We're down but not out.

The last election in Oz has been a dismal failure. We elected (again), an old government, full of old people. This isn't an ageist observation; they are all old in mind and spirit. They won convincingly, and legally, but not morally. The question is not why did we elect them, but where do we go from here. Labor is well and truly out in the wilderness, and the word is that they won't govern again till 2011 if then. They need a leader who inspires, who has the demeaner of a leader not a loser. It's all about image and convincing policies. The elction process must begin soon, not in the last weeks before an election. The new opposition leader has a big task ahead, but as Howard has shown, it is possible to fool most of the people most of the time. Howard's speech writer came up with a winning slogan: " We will decide who comes to Australia, and under what ciecumstances they come here". It's a meaningless statement, and ignores the estimated 800,000 peopel who live in Australia illegally, having overstayed their visas, and the thousands of people who have gained legal access by becoming New Zealand citizens.
Labor needs a new speech writer, and a new leader-minder a new campaign manager and a dull treaurer who looks like death warmed up. It would help if he has leadership ambitions, and a fundamentalist christian outlook. Six years is a long time in politics. maybe Labor can get it together by then, with the help of a massive number of Greens preferences, and a healthy swagger of Greens policies.
Another question is how soon will Howard wait to move to abolish the Senate? Certainly he will have opposition support for such a measure. It would be a major blow to minor parties like the Greens, but hey the Greens won't always be a minor party, judging by the increased votes in the last elections. It's an inevitable political fact, that as the Labor party takes another lurch to the right, more people turn to the Greens.

the politics of Slow-Foods

Slow-Foods is a concept I originated in 1977, when I opened my ALEXX SLOW-FOODS cafe in Sydney.

The SLOW-FOOD concept was my political action to counter the foreign fast food explosion which is now reaping amongst its profits a generation of overweight children, with high cholesterol levels and other health related problems. I made a prediction in 1985 that by the year 2010, the foreign owned fast food outlets would have on the menu organic vegetarian whole food choices. I think the prediction is running pretty well on track.

I ran my cafe for two years, then turned my attention to making sour dough organic wholemeal bread. This helped start a bread revolution in Oz and now there are many bakeries devoted to baking organic sour dough bread. I ran the bakery until 1991, and then pursued other interests, which included University studies, and a BA in Media Studies.

ALEXX SLOW-FOODS as I conceived it, had very important guidelines. It was about leaving just a small footprint on planet Earth. The meals I created were 100% vegan. I used the highest quality ingredients, with organic food wherever possible (though supplies of such were limited then). Only virgin olive oils were used in cooking and salads. Meals were well balanced with grains, pulses and vegetables being augmented with a fresh salad. They were created with creativeness, TLC, (and my trusty Majimix). They were much appreciated. It was a hippy establishment, but attracted a wide range of people. Discounts were given to pensioners and unwaged people. It was a rewarding two years, and I proved that if you give quality, people appreciate it, and word of mouth brings many converts. The food was pepared SLOWLY, with care and integrity, for health, for the environment and for progressive ideals like providing good vibes and healing. Fast foods are on the whole made for fast profit, cheap thrills, and give no health or other benefits to a community.

This was the original and genuine SLOW-FOODS, and bears no relationship to the recent slow food movement, which has used my idea, but robbed it of its life-affirmative substance. In the end there is no substitute for a home-cooked meal.
Posted by: alexx / 1:20 AM

sydney

Wednesday, April 28, 2004



Sydney is a city of conrasts. Like most cities, it has the very rich (living around our famous harbor), the very poor living in depressed areas, and the middle class, doing ok, but more often than ever before, working part time. Our society has been changed from being friendly and generous, to tending to be mean spirited and insular. This is an unhappy time in our history, as we are being shaped by a brutal, dishonest, uncaring, inept and reckless government. We have long past the times of voting in a popular government. With our compulsory voting system (an anachronism which ensures a high voting turn out) we vote out a government which is judged to be not in our best interest, whatever we think that is. Good government, thoughtful environmental policies, generous funding to health care, education, and the arts are talked about by the opposition parties but in a country which has high unemployment despite what official figures indicate, homelessness at epidemic rates, (including many street kids) many people understandingly approach our coming election with 'fear and loathing'. Our Prime Minister is no doubt choosing from his speech writers, a fitting speech to deliver when we have our first major terrorist attack. Also a speech to give when we suffer our first casualties in Iraq. These situations, if handled correctly, might help him scrape in at election time. Our government cares not about its citizens nor their declining standard of living and suffering. It's all about holding on to power at any cost, and selling out to the US.

ETERNITY
As a child, when walking through the city or King's Cross, I would often be struck by the word "Eternity" written in neat copperplate running script on our footpaths. Far from having biblical overtones for me, it would take me to a thoughtful state of mind where I would contemplate the enormity of the concept. It still has that effect on me.
I remember, also as a child, that our uncle told us a story in which a mystic gave an example of eternity. Every day, a man (well it was the fifties) would walk up to this huge granite rock and give it a cursory wipe with a silk scarf. "Wow" I though. "That would take forever."

The story stuck with me, but as I grew older. I thought, well one day, it would eventually whittle the rock down. I decided that the rock should be a hundred mile cube. And that he would wipe it only once a decade. That seemed an awful long time, but as I grew older, It still bothered me that one day this mammoth cube would be gone. What would the world be like then?
I remembered this the other day and decided to make eternity harder to attain. The rock would be made from Naxos stone, and it would be case hardened with uranium, and it would be the size of Tasmania. Not only that, but the luckless guy would only get to wipe it once a millennium. Ok I hear you say, why not make it the size of Australia, and he could wipe it once in a blue moon?
The point is that having it wiped once a millennium would make it a ceremonious occasion. A huge rock concert would be given , and Bob Geldof could sing "I don't like Monday"
I guess even this would one day be worn away. But what would the world be like then? Would we at last have peace and happiness, would religion be gone? The hippies who promised us that in the sixties, are now running corporations and rather than being part of the solution, are part of the problem. Well I'm still a hippy, and I like to think I'm no longer a problem, by way of not being such a threat to our eco system.

I'm not going to dwell on the rock analogy anymore, but I will always be in awe of the word 'ETERNITY'



Google turned up this info on Arthur Stace:

Arthur Stace was a loser, a no-hoper, an alcoholic -ö and completely illiterate. He lived in the streets of Sydney, regarded by many who saw him as a lost cause.

One Sunday night in 1932 he entered St Barnabas' Anglican Church on Broadway, Sydney, and heard the Reverend T C Hammond preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Arthur was convicted by the Spirit of God. He left the church, crossed the road, and sat under a tree in Victoria Park where he committed his life to Jesus Christ. He became a new creation.

Later that year he was at the Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle on the corner of Palmer Street, Darlinghurst when he heard the evangelist the Reverend John G Ridley preaching.

In his urgent, commanding voice, an excited John Ridley thundered out: "Eternity! Eternity! Oh, that this word could be emblazoned across the streets of Sydney!"

Arthur Stace the little man who still could not read or write left that church, took some yellow chalk and, only under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, bent down and wrote one word on the footpath. And throughout the night for the next 40 years, while Sydney slept, Arthur would take his chalk and write in immaculate copperplate handwriting the word "eternity" on footpaths, entrances to the train station, and anywhere else he thought it would catch people's attention.

Sydneysiders would alight from their commuter trains of a morning and see this word as they walked to work.

In Sydney today, you can still see the word in three places...

1) On his gravestone in Waverley Cemetery, commemorating the life of Arthur Stace who had become known as 'Mr Eternity'.

2) Inside the huge bell in the GPO clock tower which had been dismantled during the second world war. When the clock tower was rebuilt in the 1960s, the bell was brought out of storage and as the workmen were installing the bell they noticed, inside, the word "eternity" in Arthur Stace's chalk. (No one ever found out how Stace had been able to get to the bell, which had been sealed up, to add this mysterious entry to Sydney's folklore.)

3) In Town Hall Square, between St Andrew's Cathedral and the Sydney Town Hall. When the area was redeveloped in the 1970s, a solid brass replica of the word in Stace's original copperplate handwriting was embedded in the footpath near a fountain as an eternal memorial to Arthur Stace.

And the big news is that this coming Friday, as we bid farewell to 1999 and welcome in the year 2000, the word "eternity" in Stace's famous copperplate handwriting, will be emblazoned NOT across the streets of Sydney as John Ridley had wished, but across the face of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and, thanks to modern technology seen around the world.

Of all the words that have been spoken during the first two millennia, the one chosen by otherwise-godless people to be featured on the Harbour Bridge at the dawn of the year 2000, is the one that was used to remind so many busy Sydneysiders of their impending appointment with their creator.

Because Sydney's fireworks display is the first of the international celebrations to be telecast around the globe, people in every continent will witness the miracle that God performed when he touched the life of one little, 'insignificant' man -- Arthur Stace -- a man who heard the voice of

God and responded by committing his life to 'preaching' his one-word sermon.

Heaven only knows how God will continue to speak to the hearts of so many people around the globe, using the work He started back in the 1930s through one illiterate 'lost cause' no-hoper Arthur Staceand his inspirationally simple use of a piece of yellow chalk.

.............................................................................



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posted by alexx at 2:11 AM