The Rongolian Star

"Irish Friendship Wish" by Jennifer Fefel Jahromi

May  there always  be work for your hands to do;

May your purse always hold  a coin or  two;

May the  sun always shine on your windowpane;

May a rainbow be  certain to  follow each  rain;

May the hand of a friend always be near you;

May God  fill your  heart with gladness to cheer  you,

and may  you be in  heaven a half hour before the devil  knows you’re  dead.

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St. Nicholas: Buried in Ireland

London, Dec 14 : Historians believe that the remains of St. Nicholas, the man who inspired Father Christmas, are buried at Jerpoint Abbey in County Kilkenny, Ireland.

The bishop was buried in the cathedral church in Myra, which became a pilgrimage site, but Irish historians claim that the early crusaders brought his remains back to Jerpoint Abbey.

“It is an amazing story and yet very few people in Ireland know about St Nicholas”s connection with this country. Every year now we get visitors to the site, but still not that many,” The Telegraph quoted Philip Lynch, an historian and chairman of Callan Heritage Society in Co Kilkenny, as saying.

“There is a great story about a notorious old miser. He never gave the children any Christmas presents, instead he delighted in bringing them to Jerpoint and showing them Father Christmas”s grave,” he added.

It has previously believed that St Nicholas’s remains were taken to Bari in southern Italy in the 11th century after Italian sailors looted his grave.

However, Lynch claims there is evidence to suggest that a French family who settled in Ireland shortly after 1169 were responsible for moving his remains.

He believes that the crusading family, called the de Frainets, exhumed the tomb after they were routed by their enemies, and brought the content to southern Italy, which was then Norman lands.

When they were subsequently forced out of Italy by the Genoese, the remains were entrusted to relatives in Nice, who moved them to family lands in Kilkenny for safe keeping.

Nicholas de Frainet built a dedicated Cistercian Abbey at Jerpoint where St Nicholas’s remains were then interred in 1200.

“St Nicholas Church is still standing and there is a slab on the ground which marks St Nicholas”s grave,” Lynch said. (ANI)

Jock Fleming

His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped his tools and ran to the bog.

There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death.

The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman’s sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved.

‘I want to repay you,’ said the nobleman. ‘You saved my son’s life.’

Elegantly dressed Scottish nobleman

‘No, I can’t accept payment for what I did,’ the Scottish farmer replied waving off the offer. At that moment, the farmer’s own son came to the door of the family hovel.

‘Is that your son?’ the nobleman asked.

‘Yes,’ the farmer replied proudly.

‘I’ll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of education my own son will enjoy, if the lad is anything like his father, he’ll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of.’ And that he did.

Farmer Fleming’s son attended the very best schools and in time, graduated from St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.

Penicillin as Invented by Sir Alexander Fleming

Years afterward, the same nobleman’s son who was saved from the bog was stricken with gonorrhea.

What saved his life this time? Penicillin.

The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill .. His son’s name?

Sir Winston Churchill.

Winston Churchill

Someone once said: What goes around comes around.

Work like you don’t need the money.

Love like you’ve never been hurt.

Dance like nobody’s watching.

Sing like nobody’s listening..

Live like it’s Heaven on Earth.

And drink like Winston.

Happy Aussies!!

You know you’re Australian when:

OzTralia M8

• You believe that stubbies can either be drunk or worn.
• You’ve made a bong out of your garden hose rather than use it for something illegal such as watering the garden.
• You understand that the phrase ‘a group of women wearing black thongs’ refers to footwear and may be less alluring than it sounds.
• You pronounce Melbourne as ‘Mel-bin’. You believe the ‘l’ in the word ‘Australia’ is optional.
• You can translate: ‘Dazza and Shazza played Acca Dacca on the way to Maccas’.
• You call your best friend ‘a total bastard’ but someone you really, truly despise is just ‘a bit of a bastard’.
• You think ‘Woolloomooloo’ is a perfectly reasonable name for a place.
• You’re secretly proud of our killer wildlife.
• You believe it makes sense for a country to have a $1 coin that’s twice as big as its $2 coin.
• You understand that ‘Wagga Wagga’ can be abbreviated to ‘Wagga’ but ‘Woy Woy’ can’t be called ‘Woy’.
• You believe that cooked down axle grease makes a good breakfast spread – you’ve squeezed it through Vita Wheats to make little Vegemite worms.
• You believe all famous Kiwis are actually Australian, until they stuff up, at which point they again become Kiwis. Beetroot with your Hamburger… of course!
• You know that certain words must, by law, be shouted out during any rendition of the Angels’ song ‘Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again’ And ‘Living next door to Alice’.
• You wear ugg boots outside the house.
• You believe that every important discovery in the world was made by an Australian but then sold off for a pittance.
• You believe that the more you shorten someone’s name the more you like them.
• You understand that ‘excuse me’ can sound rude, While ‘scuse me’ is always polite.
• You know what it’s like to swallow a fly, on occasion via your nose.
• You know it’s not summer until the steering wheel is too hot to handle and a seat belt buckle becomes a pretty good branding iron.
• Your biggest family argument over the summer concerned the rules for beach cricket.
• You shake your head in horror when companies try to market what they call ‘Anzac Cookies’.
• You still think of Kylie as ‘that girl off Neighbours’.
• When working in a bar, you understand male customers will feel the need to offer an excuse whenever they order low-alcohol beer.
• You know how to abbreviate every word, all of which usually end in “o”: arvo, combo, garbo, kero, lezzo, metho, milko, muso, rego, servo, smoko, speedo, righto, goodo etc…
• You know that there is a universal place called ‘woop woop’ located in the middle of nowhere, no matter where you actually are!
• You know that none of us actually drink Fosters beer, because it tastes like piss.
• You sleep with Aeroguard on in the summer and don’t mind it as a perfume.
• You’ve only ever used the words – tops, ripper, sick, mad, sweet, to mean “good” and when you place ‘bloody’ in front of it then you really mean it.
• You know that the barbecue is a political arena.
• You say ‘no worries’ quite often, whether you realise it or not.
• You understand what no wucking furries means.
• You’ve drank your tea/coffee/milo through a Tim Tam.
• You own a Bond’s chesty – in several different colors.
• You know that some people pronounce Australia like “Straya” and that’s OK.

Real Aussie Bloke

Aussie SAS Trooper Bruce "Knackers" McDangler

PERTH – An (Australian) SAS trooper collecting toys for children was stabbed when he helped stop a suspected shoplifter in east Perth.

The ‘Toys-R-Us’ Store Manager (Mr Smith) told ‘The West Australian’  that a man was seen on surveillance cameras last Friday putting a Barbie doll under his jacket at the store.

When confronted, the man became irate, knocked down an employee, pulled a knife and ran toward the door.

Outside were four SAS Troopers collecting toys for the “Toys For Tots” program.

Smith said the Troopers stopped the man, but he stabbed one of them
in the back. The cut did not appear to be severe.

The suspect was transported by ambulance to the Royal Perth Hospital with two broken arms, a broken leg, possible broken ribs, multiple contusions and assorted lacerations including a broken nose and jaw…Injuries he apparently sustained when he tripped as he was trying to escape after the stabbing.

One of the Troopers said, “He was a clumsy bastard.”

The Rongolian Star

(From The Rongolian Star Archives)

Saturday, July 6, 2002

By ANGELA JEFFS

Journalist Paul Murray was slightly thrown when his photographic teacher told him to forget using a macro lens. “He said the best photographers technically were Japanese, so I might as well give up before I started.”

Paul Murray, hailing from the rustic environs of South Australia's Kangaroo island, is exhibiting his view of nature in Tokyo's Omotesando area this month.

Yet Paul puts every doubting Thomas to flight this month, exhibiting remarkable photographs in the Las Chicas restaurant complex in Tokyo’s Omotesando.There was also the matter of his build — tall and gangling with (it has to be said) enormous hands and feet. Hardly easy to get down close to the earth to shoot the tiniest flower, or lean in close and still to record a quivering raindrop on a leaf.

It’s a long way from Australia’s Kangaroo Island, where he grew upon a sheep and cattle farm.

When Paul was 8 his father remarried. “I was already fiercely independent. Now I became fiercely rebellious.” At age 14 he was packed off to boarding school in Adelaide — a huge shock, he says,”but it made me.” When he left, he had no idea what to do except “have an interesting life.”

Well, he certainly did that!

He became a jackaroo, an Australian cowboy, working in different parts of the country. “I was tough as hell. But it was romantic, too. Pure. Three hours from the nearest town, yet never boring — and never lonely until I lived in a city.” The only recreation? Nurses, in for rodeos. “Bless their little Mother Teresa hearts!”

Moving from heaven to hell, he became a sheet metal apprentice in a factory. Seeing through the ruse (as a form of slavery) he went back to the land, as overseer on world’s largest sheep farm — 1,600,000 hectares and 70,000 sheep — aged just 19. “Acknowledging my agrarian blood, I then went off to study agricultural science, majoring in horticulture.”

When he graduated, Australia was in recession and the only jobs in chemical companies (“forget that”) or selling insurance (“which I proved scarily good at!”).

Next stop, marrying a multimillionaire’s daughter. Moving to Melbourne, he became a partner in an insurance company. “I began living up to other peoples’ expectations.”

Waking one day to find himself unhappy (“my wife was well into her own career”) he decided to go back to farming. Buying into a tropical fruit company to export custard apples to Hong Kong and Singapore seemed a great idea. Until a freak hailstorm wiped out the whole crop. “I lost everything, including my wife.”

With life at its lower ebb, he came to Japan on a working vacation to lick his wounds. “I liked the idea of treading water for a while.” One year turned into 18 months. “I was teaching at a high school for dropouts — kids with mental problems, bosozoku, girls who’d been hostesses, some of whom saw English as a way to escape Japan.”

The pivotal experience came at a dinner party in Shibuya. Guests, all successful in their chosen fields, were talking about a psychic in America who had changed their lives. “I was totally skeptical, yet for some reason decided to shut up and listen.” Later he made an appointment to talk to “Garry” by phone in Georgia. “I’d been told to prepare 10 questions,” Paul recalls. “Yet the first thing ‘Garry’ said to me was, ‘Paul, you would have been a much more creative person if your mother hadn’t died when you were 2.’ It blew me away. Then he asked me why I’d stopped playing piano. Now he had my full attention.”

Later Paul asked if he should buy some Fuji Bank stock. Good idea, he was told. Three weeks later Fuji merged with two other banks.

After speaking with the psychic, Paul realized that in every job he had ever done, there was a point when he leveled out, then lost interest. “It really made me think.”

Deciding to try journalism, he enrolled in an MA program through distance learning, taking exams at the Australian Embassy.

As a journalist, he says: “In writing, you can always do better. There’s no plateau. As I find it easier to express myself, I realize that satisfaction for me lies in creative pursuits.”

Volunteering with an NGO in Thailand, he began photographing faces, and was surprised — despite knowing little of a camera’s mechanics — by just how good some were.

In Europe, he focused on architecture. But then he began to be fascinated by patterns and designs in nature.

“The turning point was a butterfly on a sunflower. The inside of the flower reminded me of Spirograph patterns drawn as a kid.” This is when he bought a macro lens. “I’m not into photographing wildlife. I leave the Japanese to that. My motivation is in nature’s design, construction, the ‘art’ in it.”

The pattern on a bird’s wing reminds him of a flock of sparrows in flight. In a stretch of vegetation, he sees circles — the cyclical nature of life. “At my first exhibition in Ichikawa in March, people thought my images sexy.” He sold over 100 prints. One man bought five to get his wife in the mood to get pregnant. She is now expecting.

“Art of Nature — Contemplative Observation,” will exhibit some 30 photographs, plus a slide show. “I’m not interested in people saying, ‘Oh what lovely flowers.’ I want them to look in depth. We’re too complaisant.

“The government — the Liberal Democratic Party-led regime — has one criteria in assessing nature: its value as a car park. But nature’s value is intangible. I’d like to help people regain this appreciation.”

In August he leaves for New Zealand, where he has bought 32 hectares of natural forest bordering a national park, with 400 meters of river frontage. His goal, he says, is to make a living from his camera, to continue to remind people of the true beauty of nature. “I have to make it more interesting than Disneyland in order to help save it.”

For further information about the exhibition, telephone: (0468) 75-1149; E-mail warrigulbartlett@yahoo.com; or check: http://www.geocities.com/warrigulbartlett/artofnature