the 34 nations). The quality of housing rates second in terms of the world’s best, with 2.3 rooms per person (behind Canada which rates first).

 

In terms of the natural environment, Australia only rates 8^th – behind Sweden, Britain, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Germany, and Finland.

 

The work-life balance is rated very poorly in Australia – one of the worst of the 34 nations. More than 14% of Australians work more than 50 hours per week (the OECD average is 9%). However, 25% of Australian males work more than 50 hours per way – significantly higher than the average – compared to 6% of Australian women. Denmark has the best work-life balance with only 2% of workers averaging more than 50 hours per week.

 

Adding and averaging all scores makes Australians first on the good living index with an average of 7.2 points out of 10 (the OECD average is 6.6). Men and women in Australia are almost equal in their happiness score, although people without secondary education are a little less happy than Australians with university degrees. And 84% of Australians have more positive experiences (feelings of rest, pride in accomplishments, enjoyment, etc.) than negative ones (pain, worry, boredom, and sadness for example) in an average day. They are also helpful to strangers, with 66% reporting to have helped a stranger in the month prior to the survey (well above the OECD average of 48%). However, 91% of Australians do not like the quality of their drinking water.

http://www.canberratimes.com.au

Wisdom of the Last Farmer by David Mas Masumoto: book review

Wisdom of the Last Farmer: Harvesting Legacies from the Land (2009) is part of a series of

books about the author’s peach, nectarine and grape farm in Central Valley, California. Masumoto is best known for his first autobiographical novel, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on my Family Farm (1995).

 

Masumoto tells of three generations of family farming, from the first time his grandparents arrived in America from Japan in 1899 when alien land laws prohibited non native-born Asians from owning land, to his father’s purchase of land in the 1950s, and to the author’s increasing responsibilities and ownership as he looks to past legacies and eventually leaving his own.

 

Farming is a hard life, and organic farming is even harder. Organic farming works in harmony with nature, using as many natural means of production as possible. Masumoto, in a simple easy graceful style, tells of the movement toward alternative and unproven farming methods as he strives for perfection. In this true tale of the second son’s determination to build a reputation, and to survive financially and physically on the land, he writes of the perennial dependence on external elements: weather, soil, mildew, weeds, pests, hired help, his family’s health, machinery, technology, the homogenization of food crops, the emergence of supermarkets,  the demand for quality, and the expectations of the buying majority: where quality is determined by colour and shape—the externals—rather than by flavour or nutritional content—the internals.

 

In telling of the hardships of the land, he tells of personal hardships through a father and son relationship. In 1997 his father has the first of a series of debilitating strokes. The account of his feelings as he watches the “signposts of success” as his father recovers some functions and memory and then the gradual deterioration of his father’s health with age, is poignant and honest.

 

The “last farmer” refers to the loss of farmers in an economically deteriorating industry, when in 1950 30% of farmers were over the age of fifty-five (the age of the author) and by 1990 60% of farmers were over 55. The next generation is fading from the farm. Farming requires resilience and patience, hard physical work, and institutional memory. It is built upon routine and tradition, but also experimentation and progress. It’s about timing – when to plant, when to harvest, when to rotate crop, when to reduce, when to expand, when to give in, and when to give up. It is about the “pain of surplus” but also the pleasure of memories, a productive harvest, a sense of place, a connectedness to the land and to the family, and to the preservation of legacies.

 

Wistful wisdom, patient story-telling, an acceptance of tradition and trading losses for gains, and a genuine tenderness for his father, family and organic fruits are the trademarks of this exceptionally fine book.

National Sorry Day 2013

Held on May 26 each year, since 1998, Australia recognizes National Sorry Day. It is an annual commemoration and rememberance of those impacted by government policies of forcible removal of children from families that have resulted in “The Stolen Generations.”

 

The commemoration was a direct result of the National Inquiry of 1997 into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and the report “Bringing the Home.” Soon afterwards the National Sorry Day Committee was formed with its main mandate to inform the public and encourage awareness raising campaigns. The first National Sorry Day was held in Sydney on May 26, 1998.

 

Events in Canberra commenced on Monday May 20 at the National Gallery of Australia and will continue until Monday May 27 with the Calvary’s Health Care’s Commemoration. The National Gallery of Australia collaborated with ABC Classic FM’s program “Notes and Strokes” in which selected music was played to accompany a 2009 untitled painting by Walangkura Napanangka. The painting was acquired in acknowledgement of the National Apology to the Stolen Generation with the support of the Myer Foundation.

 

Today, Sunday May 26, is the National Sorry Day gathering from 4:30 to 6:00pm around The Fireplace at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture in Barton as part of the involvement of churches in policies that affected Australia’s indigenous children.  The gathering is an opportunity for the churches to say sorry in a spirit of reconciliation.

 

http://www.nsdc.org.au/events-info

Africa Day, May 25, 2013

On the fiftieth anniversary, the Golden Jubilee, of the African Union, Australia celebrates

Africa Day on May 25, 2013. Celebratory programs, such as sports, debates, campaigns, information sessions, and displays will take place in Australia and globally.

 

In 1963 leaders of 32 African nations met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to discuss continental issues such as colonialism and apartheid. They agreed to form the Organization of African Unity (OAU). On May 25, 2001, the OAU was replaced with the African Union consisting of 54 African member states to place greater emphasis on unity and cooperation.

 

The African Union also has a representative body, the Pan African Parliament, which consists of 265 members elected by the national parliaments of the AU member states. The AU is the body through which individual member states coordinate foreign policy in addition to each nation’s own determinants.

 

Australia’s Foreign Minister, Senator Bob Carr, sees a great deal of future cooperation with African nations. “The African population is young, with a median age of 20 years – compared to 30 in Asia and 40 in Europe. It is urbanising and has a growing middle class. And Africa is rich in arable land, mineral resources, and energy – with 30% of the world’s mineral resources and 10% of its oil,” he said.

 

The theme for the Golden Jubilee is “Pan Africanism and the African Renaissance” in which Africa and the world takes stock of Africa’s achievements such as the growing optimism about their economy and independence, but also continues to look for solutions toward peace and stability, cooperation, democracy, interdependence, sustainability, and a knowledge-based society.

 

City News May 23-29, Volume 19, Number 17, www.citynews.com.au

Bardot’s Comet a finalist in cross-genre fiction category in American book award

My 2011 novel, Bardot’s Comet, was a finalist in the 2013 National Indie Excellence Book Awards announced on May 22, 2013. Bardot’s Comet was a finalist in the Cross-Genre category.

 

Cross-genre is a term in fiction that blends themes and elements from two or more different genres. For example, the Twilight series can be categorized as a mixture of three genres: paranormal, fantasy, and romance. Bardot’s Comet is a combination of the mystery genre with suspence, crime, science, and historical fiction.

 

Why write across genres? Writing across genres is increasingly becoming more popular with many authors. Historical fiction, in particular, lends itself to the inclusion of other themes—in the case of Bardot’s Comet, set in The Sixties in Adelaide, South Australia, these themes include real events, scientific theories, films, dress codes, social conditions, and the morals of the times. The rise of feminism, uni-sex dress codes, the Vietnam War, the moon landing, the religion versus science debate, and Youth Quake are all themes in Bardot’s Comet.

 

With readers becoming more sophisticated in their reading choices, complex themes are often best handled using multiple genres, providing depth, interwoven issues, current affairs, and historical realities. For me, the starting point was the period 1966-1969, one of the most progressive periods in history in terms of science and social advances. Hence, Bardot’s Comet is historical fiction with science at the core—specifically mathematics and astronomy.

 

Bardot's Comet was my first foray into the cross-genre category because my other novels are specifically about a country context, such as with The Sudan Curse (2009), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010), and Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012).

 

I have provided a link below with a free 30-page download sample PDF of Bardot’s Comet. The Kindle and Barnes &Noble links are on the last page.

http://epubco.com/samples/978-1-61897-570-6sample.pdf

Bardot’s Comet is also available at amazon.com or directly through my publisher at http://sbpra.com/martinanicolls

 

Five months into a centenary year for Canberra

The naming of Canberra, the capital of Australia, turned 100 on March 12, with centenary events and exhibitions planned for the whole of 2013. The first half of the year, during summer and autumn, included many outdoor events and festivals. Now that the cooler months are coming, a winter theme will proliferate—but so too will events such as auctions.

 

Canberra Times has reported the results of the auction of the first set of the Centenary of Canberra number plates. Fifty car number plates will be made and distributed among local charities so that they can use them to raise funds. Why only fifty? I’m not sure.

 

However, the first one (C 100) went under the auction hammer online through PicklesPlus. Expecting a reserve price of $500, the winning bid was $9,350 placed by plasterer Stefan. The first auction was held at the Timor Leste Embassy with the funds going to the charity “Dollars for Dili” which is an official Centenary of Canberra project (in collaboration with the ACT government, Scouts Australia, and the Rotary Club of Dubbo South) to contribute to the capacity building of young people in Dili, the capital of Timor Leste. Timor Leste is the world’s second newest nation (second to South Sudan), and has a 90% youth unemployment rate. Therefore the organizers were extremely pleased with their fund-raising efforts from the auction of the car number plates. The plates can be officially used—for the next hundred years or so—but can only be fitted to ACT (Canberra) registered vehicles.

 

The second online auction of a set of number plates (C 001) will be held later in the year and will benefit the charity, “Boundless” – the all-abilities playground on the edge of Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra. The National Children’s Playground Project is a gift from the public servants of Canberra with the philosophy that the playground will foster inclusion, respect, and no barriers for all children.

Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/centenary-plates-go-for-more-than-9000-20130521-2jxnd.html#ixzz2TtdSRtrT

www.dollarsfordili.com.au and www.boundlesscanberra.org.au

Autumnal Canberran colours

Most of Australia has four seasons: winter from June to August, spring from September to

November, summer from December to February and autumn from March to May. The tropical north of Australia has two seasons: the wet and the dry. However, indigenous Australians, especially in the north, recognize more seasons, such as the wet, the end of the rain, the start of the heat, the cool dry, the humid, and the rainy humid.

The temperate climate of the south brings autumn (fall) at this time of the year. Now, almost over, and soon entering the winter months, the trees are at their most brilliant colours, with leaves of golden yellow, orange and red. The days often have blue skies, with wind and falling leaves. Here in Canberra, the night time temperatures drop to zero to 3 degrees Celsius, but the day time temperatures are about 12-18C.

 

 

More than Space: Wolfgang Buttress gives Canberra 9,000 stars

Award-winning sculptor—known for his artworks in public spaces—Wolfgang Buttress (1965-), exhibits his work at the Australian National University’s Drill Hall Gallery. The exhibition, “Space,” from 10 May to 23 June 2013, is an assemblage of paintings, maquettes, and drawings.

 

Inside the gallery are his drawings and preparations for the larger sculpture called UNA 013, commissioned by the Australian National University (ANU) College of Science in 2012. In a separate room is a time lapse video of the creation and installation of RISE, a public work of art in Belfast, Ireland, which is a geodesic sphere suspended within a larger 30 metre diameter sphere by discreet, pre-tensioned galvanised wires. The structure illuminates in darkness.

 

For Canberra's ANU, Buttress designed, created, and installed UNA, inspired by ancient palimpsests—manuscripts that have been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible. Buttress collaborated with the engineering firm, ARTSCAPE International, for its installation in the university grounds, near the WK Hancock Building and between the Linnaeus Building and the Science Teaching Building.

 

UNA is a polished 4 metre diameter polished stainless steel sphere with LED lighting and around 30,000 laser and hand-cut perforations that depict the 9,000 stars in the Southern Hemisphere that are visible to the naked eye. The 9,000 stars were astronomically studied and perforations on the sphere were cut according to their accurate location and brightness in the sky. Buttress worked closely with ANU’s astronomy department, and eminent Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics astronomer Dr. Daniel Bayliss, who provided the digital star map. A smaller sphere is suspended inside the larger sphere and is visible when looking into the star’s “holes” of the outer sphere. The two-tonne installation was completed in March 2013, and officially opened on May 9, 2013, to coincide with the Drill Hall Gallery exhibition of the plans and drawings that preceded the installation, as well as other Buttress works.

 

The plaque below the sculpture reads: “Mediating on nature, Buttress’s work evokes universal structures. The symmetry body is also present throughout the natural world – evident in cell formation, nautilus shells, diatoms and the stars themselves. By associating us with these phenomena, Buttress seeks to re-establish a more emphatic and harmonious relationship with the universe by means of poetic place-markers which engender a feeling of centeredness. In UNA over 9,000 perforations map all the stars in the Southern Sky which are visible to the naked eye. Emphasising connections between the macro and the micro, UNA can be seen as a portal of reflection that suggests a sense of wonder, elation, and sublimity.”

Viewing the sculpture, it looks like a large polished ball. But look closer. Each of the perforations (large, small, and irregularly shaped) can be peered into. Each hole is a star and each star is a hole. From each hole, the spectator can see the inside sphere. Bouncing off the surfaces, the light resembles the stars in the night sky. It's almost like viewing the cosmos from a space-craft. Not only is it elegant and simple, it is also complex and enthralling, showing the viewer who peers through the stars a most wondrous cosmic fusion of art and science.

 

 

Another eye-opener, pointed out to me by a university staff member, is that, if you look very very carefully, you can see the reflection of your own eye as you peer through the perforations. Spooky!

Opening of the 2013 Canberra International Music Festival: The Summoning

 

Last night, Friday May 10, at the iconic Albert Hall, the 19^th Canberra International Music Festival commenced. It was the gala performance of the festival's 10-day event, concluding on Sunday May 19.

 

Concert 1, the “Canberra Times Opening Gala: The Summoning” set the scene for the Centenary of Canberra celebrations that honours a hundred years of the naming of the city and the design and creation of the nation’s capital city. Acknowledging the Ngunnawal people (past and present), the traditional owners of the land on which Canberra was built, the two-hour show featured the haunting tones of William Barton’s didjeridoo solo. The indigenous sound of his music, entitled “Didjeridu,” echoed throughout the hall, which for me was the highlight of the evening.

 

Interspersed into the performances were the “retrospective” personas of Walter Burley Griffin and his wife Marion Mahony Griffin. The Griffin Architects from Chicago won the international competition, announced in 1911, to design the layout for the city of Canberra. In 1913, the design commenced and the Griffins moved to Australia. Hence the festival acknowledged its creative roots. In addition, the Music Festival paid tribute to the people throughout the world who made Canberra their home.

 

Estonian minimalist, Arvo Part performed “Hymn to a Great City” which was an Australian premiere performance. TaikOz performed “Opening Rite” followed by Carl Orff’s “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana. TaikOz’s performed “Middle Rite” followed by Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.” Edgar Elgar performed “Canberra, Shimmering City” before TaikOz’s “Closing Rite” and Igor Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.” Featured artists included Synergy Percussion, Viney-Grinberg Piano Duo, Calvin Bowman with an organ rendition, and the Canberra Festival Brass. The Canberra Festival Chorus (a combination of Canberra Choral Society, Oriana Chorale, Llewellyn Choir, SCUNA, Australian National University School of Music Chamber Choir, and the University of Canberra Chorale) sung the themed pieces from thr front stage and behind the audience, directed by Roland Peelman.

 

Witold Lutoslawski performed “Variations on a Theme of Paganini, followed by the premiere version of Elena Kats-Chernin’s “Beaver Blaze” commissioned by Betty Beaver. The night was hailed a success with a standing ovation.

 

The remaining 9 days of the Canberra International Music Festival will have performances at various locations around the city. It will celebrate America’s cultural contributions to Australia through the composer-in-residence, Paul Dresher and a focus on the works of John Adams and Steve Reich. The Music Festival will also acknowledge its English heritage with performances by composer-in-residence, Gavin Bryars. Featured composers will include contemporaries of Marion Mahony Griffin—including Rebecca Clarke, Amy Beach, and Phyllis Campbell. Other featured composers throughout the festival will include Johann Sebastion Bach, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Benjamin Britten.

www.cimf.org.au

 

2013 April lunar eclipse and May solar eclipse

With one eclipse gone, another is on its way. They always appear in pairs, two weeks apart—one at the new moon and the other at the full moon.

 

The first eclipse of 2013 was on Thursday April 25. It was a partial lunar eclipse in which part of the moon was obscured. It was visible in the evening in Western Europe and West Africa at moonrise, and in parts of Australia, Japan, Eastern Russia, and Indonesia it was visible at moonset. The entire eclipse was visible in Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southern Africa, India, most of China, and most of Russia.

 

It’s “pair” is during the full moon on Thursday May 9/Friday May 10. The second eclipse will be an annular solar eclipse in which the sun is blocked by the moon. It will be visible from Western and Northern Australia, Eastern Papua New Guinea, and the South Pacific over a wide path of between 170-225 kilometres. Starting in Western Australia at 22:33 Universal Time (UT), it will travel northeast across the Northern Territory. Depending on the location, the time of the annular phase will be from 3 minutes to about 6 minutes (in the Pacific).

 

The trajectory will take about 45 minutes and cover less than 1% of the Earth’s surface area. Partial phases of the solar eclipse will be visible from Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia.

 

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) eclipse website lists the next penumbral lunar eclipse on May 25, but this will be “almost impossible” to detect. This is an unusual second lunar eclipse of the season.

 

The next “pairing” of eclipses in 2013 will be a lunar eclipse on October 18 followed by a solar eclipse on November 3.

Information and images - http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html

Arabesques by Robert Dessaix: book review

Arabesques: A Tale of Double Lives (2008) by Australian author, Robert Dessaix, is a literary travelogue.

 

The starting point is the prolific French author, Andre Gide (1869-1951), who died when Dessaix was seven years old, just after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947. Gide was regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers and thinkers.

 

Following the tracks of Gide, from Portugal, France, Algiers, and Morocco to Italy, Dessaix explores the writer’s influences on his literary works—such as If it Die, Fruits of the Earth, The Vatican Cellars, The Immoralist, The Counterfeiters, and his later works, So Be It and Strait is the Gate—from an introspective analysis. Though there is no “real connection” between Dessaix and Gide, the author wanted to explore Gide’s “moral courage” and “openness about who he was and what he believed” from religion to relationships.

 

The Roman Catholic Church placed Gide’s works on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1952. Gide had Protestant beliefs, and Dessaix writes on Christianity, believers and non-believers because “It has always mattered to me where people stand on these questions”—the orientation of the soul, God and miracles, and heaven and hell.

 

Dessaix is fascinated by Gide’s relationships—with his wife Madeleine (a marriage blanc) to casual encounters and adolescent boys. The author places these relationships in the context of the “times he lived in.” The exploration of these relationships covers a continuum from infatuation, sex, affairs, intimacy, romantic love, to unspoken acquiescence. In parts, it is more about Madeleine’s feelings to relationships than Gide’s—but always how Dessaix relates to their connection and what bound them together.

 

During the travels, with companions, Dessaix contrasts the loving and the loathing for Gide. In doing so, Dessaix also absorbs the philosophies and impressions of other authors, such as Wilde and Camus to Proust, Sartre, and Pepys.

 

Most poignant are the introspections on ageing—as Gide aged and as Dessaix ages. “It’s dispiriting to suspect that you’ve become repulsive to the young,” Dessaix writes. And Dessaix compares Gide’s later works to his views of ageing and sexuality, for that never leaves Gide, right to the end of his 81 years.

 

The title “Arabesques” refers to the mosaics on North Africa in which flowers, foliage, fruits and figures are represented in an entangled combination of patterns, just as the writing flows in this form. Yet the secondary title “A Tale of Double Lives” is where the truth lies. The double life of Gide as a philanderer and a husband, an adventurer and a “trapped” man, a religious person in thought but not deed, and a writer’s word and his conviction are juxtaposed between Desssaix and Gide, from the past to the present.