bilateral kellerberrin

Some kind of adventure game, rock climbing etc, there’s no way my team is gonna win, my partner is the youngest player, and I already know we are behind. We find some apricot danishes along the route.

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Had beer and falafel with chris last night, bashed his ear about Kellerberrin and what is going on. I had been reading “small worlds” by Duncan watts on the train. I had a bit of trouble with some of the maths which he quickly introduced, but the concepts are fascinating – six degrees of separation really does exist. I was particularly into some postage experiments done in the sixties. In one model, letters are intended for a recipient in new york, but sent to someone completely unrelated in LA. The LA recipient should post the letter on to one person that they know the name and address of, who they reckon has a good chance of getting the letter closer to the final recipient. What they found is that usually this chain of letters only took about 6 links to reach the intended recipient, even though there was no connection with the first person in LA. Chris and I talked about the kinds of things I could do in keller, experiments of this nature. Mapping the social networks between people, or something. But something of the researcher in me (which is not a very strong part) tells me I need to have a “hunch” or a desire or at least something I have an itch to find out before embarking on anything of that nature.

We talked about blogging, a lot actually. I’ve made a new blog (this one!) in which all the files are stored on my local web host rather than some free blogging provider which could fold any day and holds back features because they want you to upgrade. In terms of what I’ve been doing in keller, I was wondering about how I could fold back the blogging activities to the town itself – because I suspect that most folks wouldn’t be as obsessed with the internet as me (to say the least). So I had thought about how to distribute the texts locally, in a low tech way. Of course, I thought about using the pipeline. But then I was thinking that it would be good to distribute my “today I met” texts only through myself. That is, hand them out personally. That way, when I hand out a copy, I have another meeting. Chris’ notion of feedback fits in here, as a daily distribtution of the ‘physical blog’ would necessarily result in meetings related to that distribution, and feedback related to the content etc.

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Cristina and I had a fair bit to squeeze in. I wanted to varnish the cross atop the prev, we needed to have a swim in Cunderdin, and also, we’d been invited to josephine’s house for her sister’s 21st birthday.

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At the hardware I couldn’t find any varnish which caught my fancy. The guy there (I didn’t get his name) suggested that something like my cross, which would be sitting in the sun all day, might cause varnish to crack and go white anyway. So I went for some linseed oil instead.

By the time we got up to the prev, it was damn hot, too hot to sit up on the roof oiling a cross. Roger was there, and he was ready to quit painting and have lunch, so we picked him up and went back to cristina’s place where we put together some salad to go with his meat pie.

On the road to Cunderdin, we listened to smog. Cristina wanted to turn it up and concentrate on the words to the song “I had to leave the country” which has the great line “I don’t know where I’m going – all I know is I’ll hit the ground running.”

Julie was at the pool. We did some laps but it was freezing. My toes started to freeze up, they didn’t even thaw in the sun. I asked Julie about the Cunderdin newsletter (the bandicoot) – I had noticed that its production values were quite high- it has a red printed masthead, which looks like it was made on an old machine. Julies father in law is the printer, he runs the local press. So I shall have to go visit him next week to see what’s possible there…julie said he even has an old letterpress machine.

At wooden décor, at julie’s suggestion, we asked for mick. He was the most open (or at least, the least defensive) of the ‘brethren we had spoken to. Mick told us the same stuff the others had said (no tv, no phone, no internet etc) but he also said they have home schooling. Cristina asked him if they went to university. No, he said, but there are some old folks who did go, and are doctors for example. Of course, they are a valuable resource in their community. But the Plymouth brethren don’t have any problem using the services of professionals outside their enclave. Mick said that a professor had done a comparative study of religions, and produced a small booklet about the brethren. He has a copy he can give us. But it seemed unlikely that cristina could have access to take photos of them while they are in their church service. Mick said “people ask us why our church has no windows, but its fully airconditioned, so we don’t need windows”. Later, cristina said “you know, he reminded me of that guy from the simpsons, the next door neighbour of omero…”

By the time we got back to keller it was too late for me to go to the 21st party. I just could pack and jump on the train. Cristina drove us up to the prev to see if roger would go with her, but his big sister was arriving in town, and they were having family get-together before he flew to Sydney for his filmmaking course. The prospector was showing a shit animation called ‘home on the range’ which was all about a rapacious cattle rustler who was buying up all the farms at auction when they went bust. I was interested in the topic of injustice as presented in a Disney movie, but it was really just a feelgood about old fashioned values and singing cows. Roseanne barr was the main cow.

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These notes were hard to write. I’m in perth, at chris’ house, writing on mark’s computer. Tigger cartoons are playing on the tv. Chris is reading headlines from the weekend paper about how chinese labourers are cheaper than robots in manufacturing, and mark is talking about the papal conclave and wondering who you would place a bet on. Its not easy to concentrate.