June Irene 10/12/1943 - 05/05/2011

I’ve sat alone

Without you by my side before

Shut doors behind you

My life inspired by you

Even when you couldn’t be seen

I’ve cried about you

In the past

Had angry feelings that couldn’t last

When I imagined your words

Even when they weren’t heard

But I’ve never breathed before

The air from a world

Without you in it

I miss my mum x

Intrigued about the future of QR Codes... so got one all my own :)

In a nutshell:
The info you want to share on a business card 'bar code' - no matter who has your card, where they are or how long they have had it - your details will be current if you ensure you keep your account details accurate.

Recipients of your card or even just the QR code - simply scan with their Smart phone to download your 'business card' (it is very nicely laid out too, corporate, uncomplicated and open to individualisation).

You maintain your account with the sort of details you want to share ie: Twitter/LinkedIn/FaceBook & other social media links, website & email, company name & job title, contact details, image etc. and each time your particular QR code is scanned - it will show what you have entered as it gets its info from your account.

If you're interested, you could go to http://getqrky.com/ or follow @QRky on Twitter to find out more.

Tina Louise: Fragmented People, Coagulating

Tina Louise: Fragmented People, Coagulating

As each individual, regardless of position or role in society, regardless of title or faith, accepts that he is first and foremost a human being, we begin at last to realise not only the sameness we share with our fellow man but the power we have as individuals; when we are of one intent, together.

The mass that is forming looks like ‘we the people’ and nothing is bigger than this; even those with the weapons and those who have had the power, cannot fail to recognise that at their core, they too are a part of ‘we the people’.

One life is what we each currently have and how we live it – is what our uprisings are about.

The current situations arising in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and elsewhere are happening so quickly and each day the world looks a lot less like it did yesterday. It feels like remembering who we were – before we became our job titles, our marital status or our god’s image creator. It feels like the shedding of our outer layers; built up over years of dressing to fit our pigeon-holed surroundings. It feels like letting go of what’s-to-be-expected and a reaching instead, for a possibility. It feels at last, like a feeling that originates at our core – not at a dictate.

Naïve, optimistic and blinkered by rose coloured shades? Sure it is likely to get a lot bloodier before we tidy the place but in my heart, it truly feels like we have let something escape and that it is refusing to be contained again. It feels also like, that something - is us.

In the March 3rd issue of CounterPunch in 2007, my essay ‘Stuffed with Terror, Starved of Dreams’ was published and as I sat to write this (my second essay to be published by CounterPunch) some four years later – I realise it is almost to the day. Something about an end to winter and coming of spring? Maybe.

That first essay was written as the Iraq war and all that surrounded it; the torture, the illegality, the theft, the abuse and the sheer bloody waste of life, pleasure and joy; had grown so very great. Frustration and anger at our governments had finally spilled over from the protesters to the general populous and yet, protest after protest, revelation after revelation and even common sense’s attempts at intervention, nothing was changing.

I opened the essay in 2007 with this paragraph:

“Sick of Iraq, war on terror, torture, civilian deaths, political lies, corruption in high places, loss of civil liberties, stolen elections, media manipulation and conversation after conversation about all of the above. Over the past four years I have evolved from a contented mother to a raging activist granny. This is not something I chose to be; I want to get a cottage, grow organic vegetables and write poetry that speaks of love and passion whilst I relax safe in the knowledge that my offspring and hers will live to a decent age, in a peaceful world with air they can breathe, clean water and freedom to choose whatever path they want to follow. Sadly, the cottage image is a shattered mess along with all the other hopes as the screen before me fills with images of other mothers whose children are slaughtered by armies that claim to represent me and make me an accessory by using my tax to fund the killing.”.

To say that today is a contrast would be a ridiculous understatement. I watch as dictators slaughter their people and other powers offer help, that sound more like colonisation and yet there is still a powerful sense that it is ok.

It is the people.

Whether each who chose to risk his life by standing up to the powers that govern it, was mislead, manipulated or truly informed - doesn’t matter as much as the fact that each stood. Each chose life or death rather than acceptance of what feels wrong and each was emboldened by the stand.

Long fragmented by our divisions, we the people are now forming a mass of discontent and the abusers of people and power are so very few when compared to the majority that is …us. We may not have an easy path ahead but it feels like the right path to take.

The Venus Project for a resource based economy...

"Here I am, here to watch the daytime television, to buy the designer clothes, to consume industry-approved placation after placation? No. There is more, and more still." Jacques Fresco

Bill Nighy and Richard Curtis take Robin Hood tax campaign to Parliament | News

Bill Nighy and Richard Curtis take Robin Hood tax campaign to Parliament | News

One & Other - the summer of 2009

The Summer of 2009 was the most unique of summers for me. I may have had only one hour on the 4th Plinth in Trafalgar Square as 1/2400th of Antony Gormley's 'One & Other' project... but the influence of this experience that was begun on 8th June 2009 (when I first read that I had a place), carried through the Summer, until the final hour of the One & Other art installation and beyond.

I lived this Summer of 2009 on a different level and although for the most part, my days occurred as normal - they were ‘felt’ differently. I spent a lot of time, wondering about the Plinth – an awful, ridiculous, all-consuming amount of time, wondering about the Plinth.

Before 11am Sunday 12th July, I would wonder at how it would be on the Plinth and how I would spend my hour. Then after my hour, I would wonder at who was on the Plinth at any given moment and I would be a little envious that some 'other' was having a ‘Plinth experience’.

The Summer of 2009 morphed from its heady intensity on 8th June to complete fear by 9th June. What on earth was I thinking? I had no desire for cameras, no desire for my moment in a spotlight, no desire for doing anything quite as incredibly public as this Plinth thing. I had entered my name for a place, to show support for what I thought was a lovely idea worth supporting – I sign up to too many newsletters for the same reason.

At the time of notification, there was no ‘One’ on the Plinth (the project did not start until 6th July), so there was all that time of overwhelming newness – total unknown-ness about this. On reflection – this was probably the most exquisite of times. When we grow up, there are a whole lot less ‘firsts’. This was a true first, a something I had never done and more than that, a something I had never even considered or imagined as a something I would ever do… ever.

At this time, I felt like I needed to find some of the ‘others’, so went searching. Google, Facebook, Twitter had some chatter about the One & Other event and I started finding the search results for “What will I do with my hour?” – growing. Slowly but surely, those that had received notice that they had an hour on the Plinth and were on the internet – found each other.

The official Facebook Group by Artichoke (and the lovely, approachable, helpful Holly Race) for One & Other, was a big group, even in the pre-project days and what I really wanted, was to narrow down my search; to just those who were going to have an hour on the Plinth.

So for every post I found on the internet that said the poster had received notice that they were going on the Plinth – I sent a message inviting them to a new Facebook group called ‘I, Plinthian’; a locked group that would be for Plinthians only.

This was one of my better ideas. ‘I, Plinthian’ was a dimension to this experience that I could never have factored. The support, the warmth, the honesty, the sincerity and the incredible unity of our band of ‘others’ …stirred such emotion within me. Not wishing to over-dramatise (could I ever be accused of that?), but this group assured me, that my belief in the natural wonderfulness of people – was a well founded one.

My faith in ‘others’ was established as fact.

Who's Your Favourite Ally?

I was thinking tonight about Allies.

Groups form around us at times and phases in our lives - we ally with 'youth', when we are them, we ally with 'gender', when gender-issues arise, we ally with our 'religion', when we have it and it differs from some other and we ally with our 'class/social group' when it serves to do so; we ally with whatever reflects our image of our selves at the time.

Not sure where I am going with this...

…it's just that it reminded me of how, when I am in South London, North London seems a contrast and yet as I pass Birmingham, I begin to feel an allegiance to my London roots. Then as Lancashire approaches, I ponder the contrast of Northerners and Southerners. Don’t get me started on how all this morphs again once I leave the country…

It also reminded me of how, within South London, exist the many smaller allegiances of suburbs and clans of fans of football teams... and how, even in the wider view of the world, there are larger chunks of allegiances, held together by religion and race.

What does this all mean and is it of any relevance? Goodness knows. Just thinking about who/what we choose to ally with and what would happen, if we chose our allies with a different, as yet unthought-of criteria?

Maybe the whole ‘ally’ concept is the spanner in the works of world-wide harmony?

And what of the way allying, is changing? New allies are being formed on social networking and other online community sites. We have new allegiances with those on Linked-in or those who prefer Facebook over Bebo …and almost related, to those who tweet on Twitter.

Allies are the power-base of those who seek control – from neighbourhood gangs to global partners – power is built on strategically or numerically worthwhile allegiances.

So I suppose I am questioning what/who I ally myself with.