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Category: songs, in English

Big softie, empty tank (#4 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series + musical bonus)

 

 

The Curdimurka rail siding – near Lake Eyre South in the SA outback – saw its first train in 1888.

The last one went through in 1980, nearly three decades after the pictured water tank and gigantic water softener lost their raison d’être, when diesel electrics replaced steam locomotives in 1951.

This “big softie” was erected in 1943-44, so its working life was very brief.

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Word power: Natalie Merchant and Walt Whitman

 

 

Natalie and Walt have just unwittingly delayed the promised leopard post!

(it will be the next one, I promise)

The photo alludes to one of my favourite Walt Whitman poems, from Leaves of Grass.

Most printed interviews with musicians are time-wasting, publicist-driven piffle.

A notable exception is The New Yorker interview, published today – worth reading, whether or not you admire/know Natalie Merchant’s singing/songs.

There aren’t a lot of people writing love songs to Walt Whitman.

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Happy Gnu Year, with musical bonuses (final, double-edition of Namibia “single”-image series)

 

Gnu/wildebeest are bona fide antelopes.

However, as the Blue Wildebeest’s scientific name – Connochaetes taurinus – suggests, most human newcomers assume that wildebeest are bovine beasts.

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Word power: tax (cartoonist’s, economist’s & songster’s perspectives)

 

Australians’ 2022 views on taxation – and on taxation “reform” – are “informed” by a confusing array of truths, lies, twaddle, insight, credulity, chicanery, chutzpah, self-interested opportunism (sometimes naked, sometimes disguised) , rank hypocrisy, timidity, virtue-signalling, obfuscation, indifference, compassion, cruelty, ignorance, knowledge, and honest uncertainty.

The featured image is (Jon) Kudlelka’s cartoon for the 08 October 2022 edition of The Saturday Paper

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McGowangrad, winter ‘22: #2 in series (tar, cement, photosynthesis + musical bonus)

 

 

Looking at the ground right in front of your feet can offer surprising rewards, even when your feet are trudging along urban, paved surfaces.

Especially when a decent amount of rain has recently fallen, such “dead” zones can be surprisingly alive, not endlessly-grey.

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Revelatory covers (#22 in series – Jerry Jeff sings Guy)

The opening couplet from Guy Clark’s “Old Time Feeling”:

And that old time feelin’ goes sneakin’ down the hall

Like an old grey cat in winter, keepin’ close to the wall

As it happens, just a few days after the recent winter solstice, I happened upon an old grey cat who was keeping close to a wall…but, more crucially, taking advantage of the steps in front of it.

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Flight, Coorong National Park: gulls (with musical bonus)

 

When an Australian thinks of seagulls, the relevant species is almost certainly our most common, emblematic one.

Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae – the Silver gullhas prospered mightily, post-1788.

Arguably, this highly-adaptable bird should no longer be described as a “seagull”.

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