One Day...

Let us all hope that one day we will wake up and everything will be different like the birth of something new. There is coming a time when the US Dollar will collapse. We will all be effected by this because so much of the world's way of buying and selling is connected with this currency. This unravelling is starting to happen even now, but when the almighty Dollar really does go down the tube, we will have a rare window of opportunity to help change our society.

We will need to resist the demands of our pervading "consumer culture" of which we are all part of, if we are reading this blog. If we are able to be unselfish and compassionate, we will truly help to make a better world. Here are some of the changes that have to happen in a good and healthy world:

• Respect for nature (all life in general)


• Free speech for nutritional supplement manufacturers (the present regulation makes their product promotional statements toothless)


• End all noted unhealthy additives in food (these things are known to contribute to degenerative diseases)


• Banning of all advertising of processed and fast foods (yes, even pizzas)


• Banning of all advertising of pharmaceuticals (including all the remaining places where cigarette advertising happens)


• Banning of all government pharmaceutical subsidies (our governments are being fleeced by the pharmaceutical companies with their over-inflated prices for drugs)


• Banning of all genetically engineered crops (we must save our planet and reduce the amount of poison allowed to be used on some of these crops)


• Banning of all genetic manipulation of life (including stem cell "research" with the fertilised ovum


• Stopping copyright protection on ideas and creations that are now out of copyright but have had a modification of some sort to keep it in copyright (slightly altered sheet music of past great composers is an example)


• Deny corporations the legal status of the individual (this may stop their investment and control of mass media for their own ends)


• Stop allowing corporations donating to political parties


• Stop allowing corporations to lobby governments (in case we missed the previous point)


• Stop allowing corporation executives legal protection behind the company facade while their actions destroy the lives of countless numbers of people the world over (especially the third world)
  
• End patent protection for genes, seeds and medicines, declaring all such patents public property (the useless and dangerous products should then disappear if there is no profit to be made)

The list could go on. What we are up against is greed in the individual human being and this is endemic is our society. To earn the right to speak out we have to master those tendencies in ourselves first by letting go of our fears of being "labelled" and sent to the fringe to join the society "dropouts". Yet we find God in those fringe places because that is where truth and love may be found. The chance is before us to make a difference. Shall we try?

Barb's on the way

The day finally arrived and we made it to the airport. The traffic was pretty light on the Ring Road at 4:45 am so we skidded there in next to no time. At the Qantas check, in Barb got an earlier flight. That was good for Barb because she may need the extra time to find the shuttle bus to take her round to the international terminal. And going through immigration might be slow.

So a good start for the trip. Peter shared Barb's first leg (Ring Road travel) and we said our good-byes. May God grant Barb a sensational time in Canada. May her time there, first at Alberta and then at Manitoba, be blessed with much family fun and love.

Living in God's Family

We have just concluded second term of Children's Church. It was a longish term because of the earlier Easter. This time we ran with a very pastorally orientated program and in that sense it was challenging. Our curriculum was originally developed within the Anglican tradition and intended for young people preparing for confirmation and participation in holy communion. As it was, the original text was inappropriate for a Baptist Children's Church and so underwent a thorough 'de-Anglicanisation'. Each of the eight lessons: belonging, holidays, remembering, caring, breaking and making up, saying thank you, sharing, and going in peace and celebration, incorporated great pastoral care opportunities. We have learned much in the process and the kids had a ball.

Storm vs. Cowboys

It has almost reached our shortest day and we ventured out with friends to brave the cold night air. Our train trip in was eventful enough. The line was sabotaged and the train was disabled as it hit the logs laid across the tracks. After a wait at another station a second train took us the rest of the way. We saw the end of the first game, watching the North Queensland Cowboys seconds beat the Melbourne Storm seconds. But we knew that Storm was too strong for the Cowboys in the main match. And besides, Olympic Park Melbourne, is the graveyard for all visiting first division Rugby League teams and there was no reason to suspect that this night was going to be any different.

It was a fun game to watch. The Cowboys drew first blood with an early try. The Storm responded with the next to even the score. Then the Cowboys broke through again and scored again. After that Storm woke up and scored eight more unanswered tries and converted six of them.

At half time, Peter experienced his first queue at any public toilet facility he has ever been to. It was bad enough waiting in the long line toward the door, but once inside he had to choose one of about eight queues at the urinal. And to add to his displeasure, he was in front of a guy who had the slowest flow ever. But think of the women. Their queue was three times as long outside. It was gruelling for Barb.

In the second half, the Cowboys managed to get a consolation try, but it was all Storm for most of the game. The final score was Storm 48, and Cowboys 20 (we think). We returned home in good spirits. We had been entertained with plenty of tries.

Termites

At Gembrook, Peter has turned his focus to the termite problem. Over the months the termite inspector made some visits and dealt with the little critters to some degree. Now that it is Winter termites are pretty quiet, so we won't know how effective the treatments have been till the Spring. In the mean time, Peter pulled up the flooring in part of the "eaten" areas and found a few stragglers! But Peter is now optimistic that he has found how they have reached the flooring. It is not as bad as it had looked earlier, and fairly simple changes to the building construction under the floor should stop them.

Termites are less of a mystery now. Firstly, they don't live in the flooring, but travel in from an nest hidden away outside. The nest can be in the trunk of a tree or simply underground somewhere, so it is very hard to find. Secondly, if there has been a water leak about the building (which has happened at the Gembrook Retreat), then with plenty to drink, they become much more active in what they do best - eating houses. The water leak may be fixed but the damage has to be repaired and the way in checked to stop reoccurrences. That is the current project.

Teaching Cinderella

Abigail shared her fifth birthday with us today. We gave her a pink mix-and-match outfit. Joy and Craig gave her a Disney Cinderella computer! This "princess playmate" has about fifteen different learning games programmed into it.

Abigail is still to work out the mouse function, but has the touch pencil method down pat. And each time Abigail presses one of the letters on the keypad, the 'teaching' Cinderella voice pronounces the letter very clearly with good English accent. We were very impressed and could see that Abigail will get a lot out of this electronic friend. What an excellent gift.

Wardrobe Story

Peter recently constructed a wardrobe at Gembrook Retreat. The wall could have simply been boarded up except that there was an inset space to a brick wall which was set back. And there was a spare wooden louvered cupboard door just hanging about. In fact, there was a lot of available material to make a cupboard fixture.

So these were the steps.

• Start the construction and suddenly find that existing stud work is all out of plumb.


• Effectively start again and checking for square and re-measuring at each shelf level .


• Instead of an "L" shaped shelves, decide to make each level as two separate rectangular shelves that are detachable. Not sure if they work.


• Clad outside and inside, fix shelf brackets, and install shelves. They work well.


• Search about the suburbs for a matching door for the open space above. Find that the wooden louvered door type is no longer in fashion That's a blow. Check out a giant second hand house parts place and still not find one that will fit! But through divine guidance find a pair (on a clearance sale) that can be jigged to look like they were designed to be there.


• Do the jiggering and hang these higher doors. They look OK. Praise God.


• Fix thin shelves outside the wardrobe to fit snug behind the swing of the bedroom door. Done!

Ned Kelly Lives On

Just last weekend three protestors dressed in Ned Kelly armour accompanied by another hundred protestors actually held up a train at the town of Glenrowan. The steam train was making its last trip on the wide gauge line before it was torn up. This was a protest against the Victorian Government for neglecting to include a platform at Glenrowan in the laying of dual standard gauge tracks right through to Melbourne from Sydney. The protest might have done enough to help the government to realise there is public interest in the place because of what happened there 128 years ago. It seems that our government is thinking only of improving its freight capacity and commerce, the sort of thinking that raised the ira of those on the fringe of society like the Kelly family of yesteryear.

.

The changing of the gauge width has really messed up the Australian Railway Historical Society - Victorian Division.

.

This non-profit organisation has collected a wide gauge rolling stock over the years and is having to make conversions (if they can) to these to be able to continue to run their rail excursions for the public. We recently went and saw the work they were doing at their centre in Seymour and were amazed at the effort so many volunteers were putting in for the cause.

The former Ann Jones Hotel at Glenrowan, the place of the Kelly Gang's last stand (June 1880), has just had a team of archaeologists comb through the site for signs of the gun fight and how life was like back then. All the Kelly 'exploits' have become genuine tourist destinations, hence the argument for a platform at Glenrowan.

We visited a friend's home on the same weekend and saw a school grade six project in construction. It was none other than on Ned Kelly. The project involved making acted out video footage at school, complete with the son dressed up as Ned Kelly with armour and beard. We were very impressed at the ingenuity in the effort. Another part of the project was a three dimensionally constructed scene of one of Ned Kelly's confrontations with the law. It has a free standing cardboard policeman on a horse and a cardboard black tracker is behind a tree. The trees are made of coloured plasticine and one of them is complete with a plasticine koala. The central plasticine fire looks so good. Ned Kelly looks fantastic as a plasticine figure in his armour.