Jean Burman

Here’s an inspiring song for you…

[don't forget to turn on your sound!]

I ain’t got no home, ain’t got no shoes
Ain’t got no money, ain’t got no class
Ain’t got no skirts, ain’t got no sweater
Ain’t got no perfume, ain’t got no beer
Ain’t got no mind

Ain’t got no mother, ain’t got no culture
Ain’t got no friends, ain’t got no schooling
Ain’t got no love, ain’t got no name
Ain’t got no ticket, ain’t got no token
Ain’t got no God

Then what have I got?
Why am I alive anyway?
Yeah, what have I got?

Nobody can take away!

I got my hair, got my head
got my brains, got my ears
got my eyes, got my nose
got my mouth… I got my smile!

I got my tongue, got my chin
got my neck, got my boobs
got my heart, got my soul
got my back… I got my self

I got my arms, got my hands
got my fingers, got my legs
got my feet, got my toes
got my liver… I got my blood

I’ve got life… I’ve got my freedom
I’ve got life!

I’ve got life… and I’m gonna keep it!

I’ve got life… and nobody’s gonna take it away

I’ve got LIFE!

Nina Simone - Ain’t Got No/I Got Life

artwork & content Copyright Jean Burman 2007

I went off to Boarding School over (what seems like) half a lifetime ago at the tender age of 12. Life was very simple back then. For 15 weeks straight… three terms per year… we weren’t allowed out of the grounds. I learned all about homesickness… and the true meaning of “heartache”. I learned what it was to be hungry (although you could never have said we were deprived - nonetheless the Boarder’s collective starvation was the stuff of cliche and legend in the Day School! LOL) We were laughed about and pitied… (it was only as adults we learned how the day girls admired us and envied our life as Boarders at our school). Consequently I learned what it was to be alienated. I learned what it was to be cold… and knew how it felt to be lonely. I learned what it was to be sad. I learned how to live in a small space… and how to consider others. You could say I learned a lot about life!

It wasn’t that Boarding School wasn’t fun… it was! And coming from a family of boys… it was wonderful to find myself all of a sudden… with so many “sisters”. It was the place where I learned to live simply. I learned to find joy in the company of others. I learned what it was to long for home whilst at the same time being “at home” already. I learned to be happy doing fun things together… planning concerts and movie nights… dances and games nights… and silly things like pyjama parties… and the conspiratorial camaraderie of the midnight feast! I even learned how to short-sheet a bed!

The best thing about it was… I survived. We all survived. Some people aren’t so lucky. There are tragedies in life that some may never recover from. But even the scars that never quite heal serve a purpose to shape us into the people that we are.

However… I believe as a whole we “Boarders” came out alright…. and despite the intervening years and our vastly divergent paths… a small group of us now get together once a month for coffee and a chat… over 1200 kilometres from the school whose goal it was to shape us into educated “young ladies”!

Our first few conversations after all those years consisted of reminiscences of our time at Boarding School… but over time that changed. Now when we get together we talk about life and the living of it in the here and now… the occurrences and happenings that pile one on top of the other to form “the stuff” of our everyday lives now. We remember the good things. And the bad things… (like only being allowed to wash our hair once a week) are looked upon now and laughed about. Thank the Lord for rose-coloured glasses!

Those years taught me how to laugh and they taught me how to cry. In a way… those years fitted me out for life… and the ebb and flow of the human experience. More than anything the experience taught me “gratitude”. And that’s a lot for a kid to learn.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING everyone!

Following on from our discussion of language… here’s something interesting for the literary inclined…

It deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Interesting eh?

And this… for the artistically inclined. Don’t forget to watch it right through… awesome eh?

The artist is Dan Dunne. Now that should keep you all busy until I get my next article up! LOL

artwork & content Copyright Jean Burman 2007

What a funny thing language is! In a world where over 6800 languages are spoken across 200 different countries… you would expect there to be a whole lot of c-o-m-m-u-n-i-c-a-t-i-n-g going on… (and you would be right!)

But not so in the 46 or so English speaking countries of the world where it would seem that our language is the only glue that sticks us all together… but understanding each other has become “a challenge” at one end of the spectrum… and a “unique” and “virtually incomprehensible” artform at the other!

Take for instance… the example of the hapless aussie huddled in a phone booth late at night somewhere (read ~lost~) in downtown Edinburgh Scotland. As the rain thunders down he huddles closer to make the call that would surely save he and the family from a cold night on the street… the street that they had driven up and down and round and round at least a dozen or so times that night. He places the call to the hotel while “the fam” waits in the car.

“Hello? hello? Oh g’day… can y’ hear me?” he bellows down the phone.
Yes… yes… “we hear you” groans the fam… and so can everyone else within spitting distance of the proverbial black stump!

“Yeah yeah we got a booking but we don’t know where t’ go. Yep yep… yep… eh?”

O-oh this was not going well.

“… beg yours? … yep… okay… eh?… errr… beg yours?… repeat that if yer can… slower this time… ehhhh?”

*sigh* Thought to self… “if he says ‘beg yours’ one more time I’m gonna get out of this car and whack him repeatedly over the head with this rather large pile of street maps” I mean… what does that mean? Precisely… it means nothing!

It was at this point that this aussie decided he would never be able to communicate with the Scots despite the commonality of our language and heritage (consequently… I handled it from there!)

As for me… I like to think of my accent as being somewhat “international” (ahem) having been mistaken for someone else in 33 languages! The Americans thought I was English, the Irish thought I was American, the French thought I was German (despite the distinctly “strine” twang in my schoolgirl French), the English thought I was one of those “dreadful savages” from South Africa (but that’s another story ~grin~) and the Scots just thought I was more than a little bit queer… (in the straight sense of the word tho) *wink*

But fortunately for we hapless aussies (stumbling around dropping consonants and flattening vowels)… wherever we went we were (once our nationality had been established) welcomed with open arms. The French and the Irish (having at least one thing in common) were grateful we weren’t English… and the Irish were grateful we weren’t American! Sheesh… never before had I ever been so totally accepted by default! LOL

This week I watched a rather fascinating documentary “The Sounds of Aus” which took a perilously close look at the quirks and peculiarities of the aussie accent. Apparently… we have the most difficult accent of all to emulate… our “unique” flat sound resonating from a somewhat lazy soft palate! hmmmm…. that’s definitely something to keep in mind… ~grin~

Anyway… the upshot of it all seems to be that over the 200 or so years of our short tenure here on this continent we have collectively

“shed the cultural cringe that made the “received pronunciation” of the English upper class a kind of linguistic role model”

Strewth… that’s a relief…

and “nor is the Ocker accent as important as it once was in defining our national voice – fewer of us speak like Hoges or Steve Irwin”

Crikey… it’s about time… I was getting kinda sick of jumping crocs and simply haven’t got the strength to toss one more shrimp on the barbie… *sigh*

And while the aussie accent has become deregulated and is open to an unprecedented array of influences from across the globe
‘it is unlikely that exposure to American culture or other global forces will diminish what makes it distinctive.’

Heysup dude… we’s got our own crib! *wink* LOL

So it seems… we aussies can breathe a sigh of relief that our language (along with the economy) not only remains intact… but has come into it’s own!

But that doesn’t mean we will have to stop speaking Queenslandish does it? (Man… what planet are we on?)

Ahhhh… Queensland… beautiful one day… perfect the next… where a bludger’s a bloke who gets to pike out on his shout because the hole in the wall didn’t work… and he’s packing it because the rellies have packed their togs and are bringing a port from the big smoke in brissie this arvo… and he looks like a dag in his stubbies and thongs after a day sinking tinnies with his mates, doing doughnuts in his ute, and chucking U-ees in the street… sussing out the new wheels and taking a squizz under the bonnet… before going to the footy and crashing at the mate’s.

Yep… clear as mud…

But y’know… she’ll be right mate!

(And seeing as we have been discussing ocean liners…)

It could only happen in Cairns… (well… it probably happens all over the place and I just don’t know about it) but here… when ocean liners call… they pull up right in the middle of town (not so much at the bottom of the garden) but at the end of the main street! Despite the many years… and the countless ocean liners big and small that have stopped in here … this sight never fails to surprise me!

It’s hard to get an angle to show how very strange this looks! (but hey..)

But adding to that now… in what would seem a strange twist of serendipitous “serendipocity”… (low and behold)… as I drove down the main street yesterday afternoon… there it was… Holland America’s Amsterdam. How strange that Roger had only just mentioned this cruise line in yesterday’s comments and then… hey presto… as if conjured up by some sort of strange magic… here was one of their ships docked at the wharf in downtown Cairns.

(Adding to the mystery… it’s not yet the cruise ship season… the majority visit here between January and April… during the Northern Hemisphere Winter) Between you and me… I suspect there is some kind of spooky Bermuda Triangle thing going down here… this ship… having passed through the Gyre found itself at 16 degrees south instead of 32 degrees north. ..

Okay… it may be just another Conspiracy Theory *sigh and groan* ;-)… but may account for the inordinate number of tourists mooching around in circles scratching their heads in the 35c degree lunchtime heat… (that’s 95F for those lost north of the equator)

What’s that? It’s what tourists DO? Oh… okay then….

This ship… whilst not (by far) the largest ship to dock here… is certainly a very nice one and as I “cruised” past it and snapped this picture on my way home yesterday… I had to wonder if Roger had travelled on the Amsterdam? And if he had… how amazing it was to imagine that it was now half way round the world in our little neck of the woods… giving real meat to the 6 degrees of separation theory! (hmmm… I wonder if it really did go through the Gyre to get here?) LOL

The world is indeed a very small place! I know I know… small things amuse small minds… but sometimes… just sometimes… it’s wonderful to be “in here” looking out!

(((chuckles)))

90m (298 ft) Athena

This one probably more my speed (grin)… also moored in downtown Cairns… one of the world’s largest private sailing yachts owned by the founder of Netscape and Silicon Graphics (whoever said you couldn’t make a living on the net?)

Many years ago I took a Pacific cruise with a few friends onboard P & O’s Sea Princess. Early one evening as the sun was going down we sat out on the rear upper deck enjoying a Captain Morgan and coke. The sun was sinking fast into the stillness of the golden sea and with the vastness of the ocean around us… it was difficult to ignore the fact that the world seemed (in that moment) like a pretty incredible place!

As the sun slipped below the horizon and the last glow of dusk hovered there… our reverie (or was it revelry? grin) was disrupted by a rather strange sound. Kaaaa-splash… followed by another kaaaa-splash… and then another. We jumped up from our deck chairs thinking someone must have surely fallen overboard… and raced to the back railing that enclosed the stern of the ship. Leaning over very far in order to see down to the decks below I remember being shocked by what I saw.

There from the bottom deck in the service area of the ship a man was dumping garbage. I leaned over further and counted as 25 giant-sized dark green garbage bags were jettisoned from the back of the ship into the sea. Even in those days before pollution was a dirty word… before the hole in the ozone was known about… and way before global warming or climate change had entered the human consciousness… I knew this just had to be WRONG.

Has anyone ever heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch … (or GPGP for short)?

I hadn’t… until I stumbled upon it’s existence just the other day. Not that I should have been surprised after my own personal experience all those years ago. That garbage had to go somewhere… and I had finally found out where! I just wish that I’d known about the GPGP before Blog Action Day as it would have made a terrific (if also horrific) story on the environment!

artwork & content Copyright Jean Burman 2007

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is a giant toxic mass of plastic waste and debris larger than the US State of Texas. It swirls around in a sickening vortex… held in by the prevailing currents… in a remote area of the ocean known as the North Pacific subtropical Gyre somewhere between Hawaii and San Francisco. Here the ocean is dead. Oxygen levels in the ocean are so low that it can no longer support life. All that remains are microorganisms that do not need oxygen for life… anaerobic organisms that have adapted and learned to persist in the hypoxic environment.

Estimated to be around 1500 miles across and 30 metres deep (no one is absolutely certain of it’s size) the swirling cesspool of plastic waste… bags bottles wrappers condoms (you name it…if it’s plastic it’s there)… floats around in silent testimony to the mindlessness of the human race. It’s existence… a tragic byproduct of human over-consumption and scant regard for the planet we cannot survive without.

Bottle tops and other plastic objects are visible inside the decomposed carcass of this Laysan albatross on Kure Atoll, which lies in a remote and virtually uninhabited region of the North Pacific. The bird probably mistook the plastics for food and ingested them while foraging for prey. Picture from the article “Trashed” by Charles Moore

You’d think that if we couldn’t survive without it… someone somewhere would care about a situation such as this which is growing by the day. But no… world leaders, conservationists, scientists, environmentalists, politicians and the politically correct seem diverted by the more long term problems presented by global warming and climate change.

Global Warming is the new big thing. It’s fashionable. It’s policitally correct… (and it’s coming)… but not before other more imminent disasters take us out… perhaps even before we will notice a one degree change in the climate!

Clean air and clean water are fundamental to our survival here on planet Earth. And unless evolution intervenes and morphs us into anaerobic organisms not requiring oxygen… we had all darned well do something about this.

Finally… no more plastic bags for me. How about you?

Holloways Beach - not far from home