Please accept this gift from me to you as i say farewell.
https://www.silenttheory.net Visions of the Sublime (a free book for you).
I have written the book in thanks for your support. Please feel free to take, and give to your friends.
The first people valued feathers from birds and assigned them symbolic and ceremonial importance. Bush folk also valued them, wearing a “gift” in leather hats to bush dances and then to battle fronts, when war called.
It was a different time. Practical clothes were made at home. Three changes of clothing was thought profligate.
Pride of place in a home was in the cool drawing room containing a piano. Around the room sat small reminders of the land: carved emu eggs; a book of bush poems; vases of dried native flowers and a display of feathers (sometimes still attached to formal hats, of both men and women). These were placed well out of reach of inquisitive children and only worn on formal occasions: a trip to the races; a bush dance; a baptism; a wedding or a funeral.
And, for fun, the people of that far away time wore them when they traveled to waterfalls.
Not every feather is a gift. Instead a gift is a happenstance. It is a feather left on a path by a bird: an emu; a bush turkey; a rosella; a cockatoo; or, most rare of all, a lyrebird. A feather taken from a dead bird can never be a gift.
In my culture, the culture of the Australia bush, a gift gains value and import according to how many times it is given. From friend to friend. From parent to child. The story of a gift and its re-giving is often told. A gift can not be bought nor sold. How we forget that the world was not once just about money and commerce.
When you regive this gift to your friends remember the gifts you gave and received on G+. Thank you.
Peter
Talaganda Wilderness 2019
Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
