i think that the lengthy sections at the end of this post are so important to read; i hope it broadens your perspective..

(www.kwangholee.com)

'if anyone has taught me a valuable lesson in what it means to be beautiful since i first moved to New York, it's my friend Francisco Costa. as Creative Director of Calvin Klein's women's collection for the past five years, Francisco drives home a clear message with his designs that applies to so many aspects of my life: Less is more. he breaks complicated ideas down to their bare bones - and always with stunning results.
when i turned eighteen and i began to understand my own stylistic choices, Francisco took over the reins at Calvin Klein Collection, so i think it's safe to say that he and i are kindred fashion spirits. i've been wearing his designs to everything from casual dinners with friends to art openings ever since. the man understands tailoring. one of my favourite pieces is a long t-shirt dress that wraps around your body like tissue paper. Francisco manages to execute the most simple of designs in the most creative ways.' - AO


(www.mischertraxler.com)

'i'm twenty-one and i'm trying to run The Row. i'm learning as i go because i've never done any of this before. it's all new to me. so it's just a huge learning process. i don't read any magazines. i really just try to stay in my world and figure out what i want, what makes me happy. i've got to trust my instincts. i really try to block out all the media and all the press, magazines, everything. at the end of the day i'm with myself, and i feel like that's the way i've been able to move forward. block out the nasty things. apart from my friends like you whose shows i go to, i try not to go to too many shows, or else my focus kind of wanders off into places where other people are going.' - AO


(www.fredrikfarg.com)

what is your favourite occupation? 'not having one, being a Gemini.'
what is your dream of happiness? 'i don't understand the question.'
what is your favourite flower? 'moss, and black magic roses.'
what is your favourite bird? 'black crows, ravens.'
how would you like to die? 'in your arms.'
what is your present state of mind? 'sarcastic.' - MKO

what to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes? 'death.'
who are you favourite poets? 'Freud.'
who are you heroes in real life? 'DVF, Lauren Hutton, Anna Wintour, and of course - Mum.'
what is it you most dislike? 'bullshit.' - AO



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Slouching Towards Windjana:
'on 25 April 1915, when Australian and New Zealand troops landed on a Turkish beach in an attempt to capture the Gallipoli peninsula, a key location in Britain’s strategy during World War I, hundreds of young men were mown down by well-fortitifed Turks shooting from the cliffs. we commemorate this slaughter every Anzac Day. we also commemorate the end of that war, with a minute’s silence at eleven AM on 11 November, Armistice Day. but we don’t have a day to commemorate all those Australians who died not in distant countries fighting the battles of others, but on their own soil, defending the country of their ancestors.
at school we learnt about Burke and Wills, Leichardt, Eyre, Wentworth, Blaxland and Lawson – brave and sometimes blinkered explorers who ‘opened up’ the country for cattle, sheep, crops and the telegraph. we didn’t learn about the massacres, poisonings and battles that occurred as the country was ‘settled’. nor did we learn about the Aboriginal resistance fighters – Pemulwuy, Jandamarra, Windradyne, Yagan, Calyute, Dundalli and others. the natives were ‘subdued’, or somehow vanished, we were taught, yielding passively to a more advanced civilisation. it was simply ‘inevitable’. today many people still say that Australia became a nation without bloodshed.
in the early eighties i came across a book called The Other Side of the Frontier, written by historian Henry Reynolds, which painted a picture of Australian history i hadn’t seen before. in it he demonstrated that the first Australians responded in many varied and creative ways to the coming of the Europeans. sometimes accommodating, sometimes resisting. he made the case that, wherever the terrain allowed it, they had fought fiercely for their land. guerilla warefare, naturally, was more effective and prolonged in hilly country than on the plains. he also argued that because the early colonial governors were under clear instructions to ‘treat the natives peaceably’, they omitted detailed descriptions of hostilities, punitive expeditions and battles from the official record. they couldn’t say they were at war.
in this manner, Australian history developed amnesia – what anthropologist W.H. Stanner called ‘the great Australian silence’. America had its Geronimos and Sitting Bulls. New Zealand had reams of scholarship on the Maori wars. but in Australia, the blacks who used to live where our cities now stand simply ‘melted away’.
Reynold’s book shook the scales from my eyes. reading it, i remembered my brother Tony’s best friend growing up. his skin was as black as night but his parents were white. Jonathan had exceptionally good manners and spoke in a toffy English accent which we used to make fun of, but apart from that i didn’t take much notice of him.
from many others i met on my travels over the years i learnt a whole other view of the world. of growing up not knowing who or where your parents were, of massacre sites remembered and avoided, of brothers who drank themselves to death, of sisters gone missing, of nephews hanging from a rope, of a thousand little slights, of not being able to get a taxi to stop at night, of pride of survival, of deep and abiding ties to a country, of songs going back thousands of years, and of celebration of heroes past and present.
i read other books. Eric Wilmot wrote a novel based on the life of Pemulwuy, who fought on behalf of the Eora people around Sydney. one phrase in that book has always stayed with me – ‘a strange hissing tongue.’ this is how the English language first strikes Pemelwuy, whose language didn’t use ‘s’.'
– p256, Paul Kelly - How to Make Gravy

Newspaper Song:
we have amade a successful start. when the nuclear tests are completed, as they soon will be, we shall be in the same position as the United States or Soviet Russia. we shall have made and tested the massive weapons. it will be possible then to discuss on equal terms. – Harold Macmillan, UK Prime Minister.
'when Britain used Australian soil and Australian people to conduct nuclear testing during the 1950s and ‘60s, our Prime Minister Robert Menzies, a confirmed Anglophile, gave the Brits his government’s complete support. in 1956 and ’57 a series of nuclear bombs were dropped in South Australia’s desert country. the site they chose, Maralinga, was part of the restricted area the British had claimed a decade before for the Woomera rocket tests. it was supposed to be unoccupied land, but for thousands of years it had been home to the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people.
security at the test sites was nonchalant and many Australian serviceman were exposed to radiation. the testing-range boundaries weren’t properly monitored and people were allowed to walk in and out as they pleased. plane patrols were sent out before a blast to make sure the area was clear, but the locals hid from them. warning signs were put up in English, which they could not read.
Yami Lester, a Yankunytjatjara spokesperson and negotiator, wrote in the prologue of his autobiography:
‘when i was a young boy living in the desert, the ground shook and a black mist came up from te south and covered our camp. the older people said they’d never seen anything like it before, and in the months that followed many people were sick and many died. i don’t like to think about it now, but one of those people was my uncle, and he was very sick before he died.
people had sore eyes too. i was one of those people, and later on i lost my sight and my life was changed forever. if i had my eyes, i would probably still be a stockman. because i haven’t, i became a stirrer.’
like many Australians, i didn’t know of those events until almost thirty years later when Judge Jim McClelland was appointed to conduct a royal commission into what happened. McClelland went to England, where he interviewed the commanders in charge of Operation Buffalo, as the initial major tests were codnamed. Air Vice Marshal Menaul said, ‘we got on very well with the Aborigines. we gave them beads. we gave them mirrors.’ McClelland also went out to the lands north of the bomb site, where many survivors were living, and asked more questions. I read about all this in an article written by Bob Ellis for the now defunct National Times in May 1985.
Yami Lester’s haunting story and calm demeanour made a strong impression on the commission and its entourage. Ellis wrote: ‘the evidence that day..grew in the mind like science fiction. first there were the two big bangs. we thought it was the Great Water Snake, loudly digging holes, as was his custom. we wore no clothes in that old time. and then the Poilu, the Black Mist, rolling, oily, sticky, like black frost came. very wide it was, low on the ground..’
amidst the dust, heat and the remorseless flies, more gruelling testimony, some of it told in secret session, was recorded.
Jim, under a blue plastic shelter, heard the worst story of all – of Edie Millipuddy camping with her husband on the bomb crater itself, being captured by men in white uniforms, forcibly and obscenely washed down, miscarrying twice and losing her husband, who to prove to the soldiers he knew English, sang ‘Jesus loves me, this i know, for the Bible tells me so.’ and how the soldiers shot their beloved, irradiated hunting dogs.'
– p303, PK - HtMG