Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Y'all come
When I was growing up on a farm in Texas and guests were leaving the common thing to say was, "Y'all come back to see us when you can." Like Australians, we tended to shorten expressions, so this one would get whittled down to the minimal: "Y'all come."
Two years ago, my wife and I got on a plane at the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) airport and began a move to a new life in a new hemisphere on a new continent, a leap that one website I checked says is 8,333 miles. Dallas to Brisbane: a neat 8,333 miles, and in a southwesterly direction, from the perspective of a Texan. Before long, we learned to drive on the wrong side of the road, saw our first 'roos in the wild, and started eating "brekkie" instead of breakfast. We also discovered that Aussies often use the word "reckon," which pleased me because I thought that was a term restricted to Texas.
We love this Land of Oz and I continue to write about that, now and again, but I've moved most of my attention to a new site. It's www.twotexansdownunder.com
I reckon you know what I'm going to say next. Yep. Y'all come!
-- Bob
Two years ago, my wife and I got on a plane at the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) airport and began a move to a new life in a new hemisphere on a new continent, a leap that one website I checked says is 8,333 miles. Dallas to Brisbane: a neat 8,333 miles, and in a southwesterly direction, from the perspective of a Texan. Before long, we learned to drive on the wrong side of the road, saw our first 'roos in the wild, and started eating "brekkie" instead of breakfast. We also discovered that Aussies often use the word "reckon," which pleased me because I thought that was a term restricted to Texas.
We love this Land of Oz and I continue to write about that, now and again, but I've moved most of my attention to a new site. It's www.twotexansdownunder.com
I reckon you know what I'm going to say next. Yep. Y'all come!
-- Bob
Friday, October 20, 2006
Silently, daily, diligently – cow plop beetles at work
Australia, I’ve just learned, is the home of an organization known as CRC CARE, which stands for Co-operative Research Centre for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment.
In a media release optimistically entitled “Here comes the clean-up army,” CRC CARE is promoting a book of articles about the possibilities of “clever trees, smart shrubs, cunning grasses and designer fungi” that may be used to produce “truly clean cities for the first time since cities were built.”
For only $230 you can buy “Trace Elements in the Environment,” edited by Ravi Naidu. For free you can learn more about it at www.ScienceAlert.com.au.
That web site is edited by Julian Cribb who published a related but less optimistic article recently in “The Australian” newspaper about how a reduction in rainfall due to climate change may bring back to this continent something it seems to have had not so long ago -- a plague of flies.
Flies used to be so bad here that eating outdoors in the summertime could be a health hazard and sweaty backs would be quickly covered. The plague may return if the worst-ever drought continues.
Plop, plop
Why? Because dung beetles need rain-softened soil in order to bury the 270 million cow patties that plop down on Aussie dirt every day. Left on top of the ground, each of these bovine gifts, Cribb writes, can produce 3,000 flies within two weeks. Let’s see… 270 million times 3,000 times the number of hot days each years equals: a lot of flies.
There’s no plague of flies here now but, sometimes and in some places, flies can be bad enough to encour
age the sale of not-so-cool hats with drop-down nets that keep flies off one’s face and neck. A couple of those green hats made hiking north of Sydney possible for me and my wife last summer.
Without nets dangling from our hat brims, we’d have been driven batty by Blue Mountain flies, but according to Cribb we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet if the worst drought in Australia’s history turns out to be non-transitory, a permanent feature of climate change. Too much dry, hard dirt and our beetle friends are shut down.
The relatively fly-less life we enjoy is due to an expert in beetles who introduced the little dung collectors here forty some years ago in a program that Cribb says is probably “the greatest recycling enterprise in our national history.”
George B’s beetles
It may not be wise to consider too closely why these beetles choose to ball up and bury cow poop, but the result for humankind is the enrichment of pastures as well as the removal of millions of fly nurseries. The increased yields of meat, milk, and wool should have made this scientist’s name an Aussie household word, except that his business card read: George Boremissza, coleopterist.
George B’s program was axed after a couple of decades and Cribb says dung beetle science here is dead as the dodo, with only a few scientists trying to figure out what to do if the beetles can’t continue to silently, daily, diligently save our necks from flies.
It’s not the kind of science we do these days, Cribb says, in part because it doesn’t generate intellectual property that can create profit. Trees, grasses, and fungi that may absorb pollutants in the soils of our cities, it seems, have greater corporate income potential.
So, are we headed for cleaner cities that are fly-blown?
It showered yesterday in our part of Brisbane. Not enough to help a beetle, I fear. Just enough to darken the pavement, but a reminder that rain may someday return.
Meanwhile, though, with reservoirs at 30% of capacity or less, one hears few Australians poo-pooing global warming and its effects. And I’m thinking about how to make a hat with a drop-down net that reaches to the ankles.
Or, of course, we could all become vegetarian. Fewer beef eaters = fewer cows. Fewer cows = fewer plops. Fewer plops = fewer flies. Eat your veggies; save the world.
Maybe I’ll write a book about that idea, which I hereby claim as intellectual property. Maybe I’ll publish it myself. Maybe I’ll offer it for $230 a copy. Or maybe I’ll just do a rain dance. What do you suggest?
In a media release optimistically entitled “Here comes the clean-up army,” CRC CARE is promoting a book of articles about the possibilities of “clever trees, smart shrubs, cunning grasses and designer fungi” that may be used to produce “truly clean cities for the first time since cities were built.”
For only $230 you can buy “Trace Elements in the Environment,” edited by Ravi Naidu. For free you can learn more about it at www.ScienceAlert.com.au.
That web site is edited by Julian Cribb who published a related but less optimistic article recently in “The Australian” newspaper about how a reduction in rainfall due to climate change may bring back to this continent something it seems to have had not so long ago -- a plague of flies.
Flies used to be so bad here that eating outdoors in the summertime could be a health hazard and sweaty backs would be quickly covered. The plague may return if the worst-ever drought continues.
Plop, plop
Why? Because dung beetles need rain-softened soil in order to bury the 270 million cow patties that plop down on Aussie dirt every day. Left on top of the ground, each of these bovine gifts, Cribb writes, can produce 3,000 flies within two weeks. Let’s see… 270 million times 3,000 times the number of hot days each years equals: a lot of flies.
There’s no plague of flies here now but, sometimes and in some places, flies can be bad enough to encour
age the sale of not-so-cool hats with drop-down nets that keep flies off one’s face and neck. A couple of those green hats made hiking north of Sydney possible for me and my wife last summer.Without nets dangling from our hat brims, we’d have been driven batty by Blue Mountain flies, but according to Cribb we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet if the worst drought in Australia’s history turns out to be non-transitory, a permanent feature of climate change. Too much dry, hard dirt and our beetle friends are shut down.
The relatively fly-less life we enjoy is due to an expert in beetles who introduced the little dung collectors here forty some years ago in a program that Cribb says is probably “the greatest recycling enterprise in our national history.”
George B’s beetles
It may not be wise to consider too closely why these beetles choose to ball up and bury cow poop, but the result for humankind is the enrichment of pastures as well as the removal of millions of fly nurseries. The increased yields of meat, milk, and wool should have made this scientist’s name an Aussie household word, except that his business card read: George Boremissza, coleopterist.
George B’s program was axed after a couple of decades and Cribb says dung beetle science here is dead as the dodo, with only a few scientists trying to figure out what to do if the beetles can’t continue to silently, daily, diligently save our necks from flies.
It’s not the kind of science we do these days, Cribb says, in part because it doesn’t generate intellectual property that can create profit. Trees, grasses, and fungi that may absorb pollutants in the soils of our cities, it seems, have greater corporate income potential.
So, are we headed for cleaner cities that are fly-blown?
It showered yesterday in our part of Brisbane. Not enough to help a beetle, I fear. Just enough to darken the pavement, but a reminder that rain may someday return.
Meanwhile, though, with reservoirs at 30% of capacity or less, one hears few Australians poo-pooing global warming and its effects. And I’m thinking about how to make a hat with a drop-down net that reaches to the ankles.
Or, of course, we could all become vegetarian. Fewer beef eaters = fewer cows. Fewer cows = fewer plops. Fewer plops = fewer flies. Eat your veggies; save the world.
Maybe I’ll write a book about that idea, which I hereby claim as intellectual property. Maybe I’ll publish it myself. Maybe I’ll offer it for $230 a copy. Or maybe I’ll just do a rain dance. What do you suggest?
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
New Orleans a Year Later
After the Katrina disaster, I challenged a widely-distributed email critique of the people trapped in New Orleans at the Convention Center and the Superdome. Brisbane folk had been quite civil when this place flooded in 1974 and the writer found the behavior of New Orleans citizens, "minorities" in particular, to be shameful and a sign of the decline of Western civilization.
I argued that the situations were not comparable. Now it turns out that the horrifying reports of civil unrest among the flood victims were wrong. Despite the appalling conditions that existed there a little more than a year ago, only one violent death at those locations has been confirmed and it was a suicide. “People comported themselves with patience, with generosity toward those with even less, and with as much dignity as they could manage,” writes John Biguenet in an Aug. 20 New York Times web journal article.
Nearly everything we think we know about what happened in New Orleans after Katrina, he says, is probably wrong.
About 1,300 New Orleanians, about half white and half black, died from drowning, dehydration, and/or exposure within a week, but they were not victims of a natural disaster, he says. Other areas took the brunt of the storm and parts of New Orleans that would soon flood were high and dry after the storm had passed.
Katrina itself didn’t kill those people, Biguenet argues, citing the draft final report of the U. S. Corps of Engineers, in which the Corps admits: “foundation failures occurred prior to water levels reaching the design levels of protection, causing breaching and subsequent massive flooding and extensive losses.”
Only parts of New Orleans is below sea level. Biguenet and his wife own a house that sits a foot above sea level, but his neighborhood now floods uncharacteristically after rains. Why? The Corps of Engineers has, since the hurricane, plugged up a drainage canal, reducing drastically its ability to carry away water.
One thing most of us are probably right about? FEMA functioned terribly. The little horror story at the end of Biguenet’s report is well worth reading in the Aug. 20, 2006, New York Times.
I argued that the situations were not comparable. Now it turns out that the horrifying reports of civil unrest among the flood victims were wrong. Despite the appalling conditions that existed there a little more than a year ago, only one violent death at those locations has been confirmed and it was a suicide. “People comported themselves with patience, with generosity toward those with even less, and with as much dignity as they could manage,” writes John Biguenet in an Aug. 20 New York Times web journal article.
Nearly everything we think we know about what happened in New Orleans after Katrina, he says, is probably wrong.
About 1,300 New Orleanians, about half white and half black, died from drowning, dehydration, and/or exposure within a week, but they were not victims of a natural disaster, he says. Other areas took the brunt of the storm and parts of New Orleans that would soon flood were high and dry after the storm had passed.
Katrina itself didn’t kill those people, Biguenet argues, citing the draft final report of the U. S. Corps of Engineers, in which the Corps admits: “foundation failures occurred prior to water levels reaching the design levels of protection, causing breaching and subsequent massive flooding and extensive losses.”
Only parts of New Orleans is below sea level. Biguenet and his wife own a house that sits a foot above sea level, but his neighborhood now floods uncharacteristically after rains. Why? The Corps of Engineers has, since the hurricane, plugged up a drainage canal, reducing drastically its ability to carry away water.
One thing most of us are probably right about? FEMA functioned terribly. The little horror story at the end of Biguenet’s report is well worth reading in the Aug. 20, 2006, New York Times.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Green Bridge Middle Closing Today...Hooray!
“Only four or five people a week will use it,” predicted a retired gentleman waiting on a park bench this morning to see the middle section of the St. Lucia-Dutton Park Green Bridge set into place, but he’s wrong. This suspension structure spanning the Brisbane River is coming together ahead of schedule and my wife and I will be among herds of folks using it several times a week as soon as it opens, perhaps before the end of the year.
A crane was in place this morning to lift a 3.6 meter mid-section piece into place and with that done, only a span over Sir William MacGregor Drive on the west end will be unconnected. Earlier this week the eastern end was linked to its approach ramp, so this $55.5 million (AU dollars) bridge for busses, walkers and bike peddlers is tantalizingly close to becoming useful.
What a joy it has been to see the two towers rise up out of the river over the past year and then to watch the decking spread bit by bit in both directions from each one. I have a few hundred digital photos of its progress and I think it's a beautiful structure.
A contest is underway now to name it, and one of the names being considered is “Green Bridge.” That would get my vote.
Another choice may be made by the officials, but this will always be the Green Bridge to me and, I suspect, to most of the rest of us who have watched it rise from the river. May it help keep UQ, St. Lucia, Dutton Park, Annerley, Fairfield, and the rest of Brisbane green and lively for many generations to come.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Friday, March 24, 2006
Pre-emptive homesickness
“The farther from Texas a Texan gets, the more Texan he becomes,” wrote Willie Morris. Even though he was from Mississippi, he got that right. He’d spent some time at the University of Texas in Austin before moving to New York, writing books, and editing Harpers magazine. After a few years in Massachusetts, I developed a taste for something I had disdained while growing up: country western music. C&W for short.
All that “born to lose” and “your cheatin’ heart” music, I’d concluded, contributed to the pervasive sense of depression and defeatism I experienced in the part of rural Texas in which I grew up. I wanted nothing to do with that. Give me jazz and folk music and rock. Then, after a few years, I began to re-discover Ray Charles and Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson. Next thing I knew, I’d begun to care, for the first time, if Oklahoma beat Texas in the Cotton Bowl. Suddenly, I could be brought almost to tears by hearing Dolly Parton sing about how she would always love me. Yee gads! Football? Country music? Thousands of miles from Texas, I had, in fact, become more Texan than I’d ever been.
Now, although I’m living in an entirely different hemisphere, I don’t feel so distant from “the old country.” The world is tighter because of this – the Internet and email – and because of air travel and cheap long distance phone cards. On so many different levels, everything is interconnected now and we’re only beginning to realize how profoundly that is so. I’m in Australia and one of every 20 Australians is living somewhere else, many in the United States, some in Texas. I wonder if it’s all different now, or if some of them have begun to develop new-found appreciation for Slim Dusty?
For sure they have to miss the sound of kookaburras. Just thinking about a time when I might be living somewhere else and unable to occasionally hear their loud, racous, insane, laughter-like sounds gives me a taste of what a nephew of mine refers to as “pre-emptive homesickness.”
Now there’s a term that could form the basis of a country and western song: homesickness for something you haven’t left yet.
Oh, wait… I think it’s already been done. I vaguely remember a C&W song that says “I miss you already and you’re not even gone.” Drat! My song-writing career is over before it could soar.
Hmmm. Maybe not. Let’s see... in the key of G… “Before I got started…”
All that “born to lose” and “your cheatin’ heart” music, I’d concluded, contributed to the pervasive sense of depression and defeatism I experienced in the part of rural Texas in which I grew up. I wanted nothing to do with that. Give me jazz and folk music and rock. Then, after a few years, I began to re-discover Ray Charles and Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson. Next thing I knew, I’d begun to care, for the first time, if Oklahoma beat Texas in the Cotton Bowl. Suddenly, I could be brought almost to tears by hearing Dolly Parton sing about how she would always love me. Yee gads! Football? Country music? Thousands of miles from Texas, I had, in fact, become more Texan than I’d ever been.
Now, although I’m living in an entirely different hemisphere, I don’t feel so distant from “the old country.” The world is tighter because of this – the Internet and email – and because of air travel and cheap long distance phone cards. On so many different levels, everything is interconnected now and we’re only beginning to realize how profoundly that is so. I’m in Australia and one of every 20 Australians is living somewhere else, many in the United States, some in Texas. I wonder if it’s all different now, or if some of them have begun to develop new-found appreciation for Slim Dusty?
For sure they have to miss the sound of kookaburras. Just thinking about a time when I might be living somewhere else and unable to occasionally hear their loud, racous, insane, laughter-like sounds gives me a taste of what a nephew of mine refers to as “pre-emptive homesickness.”
Now there’s a term that could form the basis of a country and western song: homesickness for something you haven’t left yet.
Oh, wait… I think it’s already been done. I vaguely remember a C&W song that says “I miss you already and you’re not even gone.” Drat! My song-writing career is over before it could soar.
Hmmm. Maybe not. Let’s see... in the key of G… “Before I got started…”
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