GOF’s scrap bucket

"Scarper" is a word not commonly used in Australia.  Its etymology may be from the Italian "scappare" (to escape), but my familiarity with it derives from U.K. television where "scarpering" means to rapidly decamp ones self from the scene of a felony and/or misdemeanor.  
The word sounds so beautiful to my ear that I would like to promulgate its usage over a much wider spectrum of human activity. Indeed, lets apply it to any situation where the present position in which we find ourselves becomes untenable, and we recognise that it is time to leave.

I have scarpered twice in my life. On neither occasion was criminal activity involved. No felony. No misdemeanor.
An ill-advised youthful marriage became terminally unsustainable and I made the decision to rapidly scarper, but (I hasten to add) as responsibly as the circumstances prevailing at the time would allow.
I also found it necessary to scarper from a job I had enjoyed for 12 years, when unnecessary petty bureaucracy seriously limited my ability to do effective work.

On both occasions I could perhaps have conducted my scarpering with considerably more panache.  In retrospect, my scarpering was an act of defiance, a refusal to become a lifelong victim of anyone who deliberately chose to make my life miserable.
It was also an intellectual acknowledgement that I was not excelling in either of these areas of my life, and that it was time for a fresh start.

I have since chosen to be self employed for the past 25 years, and have rarely had cause to complain about my employer.
My partner of the last 28 years continues to give me great happiness and an understanding that there could be no greener pasture  to which I should scarper.

Indeed, so successful were my two scarpering events that I would like to encourage others to adopt the practice.  I herewith supply some modest examples.

Elite athletes;   gymnasts who head butt the vaulting horse instead of sproinging over it, or slip off the high beam causing damage to genitalia or other body parts......DO NOT be a hero and resume your routine.  Finishing is not everything.  Seek retribution.  Abuse the equipment by all means, but, most importantly, simply walk out of the arena with a smile on your face.  Confuse the critics.  Scarper with class.

Iceskaters;   When you miscalculate your position on the surface of the Earth and propel yourself backwards into the fence at 60 kph, accept the moment of public humiliation as a necessary alternative to glory.  Acknowledge the pain you feel.  Whine, wail, howl for however long it is necessary for you to be long remembered in the annals of ice skating.  Gold medal performances will be forgotten in time.  Yours will not.  Then just scarper.  Accept the financial rewards forthcoming from the media.  Just go and do something more suited to your talents.

Current Olympic bicycle road racers;  If you run off the side of the road into a ditch so deep it probably goes all the way to China, recognise that it was an inherently unstable, two wheeled crappy velocipede which brought you to this point in your life.  Leave it where it is. The garbage truck will collect it.  Make your way on foot, directly to the nearest purveyor of alcoholic beverages.  Enjoy some rice wine, and plan what sort of FOUR wheeled machinery you will race next time.

For the remainder of us.  Never be afraid to scarper.
Walk now.  Walk with dignity and head held high, for life is too short to complete an inept routine, and then sit around waiting for sympathetic applause.

Heroism is best left for the real heroes.

Organised religion, and specifically the Catholic Church has previously been the subject of criticism in my writings.  A lifetime of observation and experience has led me to several conclusions regarding the subject of religion, most of which can wait for another time.

I respect the individuals right to believe in whatever they wish.  (Even astrology, if I am feeling particularly tolerant on the day).

The churches of the world include many individual people who have wonderful intentions, and selflessly sacrifice much of their own life to help others less fortunate.   The organisational structures however seem to often become distracted by ritual, ceremony, and the acquisition of financial assets.

I had the great pleasure of working in rural areas of Papua New Guinea, a developing country to the North of Australia, during the 1960's and 70's.
Much of the education and health care delivered to village people in PNG was, and is still done, by church agencies.  It is possible with the benefit of hindsight to be critical of the activities of many external aid agencies which operate in developing countries.  Some of the criticism is justified.
Almost without exception however, it was my experience that those people doing the work "on the ground" were well motivated caring people who had the best of intentions.
The Catholic church in PNG had many outstanding priests working in difficult circumstances, often doing their best work by disregarding Vatican doctrine.  
   
It was my particular honour to know Father Tom (thats not his real name, and as he subsequently rose to a high rank in the Catholic church it is right that he should remain "Father Tom")
Father Tom operated from a very remote location cleared from the rainforest.....a rough short sloping grass airstrip and a crackly short wave radio transceiver were his only connections to the outside world.  His bush material house was built on one side of the airstrip, and the nuns equally rough convent and primary school on the other side.   Father Tom was responsible for pastoral care of his "flock",  but much more importantly to him, was the establishment of numerous practical projects to help village people improve their health, education and lifestyle.   Often he travelled for days on foot or horseback to supervise his projects, conduct child health clinics, or to survey and build roads. He had a wicked sense of humour.  He often communicated with the nuns on the other side of the airstrip by sending written notes per safe hand of his native "house boy".
He would explode with mirth after the despatch of each note, written on a pad containing the logo and name of a well known brand of contraceptive pill.   He assumed the nuns did not know.  I suspect that they enjoyed the prank just as much as he did.
Father Tom did not need to preach his religion. He practised being a kind, selfless, and caring human being.   No dogma.  No pious observation of ritual.  Simply a man of the highest moral and ethical fibre.  He set the humanity bar very high.  Yet it is within reach of each and every one of us, should we make the choice,   He would be the first to encourage us, and remind us that our runup need not begin within the constricted space of any organised religion.

Thanks for the memories Father Tom.  You made the world a better place.

I promised Mrs GOF that I would get rid of all my Elle MacPherson pictures.
Thought I would slip them one at a time in between stuff here where no-one will
ever find them.  At 1 per week I'll be rid of em in no time at all.

001

Life is punctuated by moments when we discover that a truth upon which we base our lives is in fact falsehood.

Only recently was I made aware that Cinderella in fact had a FUR slipper.   The glass slipper which we have come to accept, is in fact a misnomer resulting from faulty translation of the original French manuscript.
I was able to accept this devastating information without a great deal of trauma to my psyche, because we are indeed from a young age innoculated against such disappointments.
Successive generations of adult humans perpetrate the hoaxes of Santa Claus, tooth fairy and Easter bunny, and seemingly derive some peculiar sort of enjoyment from treating their offspring like morons.

I am hoping not to find any more errors in the fairy tales of my childhood.  Did all the Kings men actually reconstruct Humpty Dumpty in the Emergency Room using advanced orthopedic surgery so I can one day bump into him sitting on a wall somewhere?  That would be very spooky because I have already mourned for him.
Or perhaps the bad wolf did actually blow down the little pigs brick house because the builders used poor quality mortar and neglected to use reinforcing steel, to save money. Then I would have to belatedly mourn for my little swine friends. And was the wolf really inherently bad, or did he just suffer psychological trauma from a deprived young wolfhood?
And, God forbid, I definitely don't need to know if Snow Whites relationship with the 7 dwarves was anything but the way it was written.

Is there a remote possibility that some other commonly held beliefs are flawed?

The bible has been translated at least twice in my lifetime and the Lords Prayer of 2008 doesn't for me resemble that with which I was brainwashed 50 years ago.   Could it be possible that the remainder of the text has also been perverted and distorted through translations over the centuries?  Could a single rogue creative, upwardly mobile translator somewhere in history have deliberately inserted a few "glass slippers" to make the whole tome a little more saleable?

What if the Dow Jones, Nikkei, FTSE and Hang Seng  were not the true indicators of the success of our civilisation, but in fact were also impeccable reminders of the rate at which we are consuming finite resources, and destroying irreplaceable ecology.

Is the Theory of Evolution beyond question?  Are we in fact superior to other primates?  The thinking chimpanzee historian, philosopher, and poet laureate today must be looking at Mugabe, Saddam, and those who invade countries under false pretences just because they own the biggest stick, and wondering just what sort of inferior life form they evolved from.  Ape history does not seem to be littered with ethnic cleansing of those with a different hair colour, or distant colonies who communicate with an unfamiliar sequence of grunts.  Nor do they deliberately crap in their own drinking water.    (Editorial note; The Bucket acknowledges that GOF is taking liberties in surmising this....he has not actually done any scientific field work to establish this as fact).

So, where are the absolute truths of our existence to be found?
Once the Earth was flat, and now it is round.  

Does our evolution simply comprise discoveries for our collective knowledge base, which will forever be subject to correction, expansion and modification?

Perhaps all the indisputable and absolute truths needed to happily conduct our lives are hidden away in our own unique and individual inner beings.  Could it perhaps be that, at times, they are akin to "common sense"?   Most of the things we learn are like constantly changing clouds coming and going on the prevailing winds of our time.

All this thinking gives me a headache.  Please pass the aspirin.

Beijing olympics logo

Sometimes life is made more complete by stumbling across information, which in hindsight makes you wonder how you previously lived life without the knowledge.

A modest example if I may.

During the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, a total of 90,000 condoms were distributed to the 10,000 athletes in the Olympic village.
Obviously identifying this as some sort of dubious record to be broken, Athens managed to hand out 130,000 in 2004.

Now I am a little perplexed.  Were there a whole lot of olympic athletic events being shown on television late at night after Mrs GOF had safely tucked me into bed?    I am going to keep a close eye on it this year.

Has the inspirational Olympic motto of Faster-Higher-Stronger been modified to include "Relentless"?

I want the Olympics permanently moved to the Vatican City to eliminate all this sin and iniquity.

And I always did wonder what that Olympic logo was all about.  Now my life is complete.

Thank you to my dear Globet for finding and sending this to me.
You are one of my golf balls.

Two Glasses of Wine
 
When things in your life seem almost too much
to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough,
remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 glasses of
wine theory...
 
A professor stood before his philosophy class
with some items on his desk in front of him. When
the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very
large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill
it with golf balls.
 
He then asked the students if the jar was
full. They agreed that it was.
 
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles
and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar
lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas
between the golf balls. He then asked the students
again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
 
The professor next picked up a box of sand and
poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled
up everything else. He asked once more if the jar
was full. The students responded with a unanimous
'YES.'
 
The professor then produced two glasses of
wine from under the table and poured the entire
contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty
space between the sand. The students laughed.
 
'Now,' said the professor, as the laughter
subsided, 'I want you to recognize that this jar
represents your life. The golf balls are the
important things; your family, your children, your
health, your friends, and your favourite passions;
things that if everything else was lost and only
they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter
like your job, your house, and your car. The sand is
everything else; the small stuff.
 

If you put the sand into the jar first', he
continued, 'there is no room for the pebbles or the
golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all
your time and energy on the small stuff, you will
never have room for the good things that are
important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical
to your happiness. Play with your children. Take
time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out
to dinner. Play another 18 holes. Do one more run
down the ski slope. There will always be time to
clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of
the golf balls first; the things that really matter.
Set your priorities . The rest is just sand.'
 

One of the students raised her hand and
inquired what the wine represented.
 
The professor smiled. 'I'm glad you asked. It
just goes to show you that no matter how full your
life may seem, there's always room for a couple of
glasses of wine with a friend.'

Your blogger has had an involvement in agriculture and horticulture for the past 40 years. Farming is an honorable profession.  Australian agriculture has much to be proud of in terms of supplying the nation and the world with food.  Nevertheless its record of caring for the environment has often been less than optimum. As a nation during the past 200 years we have introduced plagues of rabbits, cane toads, prickly pear cactus, and bureaucrats.
During the 1960's and 70's Australian farmers literally went berserk clear- felling huge expanses of native bushland in order to establish farms.   As a result, much of the continents fragile soil was eroded either by wind or water.  Huge dust storms swept across the country carrying precious topsoil and depositing it in the oceans.

Today, Australias Murray-Darling river system is a disgrace to the nation.  Farmers have been given permission by past Governments, to completely block its tributaries to provide irrigation water for crops totally unsuited to Australias semi-arid regions.  (eg cotton and rice),  and been given almost unlimited pumping rights for other crops.  During 2007 the Darling river stopped flowing completely as did the mouth of Australias largest river, the Murray, allowing saltwater inundation to destroy fragile flora and fauna habitats.  It was convenient for officials to blame this occurrence on an extended drought.  The truth I suspect is that Government officials over the past 50 years have failed to recognise water as a finite resource and regulate its usage accordingly.
Additionally many thousands of hectares of good farming land in Eastern and Western Australia is now unusable because of salination.....the result of unsuitable irrigation practices.

P.A. Yeomans (1905-1984) was a geologist turned farmer during the 1940's and 1950's.  (The writer would like to apologise for any factual errors as he is relying on memory)   He was a man who devised sustainable systems for farming long before anyone else saw the necessity of doing so.   His geological experience enabled him to design a farm planning model almost totally opposite to conventional agriculture at the time.  He was derided by Government officials and many conventional farmers alike.
Yeomans designed the "Keyline System" of farming detailed in his book "The Challenge of Landscape".  Tradition had it that farm water storages be placed at the lowest point of a farm then pumped back uphill to irrigate.  Yeomans found out that by placing smaller water storages as high up on the property as possible, and often on ridgelines, he could divert rainfall runoff from the valleys out to the ridges using contoured and  grassed water channels.  This system prevented soil erosion, increased absorbtion of rainwater into the soil, and reduced the need for subsequent irrigation, which, if required could be done by gravity flow from his higher water storages.  It was revolutionary thinking, which he proceeded to prove and  put into practice on 3 large grazing properties in New South Wales.
Additionally he retained or planted wide strips of trees to improve the farms micro climate, when accepted practice was to bulldoze vegetation.  He did not plough large areas of soil leaving it vulnerable to erosion, but deep- ripped his grazing land to open up compacted soils and gradually integrate organic matter into them, increase rain penetration, and improve micro-biological activity in the soil.  He judged his success by observing the huge increase in earthworm numbers in his soils.
The Permaculture movement of the world now recognise these practices as part of their system of sustainable agriculture.

P.A  Yeomans should be remembered as an innovator and intelligent custodian of our fragile earth.  In the 21st century, farmers can no longer afford to ignore the lesson he showed the nation 50 years ago.     The bureaucrats who failed to recognise the value of his work should now take a look at the Murray and Darling Rivers, and bow their heads in collective shame.

The world contains too many parasitic non-achievers wielding power far in excess of their knowledge and abilities, and not enough intelligent and innovative doers getting their hands dirty. (literally and/or figuratively)

P.A. Yeomans, you deserve the greatest honour for being an outstanding caretaker of mother Earth.

The German physicist Max Planck (1885-1947) is quoted as saying;
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die.