Subak

Yesterday, Google's image was a familiar rice terrace scene. I placed my cursor over the image and it read, "Celebrating Subak." Wow. That's the irrigation system developed here in Bali in the 9th century. Do a web search and see what you find for "Subak.

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass delivered a Lincoln reality check at Emancipation Memorial unveiling

No First Use

The Union of Concerned Scientists have never stopped working to make the public aware of the immenent threat of nuclear war. Here's a page on the No First Use campaign. 

Virus Bali

The numbers have started to pick up some here. With a population of 4.2 million, Bali now has 1263 reported positives. Surely it's ten or twenty times that. Eleven deaths. It went so long with just four deaths and a few hundred positives. Mass testing focusing on markets, especially the night markets. Everyone has been wearing a mask in public for a couple of months it seems. There aren't all the angry, defiant people like in the States, but many will ignore guidelines when with friends away from public places. Places are open if they want but there are strict guidelines that are followed. Most are closed though. No tourists which is 85% of the economy. 

Black Lives Matter Art Oakland CA

David Silva's BLM Oakland photos

Tree planting has to be done right

Planting new forests 'can do more harm than good'

NASA on morphing earthly weather trends

Global Climate Change page - well done

Song for a Sinking Island

One day Katrinka and I passed the a lot with a sign saying a new shopping area would be going up there. "One day," she said, "They're going to pour one load of concrete too many, and the whole island will sink into the ocean from the weight of it all." 

"Nice image for a song," I said.

Bali Go Down

Heating Up

Alarm at record-breaking heatwave in Siberia

Vera Lynn's big hit

We'll Meet Again - a sentimental heart warmer for the British during WWII

We'll Meet Again: how toxic nostalgia twisted Vera Lynn's pop masterpiece

Another song for Katrinka's birthday last November

Waiting for You - that's the Defuser Music page for the song. Just click on the Listen to MP3 link to hear.

I posted a link to Good Enough, the first one, back in January. It was a sort of raunchy, hicky song I sang her at her birthday dinner on the beach with friends. This one is not like that one. Did it at Lumbung Damuh down near Candidasa where we went in November for a few days for her birthday. 

Petty Nitpicking

Of all the things to be dissing the prez for, walking carefully down a ramp should not be one of them. The guy is 74. There should have been a handrail. There are places where all workers are required to use handrails on steps. I'm 75. I would have wanted a handrail - and I walk a lot, swim, and play tennis - and fall down a lot more than when I was younger. 

And using two hands to hold a cup when drinking is good form. 

Substance please! Good lord - It's like some houlagan was vandalizing a neighborhood and the local paper chided him for throwing rocks like a girl. 

Trouble in Blogger City

Blogger's new interface has a bug with images. Most the images I post I just use their handy URL capture and then it swipes the images from that URL (with a warning not to use other people's stuff if they don't want you to). So the image to the left with a not unusual hole in a Bali sidewalk is taken from Eat Pray Loving Everything about Bali site, a very nice one. Let's see if it is visible online. My associate Peter Ford will try to fix it if not but it might just revert back to invisible. Google will fix this bug before long we assume.  - dc

Boat of Dreams

Boat of Dreams is an album of songs that I made with excellent people in 1986. Listen to them on the Hear Now link - or go from there to other venues like Spotify. Here's a page for Boat of Dreams with the music, words, and chords and credits on my music site, Defurser Music dot com.

True in more ways than One

thanks David Cohen

Britain goes coal free

Renewables edge out fossil fuels - BBC

Speedoo!

Speedoo by the Cadillacs, lead singer Earl "Speedo" Carroll  is one of the very first songs that turned me on to a new world of music in 1955 at the tender age of ten - maybe the first. He was just 18 then. The song became a big hit and helped turn a lot of us toward the great black music that was coming out then - doo wop and rock and roll and rhythm and blues. Life was never the same for me after that.

Here's the single.

Elephant Extinction

This is a post I just ran into that's almost a year old. It reminds me of a poem I wrote in high school.

The elephant is becoming extinct

It's vanishing from sight.

It makes it's form well-known

Succint

As it stands alone 

In the moonlight night

It's sad indeed to sit and think

That the elephant is becoming extinct

Still there's Progress!

Earth’s carbon dioxide levels hit record high, despite coronavirus-related emissions drop. - BBC

Extinction crisis

'poses existential threat to civilisation' - BBC

A Twelve Year old Girl in 1992

 Severn Cullis-Suzuki warned the world about the environmental crisis

Eunice Foote was the first

Three pioneers who predicted climate change - Eunice Foote, a women's rights activist, showed how it worked - in 1820.