On the 267th day of the year I took part in a global day of action: Moving Planet – a worldwide day to move beyond fossil fuels.
It takes a certain discipline to post every single day. But for a perfectionist, it also takes a certain other kind of discipline to give up on a commitment, to let go of the purist drive to follow a rule that one has set oneself and to give oneself permission to let go. To allow oneself to break the rule, to break the perfect run of daily posts for 249 days with only 115 to go before the end of the year – well it means giving oneself a good talking to.
The minute I let myself let go, I felt a couple of tonnes lighter.
On the 249th day of the year I wondered how our government could give international aid so generously – in the top five donors to Somalia famine relief for example – yet on the other hand, treat asylum seekers who arrive in Australia so shabbily.
On the 248th day of the year I learned that fighting has killed something like 35,000 civilians in Pakistan in the last 10 years.
On the 247th day of the year Jakob Kellenberger, the head of the Red Cross was permitted to enter Syria, scheduled to meet with the president in Damascus.
Meanwhile, I wasted hours of my life at a disappointing and pointless Sydney Opera House performance. Hours I will never get back.
Jinxed by a bike shop mechanic. I hate that.
“Don’t blame me if it goes flat,” he said sneering at the patches on the recycled tube I handed him yesterday, to repair my flat.
Sure enough, today it went flat.
At a most inopportune time and place. But not because of my patches (they are solid and leak free). It was a fresh puncture by a piece of glass found in the rim. The same piece of glass that caused yesterday’s flat, I ask? that the jinxy mechanic failed to detect, I wonder?
And while tropical storm Lee hits the Gulf of Mexico, some residents are more concerned about a fresh oil slick sighted near BP’s Macondo well.
On the first Friday of Spring 2011, Woke up feeling anxious. Despairing at the unfeasible amount of work (“This is as a bad as it will get” my colleague assures me) and meanwhile the grime builds up around the bathroom taps and I wonder if I should just accept there aren’t enough hours in a day and employ a cleaner.
Speaking of clean (air), under pressure from the GOP Obama has overruled the EPA’s recommendation to tighten standards on ground-level ozone emissions.
“It is outrageous that the president has intervened politically to block the EPA administrator from correcting an unprotective smog standard that she recognizes to be scientifically and legally indefensible.” – John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council
“The reality is everything EPA is doing is laudable in terms of positive health and environmental outcomes. The problem is we’re trying to do it when we’re coming out of the deepest economic recession since the Great Depression.” Rich Gold, Chair public policy group, Holland & Knight
First day of spring.
The cat walked over the keyboard and created a new emoticon. ÷>
I don’t even know the keyboard shortcut for the percent symbol. God knows how her paws found it.
And NASA has been warned it’s time to clean up all that space junk.
The Darpa report, dubbed “Catcher’s Mitt”, suggested a range of technologies, including harpoons, nets and an umbrella-shaped device that would sweep up the debris.”
On the last day of winter:
Police car marked “DOG” with siren, pushing through us at the lights.
Heavy traffic near home causing me to take the alternative route.
A helicopter circling our neighbourhood.
Three, separate, not all that unusual, unrelated events in my morning.
Or so I thought.
Until the evening news revealed a man had been near-fatally stabbed; found bleeding in that street of heavy traffic.
Elsewhere today, the High Court ruled Australia’s Malaysia swap asylum seeker deal illegal: “made without power and is invalid”. The Government’s plan to send boat arrival immigrants to Malaysia – who is not a signatory to the UN Refugee convention – is now scrapped.
…it is an agreed fact that Malaysia does not recognise the status of refugees in domestic law” – High Court ruling
Maybe it was the recent accident, or that my friend was hit by a car on his motorbike yesterday, or that I simply don’t cycle around in peak hour traffic nearly as much as I used to – because I’m definitely more twitchy on my bike these days and tonight found a gaspingly steep hill I preferred to slog up, just to avoid main roads and angry impatient cars.
Over in Argentina, as a solution to a natural gas shortage, some manufacturers are burning peanut shells to power their factories instead.
The idea is to save money but also free ourselves from dependence on traditional fuels” – Ignacio Avila, Cotagro Cooperative
365 days of a year 