Monthly Archives: July 2019 It is addictive: five days of quality blues-and-roots (and beyond) musicians from around the world, all in one family-friendly location. There were so many international performers to choose from at this year’s Easter long-weekend Byron Bay Bluesfest that I’ve broken my posts into sections (see: Spotlight on International Performers; Old Rockers, Punk and Protest) – and, there […]  Once upon a time, long, long ago, we told fanciful stories about a moon made of cheese, and about a man who lived there. Then, fifty years ago this week, while we all watched on our flickery black-and-white television screens, American astronauts Commander Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin exited their Apollo Lunar Module Eagle and walked on the surface […]  ‘Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.’ This sense of dislocation – in a positive way – often arises when travelling off the beaten track. In Southern Ethiopia, I was so far off the popular routes that most of the ‘highways’ I was on weren’t paved! Around the city of Arba Minch – […]  The earthquake in Nepal in April 2015 killed more than 8,800 people in that country, injured nearly three times that many, and left nearly 3.5 million homeless. As a further blow to the national psyche, numerous precious historical religious buildings were damaged or destroyed. Many of these were contributors to the 1979 UNESCO World-Heritage listing […] |
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