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Thursday 6 June 2013

Thursday; Bush Poetry;




Henry Lawson
Writer
Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period.
Born: June 17, 1867, Grenfell
Died: September 2, 1922, Sydney


A Bush Girl

She's milking in the rain and dark,
As did her mother in the past.
The wretched shed of poles and bark,
Rent by the wind, is leaking fast.
She sees the “home-roof” black and low,
Where, balefully, the hut-fire gleams—
And, like her mother, long ago,
She has her dreams; she has her dreams. 

The daybreak haunts the dreary scene,
The brooding ridge, the blue-grey bush,
The “yard” where all her years have been,
Is ankle-deep in dung and slush;
She shivers as the hour drags on,
Her threadbare dress of sackcloth seems—
But, like her mother, years agone,
She has her dreams; she has her dreams. 

The sullen “breakfast” where they cut
The blackened “junk.” The lowering face,
As though a crime were in the hut,
As though a curse was on the place;
The muttered question and reply,
The tread that shakes the rotting beams,
The nagging mother, thin and dry—
God help the girl! She has her dreams. 

Then for “th’ separator” start,
Most wretched hour in all her life,
With “horse” and harness, dress and cart,
No Chinaman would give his “wife”;
Her heart is sick for light and love,
Her face is often fair and sweet,
And her intelligence above
The minds of all she’s like to meet. 

She reads, by slush-lamp light, may be,
When she has dragged her dreary round,
And dreams of cities by the sea
(Where butter’s up, so much the pound),
Of different men from those she knows,
Of shining tides and broad, bright streams;
Of theatres and city shows,
And her release! She has her dreams. 

Could I gain her a little rest,
A little light, if but for one,
I think that it would be the best
Of any good I may have done.
But, after all, the paths we go
Are not so glorious as they seem,
And—if t’will help her heart to know—
I’ve had my dream. ’Twas but a dream. 
Henry Lawson


Photo taken in Bourke Ts

Tuesday 4 June 2013

Tuesday; beauty;


Paraffin wax

Doctors use Botox and collagen to rejuvenate faces. They also use silicone inserts to enhance breast size.
Is it insecurity or stupidity that makes women submit their bodies, their health  to such awful and unnecessary procedures? 

But the history of wrinkle reduction and breast implants actually starts much earlier than people realize. 
The first recorded attempts at wrinkle removal and artificial breast enhancement were carried out prior to the 1900s.
The procedure involved injecting paraffin wax directly into the wrinkled area to smooth it out, or directly into the breast to increase its volume. 
The practice quickly fell out of favour for good reason. Harsh infections were a common side effect of this technique. It also caused the formation of hard, painful lumps known as paraffinomas. 

Now this Paraffin wax technic is called primitive.
Perhaps in 20 years time Botox and silicone procedures will  also be called  primitive!  Paraffin wax is a white or colourless soft solid that is used as a lubricant and for other applications.

Paraffin
Alkane
Kerosene, a fuel that is commonly known as paraffin in Britain, Southeast Asia and South Africa.
Tractor vaporising oil, a fuel
Liquid paraffin (medicinal)
Mineral oil
Petroleum jelly, also called soft paraffin

Botox
Botulinum toxin is a protein and neurotoxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinumIt is the most acutely toxic substance known.
Botulinum toxin can cause botulism, a serious and life-threatening illness in humans and animals. Popularly known by one of its trade names, Botox, it is used for various cosmetic and medical procedures'
In cosmetic applications, a Botox injection, consisting of a small dose of botulinum toxin, can be used to prevent development of wrinkles by paralyzing facial muscles. As of 2007, it is the most common cosmetic operation, with 4.6 million procedures in the United States, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Qualifications for Botox injectors vary by county, state and country. Botox cosmetic providers include dermatologists, plastic surgeons, aesthetic spa physicians, dentists, nurse practitioners, nurses and physician assistants. The wrinkle-preventing effect of Botox normally lasts about three to four months.

Silicon
a tetravalent metalloid, is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, 
Symbol: Si
Melting point: 1,414 °C
Atomic mass: 28.0855 ± 0.0003 u

Since the mid-1990s, the Fifth generation of silicone breast implant is made of a semi-solid gel that mostly eliminates filler leakage (silicone gel bleed) and silicone migration from the breast to elsewhere in the body. The studies Experience with Anatomical Soft Cohesive Silicone gel Prosthesis in Cosmetic and Reconstructive Breast Implant Surgery (2004) and Cohesive Silicone gel Breast Implants in Aesthetic and Reconstructive Breast Surgery (2005) reported low incidence rates of capsular contracture and of device-shell rupture, improved medical safety and technical efficacy greater than earlier generations of breast implant device.




Beauty is not perfect.



Photo/ rose/Ts

Sunday 2 June 2013

Sepia Saturday 179; a barrel of...



My three girls in the barrel in the late sixties.  It was supposed  for a dog, but our dogs never used it, but the girls loved it to play hide and seek.

The canton of Thurgau is known for its fine agricultural produce. Particularly, apples, pears, fruits and vegetables are well-known. The many orchards in the canton are mainly used for the production of cider.

Farmers had a barrel like this one in the cellar. In autumn after the apple harvest it was filled with sweet apple juice that fermented slowly. Every night 1 full jug  was taken up and drunk, as the barrel had to be emptied and cleaned out again for the next harvest.

Thursday 30 May 2013

Thursday;...found...

....again a note, or better sort of  a map for me from my granddaughter, hidden in  this cookbook


 I had not taken out for a while.
 As I was leafing through I found a map, the paper crumpled to make it look old.




The map shows some part of my home . It must have been for a while in this cookbook. I always get these little surprises from Fabrizia. She is an interesting child always leaves me little notes hidden somewhere in books. She loves to write and carries always many note books around the pages full with small stories.
She has done that since she was tiny.She also liked to keep the receipts from the shops, which she carried around in envelopes.Letters and numbers  fascinated her. In the library she did not want picture books, she only took the ones with letters or numbers. She loves to go into a shop where they sell beautiful notebooks, sometimes I buy her one she especially covets.  It is fun to have grand children, in the holidays they come for sleepovers and they give you  spontaneously big hugs, I love you.




Fabrizia, January 2010


©Photo/text Ts

Wednesday 29 May 2013

Wednesday; Bookshelf;




Lawrence M. Krauss
Physicist
Lawrence Maxwell Krauss is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is a professor of physics, Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and director of Arizona State University's Origins Project. 




A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing is a book by physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, first published in 2012, discussing various scientific ideas related to cosmogony.

Michael Brooks for New Scientist writes "Krauss will be preaching only to the converted. That said, we should be happy to be preached to so intelligently. The same can't be said about the Dawkins afterword, which is both superfluous and silly.

Whatever is said about his books;  

Lawrence Krauss is brilliant. His books should be on every bookshelf.




Monday 27 May 2013

Monday; dreams;

Dear Paul Laurence Dunbar; the best American Poet.


Dreamtime;  
  


Pray, what can dreams avail
To make love or to mar?
The child within the cradle rail
Lies dreaming of the star.
But is the star by this beguiled
To leave its place and seek the child?

The poor plucked rose within its glass
Still dreameth of the bee;
But, tho’ the lagging moments pass,
Her Love she may not see.
If dream of child and flower fail,
Why should a maiden’s dreams prevail?

Poetry by Paul Laurence Dunbar.


Photo/ morning in my garden Ts

Sunday 26 May 2013

Sunday; amazing;


Sunrise;

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System.
It has a diameter of about 1,392,684 km, about 109 times of Earth.
Three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen, while the rest is mostly helium. The remainder consists of heavier elements,  oxygen, carbon, neon, iron, and others.
The sun generates its energy by nuclear fusion.
In its core, the Sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen each second.



Sunrise;

The Sun is now thought to be brighter than about 85% of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy, most of which are red dwarfs.
The Sun's hot corona continuously expands in space.
It creates solar wind, a stream of charged particles, extending to the heliopause at roughly 100 astronomical units.
The bubble in the interstellar medium formed by the solar wind, the heliosphere, is the largest continuous structure in the Solar System.
Of the 50 nearest stellar systems within 17 light-years from Earth, the closest  a red dwarf named Proxima Centauri at approximately 4.2 light-years away.



Sunrise;

The Sun orbits the centre of the Milky Way at a distance of approximately 24,000–26,000 light-years from the galactic centre. The sun completes one clockwise orbit, as viewed from the galactic north pole, in about 225–250 million years. 
The mean distance of the Sun from the Earth is approximately 149.6 million kilometres.  The distance varies as the Earth moves from perihelion in January to aphelion in July.
 At this average distance, light travels from the Sun to Earth in about 8 minutes and 19 seconds.
 The energy of this sunlight supports almost all life on Earth by photosynthesis, drives Earth's climate and weather. 
The enormous effect of the Sun on the Earth has been recognized since prehistoric times.
The Sun has been regarded by some cultures as a deity.


Sunset;
Currumbin-Valley April 17:29 PM

There are still anomalies in the Sun's behaviour that are not yet explained and may remain so. 

 
Note that the light-year is a measure of distance. It is not a measure of time, for which it is sometimes mistaken.

1 light-year = 9460730472580800 metres (exactly)
  ˜ 5.878625 trillion miles  ˜ 63241.077 astronomical units  ˜ 0.306601 parsecs

The figures above are based on a Julian year  of exactly 365.25 days.


©Photos/Text Ts