mountain masala

yesterday

well, my dad's funeral was yesterday afternoon. laughter and tears. lots of family and friends of his from work and scouts and church family camp. i was grateful for the presence of friends like duncan, david, nicole, rob & marina, peter and others. bob warrick, an old family friend, took the service with wonderful grace and sensitivity. it was wonderful to see cousins whom i haven't seen in years.

three nieces sand and grace played sax. paul put together a slideshow. uncle keith, my brother andrew and sister anne spoke, and a work colleague from fisheries (who went for ages...) the twins read one of the scriptures.

pop had talked to anne about having a piper at the end, which we did. he played 'amazing grace' and my sister-in-law margaret led us trying to sing along with it. this experiment confirmed that bagpipes play in their own key and tempo without reference to the rest of the universe!

my dad worked in primary industries, became head of dairying for Queensland, and then the inaugural head of the Queensland Fish Management Authority. he received an A.M. (Member of the Order of Australia) for services to primary industry in 1989. of course, we kids would just refer to him as the 'king prawn' or other suitably fishy honorifics. he became involved in scouts as we did, becoming as local scout leader and then a district commissioner or something like that. for many years he was one of the key program organisers at the synod-run family camp at Alexandra Park each Dec-Jan, where his creativity and sense of humour resulted in a whole lot of ridiculous and challenging activities. and he did a bunch of other stuff, like neighbourhood watch.

the texts yesterday (colossians 3:12-17 and john 15:10-17 were about living abundantly, loving others as God loves us, and being Christ-like. they were fitting for a man who was exceedingly generous, selfless, and a servant in his family and work life.

a whole bunch of relatives and friends came back to my parent's place for some food and drink afterwards, and we finished the evening with a family toast of Grandfather port.

the emotional journey is harder to put into words, so I'm not going to try right now....

new words to an old song

i wrote these words last night to go with the tune of "morning has broken". for my dad's thanksgiving service on tuesday.

God of Creation
Gentle life-giver
Present at birth, and
all through our days
Author of sunrise
Song in the night sky
Here in this place, we
offer our praise

Jesus, Companion
teacher and healer
friend of the grieving,
suffering, the poor
Stand with your people
whisper among us
promise of mercy
goodness for all

Spirit of Comfort
blow through Creation
stir up new life, breathe
peace through our world
Healer of hearts, and
hope for tomorrow
weave all our sorrows
into new dawn

Here we give thanks for
life in its fullness
blessings received
your gifts to us all
Make us a people
filled with compassion
selflessly giving
serving your world

pop

i am wide awake at midnight. my older brother phoned this evening to say that my dad died after surgery today. 3 weeks ago he had a heart attack, 2 weeks ago he had heart surgery, and has been in intensive care ever since. he only had one working lung, after lung cancer 15+ years ago (thanks to pipe smoking).

for as long as i can remember, we all called my dad "pop". no idea where it came from. i call him "dad" just when i translate it to other people.

he had been on assisted breathing since the heart surgery, and today's surgery was a tracheotomy to make that easier.

a day before his heart attack he had been given a lot of blood to correct his low iron. perhaps it brought it on. most likely.

i have too much to say and vent and feel and think. 

flying to brisbane again tomorrow.

i am deeply undone by all of this. i cannot even explain how, nor will i try. i just needed to write something.

but i will try to sleep now. it will be a long week ahead.

the chef is back!

after two weeks away, i'm back in the kitchen. i arrived home yesterday in soaking rain, couldnt remember exactly where I'd put the car in the long term car park and got drenched finding it! picked up some cheap seafood later and made the chilli crab recipe that i've made once before, with some prawns and fish added in.in actual fact i reckon it was better the first time, but nevertheless is came up pretty well.

our margaret river wines (hay shed hill) arrived in my absence too! brilliant wine, and james halliday agrees with me! thanks to rick for the recommendation.

tonight i'm going to do a bit of a twist on roast chicken. woolworths must be trying to get the one-up on coles, as today they had all kinds of interesting stuff to sell (jerusalem artichokes). i'll tell you shortly what transpires!

tomorrow its maddy's birthday and she's asked for pumpkin soup and her favourite pizzas.

good to be home.

who's on emusic?

i've been in Brisbane for a week and a half. my dad has heart surgery tuesday and is in intensive care. he has been up and down the last two days with bleeding (that is now under control) and some instability of heart function and blood pressure. i fly back to adelaide tomorrow morning.

so apart from spending time with family and doing a bit of work and watched the odd movie & battlestar galactica episode.

i've also trawled emusic to see which of the albums that i currently have at home on old cassette or vinyl are available digitally, and had some nice surprises. they have music bu the following - bruce cockburn, the church, ed kuepper, stephen cummings, johnny clegg & juluka, harry chapin, eric bogle, the saints, the neville brothers, simply red, john michael talbot, noel paul stookey, the choir, lisa loeb, blue rodeo,  along with some individual gems from the waterboys, best of the go-betweens, midnight oil, tommy keene, john wesley harding, harry chapin, roger woodward, dave graney. "Tommy",

i had thought about stopping my sub, but perhaps not yet...

multi-tasking on the iphone

well I learnt something interesting here! didn't realise that my phone left all the apps running!

multi-tasking on the iphone

eat your books

i'm in brisbane for a few days in the lead-up to my dad having heart surgery. in the meantime i'm doing work from here, visiting him, helping my mum, etc.

plus i'm trying out www.eatyourbooks.com, a website that lets you build an online library of cookbooks that you own and then search their indexes (indices??) electronically for recipes. i'm adding books from memory at the moment.  although quite a few of mine aren't yet indexed, enough are that it should be useful.

i've just started the 30 day free trial, and if i like it i'll take up the $50 lifetime membership. thanks to john lethlean for mentioning it in the press.

you can also search your friends' cookbooks, and then I suppose ask them to scan and email you the recipe!

i'm a priest of the new religion

apparently Apple is the new religion. Even Heidi Campbell says so....

how the iphone became divine

article abstract here

i'll read and then comment....

new emusic

yes its that time of the month again.... once again i have trawled through my recent music mags, found album reviews that sounded interesting, and then checked them out on emusic.com

- "learning to bend" by ben sollee - vocal and cello, really! folk and retro jazzy R&B
- "beat pyramid" by these new puritans - angular rock, think "The Fall"
- "the monitor" by titus andronicus - combination of punk, americana and roots rock
- "quarantine the past: the best of pavement" - yes, THAT pavement, where alt-rock really started...
- "OMG!" by rusko - inventive, genre-crossing electronic house
- "so runs the world away" by josh ritter - more fab folk from the lapsed lutheran
- los angeles" by flying lotus - experimental hip hop
- feast of the hunter's moon" by black prairie - 'like a bluegrass version of the decemberists'. video clip and 2 free songs here
- "streets of new york" by willie nile - supposedly one of the great americana albums of 2006 (emusic) - a folk-rock tribute to the 'big apple'. guests include jakob dylan

plus on itunes
- "the archandroid" by janelle monae - this has everything - funk, jazz, pop, rap, r&b etc (watch the clip of 'tightrope' on youtube here). this will impress my daughters!

plus on CD
- "laws of illusion" by sarah mclachlan
- "down the way" by angus and julia stone

progress of a sort

the silence is because since coming back from brisbane I've been crook again - doctor has finally given me antibiotics and an inhaler to clear my chest of this flu. plus my dad went to hospital last friday with a major heart problem and fluid on the lungs. he is out of intensive care but it looks like his only option (other than doing nothing) is heart surgery, which is pretty risky given his age and other health issues. so, prayers for my parents, david and jean, are appreciated.

our ministerial education commission was a mixed affair. my second meeting, and in my view, a not very helpful or effective forum for developing excellence in teaching and learning. rather its been a place where colleges report on what they are doing and make minor updates in areas needing major change.

the major item of interest for us was the "please explain" that we received from the MEC about our new approach to educating ministers here in south australia. our five-yearly review by the MEC at the start of last year indicated that we were possibly breaking some of the national training 'rules' for ministerial education, and yet that the review was inconclusive due to the significant amount of change we were going through. so what happened?