Festive Recipe book, and singing for the festive season. Icke again.

The book with the longish title and subtitle Festive Recipe Favorites from Kimberly's Friends: A few tried and true recipes went on sale at Amazon dot com yesterday. Some readers of the blog actually contributed their own recipes to it.  My job is now to try every one, hopefully when someone else cooks  the item and invites me over. Best contender to date is the Irish Cream. Anyway, the proof copy was shown to some friendly people who quite like it - my sixth effort since July, all different topics, and under several pen names as author or compiler. We like the orange coloured turkey on the cover.

The singing group is prepping vocal cords for three performances from now until first of December. I am delivering to our musical director the DVDs made from yesterday's digital recording of the whole morning and afternoon sessions, for appreciation or wincing as the case may be. Still time for late tweaking of the program - or the performers. Maybe tweaking isn't the right word. You would be on target if you guessed that the programs are strongly indicative of the Christmas season. Can't think why.






There were some interesting responses from readers who either (1) had, or (2) had not heard of David Icke. The two categories embrace, let's see, everyone of the planet. But not all emailed me.  I thought the home vid (not by David) from Barcelona, to which the link was provided, was pretty chaotic ... but something of the flavour of Icke's personality came over. He does indeed find energy to talk for whole day events, solo, unscripted and without notes. He is NOT a ranting preacher-type, nor a sales-hype merchant, nor yet into political demagoguery (if that's a word).  He delivers a message, and constantly offers documented material in support of most of or all his startling claims. It is for his readers or audience to form their own opinion. Naturally he is a target of attack from many quarters. As an example, his income from sales of his books through the 1990s in America was effectively stolen by very shonky (as we say in Australia) quasi-legal shenanigans, at a time when he was totally reliant on that income. Next - typical of the manner in which adversaries operate in the dirty world - the bad guys tried to sue Icke by claiming that the rights to his own books had been acquired elsewhere. The principle behind such tactics is well-known - to use corporate big-money to wear down or destroy the lone battler. It has, after all, taken Icke twenty years to attain the sort of worldwide following he currently has, without benefit of the mainstream media to whom he is anathema.

Another modern figure and teacher of  "alternative knowledge" who comes to mind, whose path has been deliberately spread with obstacles for treading on the wrong toes (or rather, the correct toes attached to malevolent heads), is Daniel Winter. Dan Winter now works mainly from Europe since his persecutors and their packs of lawyers succeeded in driving him from the U.S., closing his websites, and capturing what material assets he owned. But not his knowledge and intelligence. And sorry, Brendan, I spent significant time in person with each of the above men. No "degree of separation" at all.

Here's a sad footnote to last week's mention of homophobic bullying driving some gay students to major depression: the same week saw the death of high school student Brandon Bitner of Pennsylvania, driven to suicide "by taunts about his emo dress style and his gay sexuality", wrote fellow blogger BB, who added "Not content with their inability to control the bullying, the authorities at Brandon's school (all women...) forbade students from attending a rally to protest against the behaviour that led to the tragedy." It may or may not be the case that female school principals are less sympathetic, in general, to male gay students. My blogger friend thinks so, but I would hope it is not the norm - not now, well embarked on the 21st century. Official hostility seems to have played a role in the case above.