Welcome to the Welcome Wagon tops my favourites for music at the moment. The Sufjan sound with a twist. And it’s all rather humorous while being quite poignant. Marvellous.
Yesterday my father-in-law Ron turned 50.
For a recent assignment I went on a little bit of a magazine spree. I never used to believe in magazines, didn’t like spending money on things that you read once and have read-once value. I’m slowly being convinced. These are some of the marvels I got my hands on. Australian magazines the lot of them.
The clear winning favourite of most of my friends. It’s full of fun, cute interesting things, it’s a bit sassy, makes it’s statement and each issue comes with a rather splendid poster. Good photography, good writing, great feel. My 50ish year old male tutor at uni thinks it’s one of the best positioned magazines out there – it targets it’s audience so well. I couldn’t agree more. I love it. I buy most issues (except when I’m feeling like I’m being sucked in and do the whole ‘don’t buy to rebel’ thing), the truth is I really am sucked in and I really love that they use an ‘unknown’ on each cover.
A little A5 production, in it’s early years so it seems. It’s based on a blog – which is cool. Cute stuff, lots of DIY. I bought it because it was small, fairly inexpensive and looked cute. I might buy it again but it’ll probably be dependent upon content. Love the good DIY project. Mixtape is down to earth, friendly and not pretentious at all. It did carry the feel of a blog in being a little haphazard in what it wanted to be – but as the cover says it’s about the small things in life that make you happy – and in that they’ve done quite well.
It’s eco fashion. I bought it because I was interested (and the uni thing). I haven’t read it cover to cover and am a little disappointed it isn’t more practical, but that’s probably more the fault of me living in the outer east of Melbourne more than anything. It’s got a nice feel and it’s really positive to see a magazine targetting this kind of thing, again I’m not a huge fashion person but there are plenty out there to whom fashion presses big buttons. Great article on fair trade and a decent one on green graphic design.
Brand spanking new, in it’s second issue. Harvest looks at ‘fresh Australian writing’ and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. It is quite different from the others and is more a mook (I think that’s what you call it!), the most inspiring personallly – it appears I really am a wordy person. I’m still digesting it, for $15 the volume of content is phenomenal. Writing like this makes me happy. It’s not devoid of nice imagery either but the imagery is there to support and not to demand attention. Lovely variety. Lovely, lovely words. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
The clouds aren’t worth watching today. They are moving far too fast. The clothes-horse out the back – the secondary clothes line, now rusting has fallen over and I can’t be bothered collecting the clothes as evilly wedged between wire and concrete as they are. Lost my favourite earing last night. Found the back of it, just to mock me. Found the other earing I’d lost in the bed. Would’ve rather have found the other ones. Sigur Ros gives music without delving into the classical. I like classical but the variety is as complicated as ripping another CD to my computer. Homework could been started a good while ago. I have an option staring me in the easy face, but the other idea plays more to my heart – it means I’ll have to go back to the immigration museum and I might not be able to take photos there, and oh the other option would be so much eaiser but not as fulfilling. Must think about that one. Really liking the idea thrown into the air last night about a decent holiday to a certain country once uni is over. The logistics don’t merit worth thinking about – too complicated. Bah to society and the need to work. The clouds aren’t worth watching today, they are moving far too fast.
Soul Survivor Melbourne 2009.
It was an exceptional week away where God did many things (visible and not so visible) in the lives of those attending. Geoff and I were on team and so spent a lot of the week running around. We had the added not-so-bonus of having to ‘tent it’ as Village Hosts. Which is great in principle but lousy for sleeping purposes.
I pulled out the camera on about day 3 after I decided that no one else was doing anything about recording the event in that way, but frankly wasn’t overly prepared and hadn’t thought much about photography where lighting is so horrendous. Next year – considering we are still involved, I think I will take it on a bit more and see what we can get. The variety of photos isn’t huge and I am a little disappointed I didn’t get more of general camping and seminars/workshops. Ah well, the recording of such things is important but not imperative and certainly not as important as what God was doing.
It was really great to see things pull together with the major shift of leadership that has happened since the 2008 festival. I’m really proud of the steering group and rest of us for our involvement and hard work. A huge clang, bang, hurrah must go out here about the individuals and teams running the food venues. As someone said, it’s such a massive but thankless task – even if you are thanked over and over. Priority here to Jess for her mind boggling coordination and Em, who didn’t stop running Le Den, also Nissa, Dave and Ruth who kept Revive up to scratch.
The Soul Survivor experience as far as scheduling goes consists of main sessions (music/worship, speaker), seminars (different speakers tailored topics), workshops (more hands on creative stuff), camping, fantastic food venues (of various themes and focus), gigs, music, prayer etc…
God spoke to me a little on dependancy, but not a great deal. I was perhaps more slowly – less vividly encouraged to do a few things differently. To realign some of how I am living. All good, no lights show for me, but then God kinda knows that light shows don’t press my buttons anyway.