Rotary Community Major Art Union

The Rotary Club of Cairns-Mulgrave Inc. advises that it is proposing to conduct its annual Community Major Art Union between the months of April to September 2002. The major prize will again be a car.

Rotary seeks Expressions of Interest from local charities schools and sporting groups interested in participating in the Art Union. Participating organisations will retain a substantial percentage of the $2.00 ticket price for no outlay, other than a commitment to sell tickets in the Cairns Community.

If your group would like to be involved in this event that last year saw over $48,000 distributed to local participating organisations please contact:

Club Secretary
Rotary Club of Cairns Mulgrave
P.O. Box 2051
Cairns 4870

Enquiries -
David Kirchner
Telephone (w) 40323377. a/h 40547408
Written expressions of interest required by Thursday 7 March 2002
Subject to the approval of the Queensland Office of Gaming Regulation.

Cairns Mulgrave Rotary Club

Boxed Gift Pens Available Now

$15.00 each.
Please see Secretary Kevin if you would like one

What's Happened This Year?

We would love to have any - photos - stories - certificates - anything at all of what has happened over the past year.

It's time to start putting the booklet for changeover together so please give any materials to Gina.

Gina Raccanello
Ph 07 4041 0565
Fax 07 4031 9011
Mob. 0407 178898
Email Gina@absolutecomputers.com.au

E-MAIL TO THE WRONG WIFE

This is voted as the best e-mail joke in Australia in 2001. Hope you enjoy it.

After being nearly snowbound for two weeks last winter, a Seattle man departed for his vacation in Miami Beach, where he was to meet his wife the next day at the conclusion of her business trip to Minneapolis. They were looking forward to pleasant weather and a nice time together.

Unfortunately, there was some sort of mix up at the boarding gate, and the man was told he would have to wait for a later flight. He tried to appeal to a supervisor but was told the airline was not responsible for the problem and it would do no good to complain. Upon arrival at the hotel the next day, he discovered that Miami Beach was having a heat wave, and its weather was almost as uncomfortably hot as Seattle's was cold.

The desk clerk gave him a message that his wife would arrive as planned. He could hardly wait to get to the pool area to cool off, and quickly sent his wife an e-mail, but due to his haste, he made an error in the e-mail address.

His message therefore arrived at the home of an elderly preacher's wife whose even older husband had died only the day before! When the grieving widow opened her e-mail, she took one look at the monitor, let out an anguished scream, and fell to the floor dead.

Her family rushed to her room where they saw this message on the screen:

Dearest wife,

Departed yesterday as you know. Just now got checked in. Some confusion at the gate. Appeal was denied. Received confirmation of your arrival tomorrow. Your loving husband.

P.S. Things are not as we thought. You're going to be surprised at how hot it is down here.

From Rotary Down Under May 2002

News

Rio Earth Summit

For those who have forgotten, it's ten years since the famous Rio Earth summit that created a whole new global, environmental awareness and effectively popularised the term 'sustainable development'. To celebrate this momentous event, a huge repeat performance is planned for this August in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Rio + 10 will bring together thousands of NGOs, corporate big hitters, politicians as well as social, environmental and religious groups, under the auspices of the United Nations, for what is sure to be one of the world's biggest ever talk fests. Already the cynics (or perhaps just realists) are saying that it will be a colossal waste of time and money more concerned with the mouthing of empty promises and a profusion of greenwash - that recent, soothing balm for the environmentally criticised corporate entity.

But what has changed for the better in the last ten years? Precious little it would seem. A recent UN report, Global Environmental Outlook, tells us, among other things, that 11,000 species are threatened with extinction; that forests are continuing to disappear at an alarming rate; that soil degradation and salination are increasing rapidly; that the world's fresh water crisis is worsening; that one third of the world's fish stocks are depleted and that well over a billion people live in abject poverty existing on less than US$1 a day.

Meanwhile just to cheer us up, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are expected to double by 2050, having a mammoth effect on all living systems through significant climate change. CO2 emissions have already increased 9% since Rio despite the proliferation of published papers and the tons of talk-shops all recognising the desperate need to cut back on the use of fossil fuels on which we now almost completely depend.

The power elites of the developed world have accepted, by and large, the need to invest in renewable and sustainable technologies without doing very much at all. Thus 95% of all energy consumption for transport says the UN report, is still petroleum based and fossil fuel use is actually growing at 3.6% a year in developing countries and at 1.5% in developed countries. Our leaders appear to be paralysed by inaction like rabbits stuck in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.

Apart from a brief flurry of publicity when a giant iceberg broke off from the Antarctic continent recently, the environment has had scarcely a mention since that fateful day in the USA last September. The 'War Against Terrorism' seems to have given the authorities around the world the excuse to bury what had been a healthy, vigorous debate about globalisation, the excesses of corporate power, GM foods, fair trade, human rights, sustainable agricultural practices and anything else that could be construed as challenging the powerful, ideological free trade and militaristic homogeny that now emphatically lays down the law on what is right and what is a perceived threat to American interests and the West's continued world market dominance. And yet, like everything in life, it's all about priorities.

In the war against terrorism, it has been estimated, that we are spending enough money to save all the natural environments in the Tropics as well as provide sustainably for the people who live there. We know, for example, that a fraction of what is currently being spent worldwide on armaments could provide clean water and sufficient food for a billion starving people.

Sadly, it's quite predictable what will happen in Johannesburg this August. There will undoubtedly be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, lamenting the state of the planet and how important it is to do something really meaningful about it. The huge number of delegates will get fired up and numerous resolutions will be passed emphasising the urgency of protecting the world's biodiversity as well as promising to do better in future. Ecological sustainability will be embedded into practically every paragraph of the trillion words published from the conference.

But will anything change? Sorry to be a negative Nelly but just as the world's attention is momentarily focussed once more on the environment and the need to protect it, September 11, 2002 will herald the biggest commemoration the world has ever seen as the media pay due homage to America's suffering and George Shrub and his oil rich cronies use the opportunity to urge yet more military spending and energy self reliance on fossil fuels to protect the American way of life.

Talk about good days to bury bad news! It probably wouldn't matter if a thousand giant icebergs grew legs and marched northwards or the whole of Amazonia was turned overnight into a cement factory. Nothing in September will be allowed to deflect our attention from America's grief. The environment and the declarations of Johannesburg will be a mere postscript to the need for the entire world to experience, once more, America's pain as well as its continuing desire for revenge.

Denis Walls. Barfly 31/6/02

STORYBOOK @ KICKARTS

Storybook, featuring the work of Robyn Baker, opens at the Kick Arts Gallery (77b Lake Street) this Friday and will be on show until July 12 (11am-4pm weekdays).

Louise Doyle, Director of the Cairns Regional Gallery, will officially open the exhibition on Friday, June 7. Storybook evolved after the Cairns artist wrote and illustrated a children's book called The Ballerina and the Pig Dog.

The concept developed as Robyn realised that each story illustration was a story on its own. "Every painting, every photograph is a story.

A story exists concerning the subject itself, but there are also many separate stories about how that image came into existence", says Robyn. Storybook comprises three avenues of storytelling. "There's The Ballerina and the Pig Dog - the Storybook. A photo album documents the life of someone. It tells a whole story but each photograph tells a separate story. The Photo Album represents this section.

The third section is a collection of paintings each representing a story in someone's life that I have witnessed or been involved with."

From Barfly May 31 2001.