Seen heading for Mardi Gras

I reached the stage a couple of years back where standing around in a crowd, no matter how friendly, does not appeal any more, so I am giving the Mardi Gras Parade a miss. However, in my wanderings around Central/Chinatown/Surry Hills I do get to see some sights, most of them pleasant on this particular occasion.

For Mardi Gras: a recycle

A little while ago I reported finding a whole stack of old entries going back to 2000, and made a page of some of them: Sydney’s Olympic Year 2000. From that page I thought I would recycle one entry as a kind of tribute to what the thirtieth Sydney Mardi Gras represents:

Saturday, September 30 2000

It is quite early as I write, as after yesterday’s hot weather I rose very early this morning–5.30am in fact. It is cooler and promises to be a very nice day. There being several hours before I go down to Chinatown to do my tutoring, I decided to visit here.

The Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions

This is of some interest. The idea goes back to Swami Vivekananda and the first "Parliament" in Chicago in 1893: see Wikipedia. This from Vivekananda’s address to the Chicago meeting is very relevant to the world we see today:

"Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful Earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often with human blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now."

I came upon all this via an email from someone connected to this movement in the USA; having read my Indigenous Australia page, they wanted to know more about Australian Indigenous poetry, a subject I will attempt to address soon on New Lines from a Floating Life.

February 2008 stats 2: Sitemeter count

In the graphs which follow, yellow = visitors (not counting my own) and orange = page views. Click to see them full size.

Floating Life Sites Meter (New Lines, Old Lines, OzPolitics, this Gateway, and some small input from Ninglun on Journalspace and Ninglun on Geocities).