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FAREWELL FARRAH
Ultimate angel ... Farrah Fawcett poses for photographers in 2006. Photograph: Rene Macura/AP "Farrah Fawcett, the bronzed, blue-eyed poster girl of 1970s America, died today at the age of 62. The former Charlie's Angels star had been battling cancer since an initial diagnosis back in 2006." LINK
Who can forget Farrah Fawcett-Majors, the girl with the most wonderful smile, whose hair even smiled. She looms large in my mind from a particular set of years when I was much younger than I am now. She was a strong role model for young women in the '70s and, for me, the world is a poorer place now that Farrah is gone.  This is sad too, I just heard that "pop star Michael Jackson is reported to have died after suffering a heart attack. "Media reports have said the star, 50, was taken to hospital in Los Angeles, California, after he was found not breathing following a suspected heart attack in his Bel Air home earlier." LINK 
Tags: FarrahFawcettMajorsMichaelJackson
 
Long before the dawn as I lay deliberating upon the mysteries of this reality, I wondered about why it was, after WWII, that westerners on the whole, in general - and mostly - have stopped wearing hats as an everyday thing.
Save, of course, for those who wear baseball type caps. As casual headgear, these curiously peaked caps have crossed the great divide of fashion sense and attained acceptability among men and women.
And crikey, I even have one to wear in the spa through daylight hours.
While hubby has a collection of them. In the daytime he doesn't leave home without one but then we live in a 'sunburnt country'; and it would be sensible for all Australians to 'slip on a hat' through the hot weather, wouldn't it?
But most of us choose to face the world bare-headed (although for babies and young children we might make an exception).
I guess I'm curious about the psychological underpinnings of this (me and origins!). I wonder what social shift occurred in the westernised world to label the wearing of hats as making a person look 'stupid', causing people to lose the habit of wearing in the everyday what is a very practical item of clothing?
Tags: Hats
After 19 years of knowing you
The first lonely morning
because you are not here
The space where your cat bowl used to sit
is empty
Your water and food dishes are gone
Your cover where you slept.
It too is gone
The doors, the windows,
we overnight would leave open for you to have fresh air
are closed
The fans we would leave on 24/7 for your comfort
are turned off
I feel the emptiness of the rooms as I pass through them
The everyday expectation I could count on of your morning greeting
is dashed against the hard place of mortality
and with all my heart I miss you
Without you
things will never feel the same again
Tags: Maudicat
Quote of the week "Of course it is, don't you see the drug gangs have started killing people again?" a smiling man told the BBC while rushing to catch the green man sign at a road crossing."
Tags: Mexicoswineflugangs
Link to story 
Khanzir is the world's luckiest pig - if only he had a girlfriend. He lives in a zoo in Afghanistan, given to the zoo by China in 2002, and it was a really good plan because this country is a bacon-free zone. This is not to say, no pigs allowed - just no pork products allowed. While the country may be a hellhole for humans to live in, Khanzir, with no fear of being turned into pork kebabs, lives in porker heaven with deer and goats. That is, until visitors to the zoo worried that Khanzir, the sole - single - one and only known pig in the whole of Afghanistan - might be carrying the H1N1 virus. Just because he's a pig. The visitors looked at the only known pig in the whole of Afghanistan and said "Mmm, a pig." Pausing, then "What do we know about pigs?" And then, "Arrgh! A pig! Swine flu!". I know! A real zealous use of exclamation marks. So Khanzir was sent to quarantine away from his deer and goat pallies, but he gets a large room with a view and plenty of fresh air, so that's not so bad, and it may not be for too long. In the meantime, the zoo's director, Mr Saqib, is turning his attention to the thought of the girlfriend issue. But he says "It is a dangerous and difficult time to get a new pig for our pig". Feel the love, this guy dotes on that pig. And don't even think about bringing swine flu to Australia. You're going to get disinfected!!!
Tags: Khanzirpig Afghanistan Swine Flu Australia
 "Coco Chanel commissioned Ernest Beaux to make six perfumes. They were labelled No. 1, No. 2, etc. through No. 6. It was bottle No.5 that was to Chanel's liking and became the chosen formula."
Link - Chanel No. 5
I'd always stupidly thought that Coco Chanel had some direct involvement in the mixing of her famous potion.
Chanel No 5 was a favourite perfume of mine when I was in my twenties. It was not heavy but distinctive. I considered it so, anyway.
I don't wear perfume any more as it happens, I have an allergic reaction to strong smells. Which is not only a shame but a huge handicap since so many others are not so likewise troubled.
However, I read in this article that "Laboratory tests have shown that Chanel No. 5 contains secretions from the perineal glands of civet cats. Civet is a powerful fixative, making the scent last a long time."
After protests that civet is harvested in a cruel way, in 1998 the Chanel company took the generous, and some might say astute, course of replacing civet with a synthetic substitute.
I can't tell you how that's affected the perfume, read above vis a vis the allergy thing.
But I can tell you that I was affected with a special warmth for the Wertheimer family.
Link - Laelaps - Is there a civet in your perfume?
"Why not just cut out the middle-man and press a civet’s butt to your arms, neck, or chest?"
Well said that woman!
Tags: Chanelno5civitsperfume
Link to the article
 Given that girls are spice and everything nice and that boys are snails and puppy dog tails, how come (according to a researcher) when we grow up, that women have more nightmares than men and men are more likely to dream about sex.
Granted men likely do dream about sex but why more than women? Why do women get lumped with the nightmares? And was this a male researcher .. checking, nope, it's a woman?
I wonder if, rather than because of hormonal differences, the reported "more kissing and sexual fantasies" and the less getting down to the real thing is a result of social pressures for females to repress their sex drive? Yes, even in this day and age.
But moving on ... UWE researcher Susan Blackmore ... said.
"My own nightmares had two reoccurring themes, one concerned standing on the beach at Weston Super Mare, my home town, when the tide suddenly goes out very fast and returns as a huge tidal wave that is about to engulf me," Parker said. "The other dream includes a dinosaur roaming the streets at night and looking in at my window. I wondered if my experience was common amongst women."
Mm, I've had the tidal wave dream I think three times but on each occasion the flooding waters have by-passed me, twice because I was standing on high ground and the third time because I scrambled down a conveniently placed narrow corridor which the rushing waters flashed by but didn't come down, and as we all know the dream reality runs by different rules to stark reality.
I also get strangers in my dreams more than people I know.
My most memorable dream was of my mother a year or so after she died. She was on a round platform, sitting on a kind of throne, in a dress made of gold which sparkled and gleamed. I was sitting on the edge of the platform and she and I were talking about something. I strained in vain to hear what she and I were saying but, internally, I knew it was about all the things we never discussed when she was alive.
Though I'm a-theist now, I wasn't back then, and my mother, herself, was a spiritualist, not religious, but she believed in life everlasting. So all in all it's not much of a wonder that, when young, I would have built this sub-conscious impression of her having escaped death and becoming a higher being. Which dream touched me on a deep enough level that it's stayed with me for many decades, proving something of a comfort. Though I'm consciously aware that it was only a dream.
Tags: Dreams Article_dreams
Many of we genealogy nuts are waiting with baited breath (whatever that means  ) for the 1911 British Census to come out.
No census in the UK is released until after 100 years of it being taken. I think the 1911 census will be released in 2010, so that's a couple of years away but we're already getting little insights and snippets into what to expect from the census.
The 1911 census is special. It's the first time the people themselves filled in their own enumerator sheets while, previously, an army of enumerators had the job of filling them in, up and down the country. The populace, in general, may not have been exactly illiterate but it wasn't until the latter part of the 19th Century when children were educated as a right and not as a matter of privilege.
In 1911 the private and personal viewpoint finally came to light in the census instead of these being almost purely statistical documents, although whose heart would not go out to "blind" or "imbecile" or other statistical information which, however, puts a very human slant on the earlier enumerator sheets.
When the scans at the Findmypast.com website were being done in August 2008, in preparation for the release of the census, these were a couple of the humerous and human responses once people themselves began to fill out their own forms. * The return for one household lists the family cat as a domestic servant, giving the feline's nationality as 'Persian'. We hope the enumerator appreciated the joke.
* One householder, apparently objecting to the intrusive nature of the census, writes on the return:
Would you like to know what our income is, what each had for breakfast and how long we expect to live on anything else?' 
Tags: 1911Census
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