© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Doubly foreign: vintage photographic souvenirs

If the past is another country, then the past of another country might be doubly foreign, I guess. When I travel overseas I'm naturally drawn to flea markets and vintage stores and among the things I like to buy are photographs and negatives. In dusty cabinets in old stores, on cluttered blankets on the ground at flea markets, at fetes and village yard sale days I hope to see them: tatty paper pouches of old negs and snapshots, cardboard boxes full of glass plate negs or old photo albums. Sometimes particular photo albums excite me enough…

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The new cold war gets warmer, again

The big guns are out, and they are aiming towards Asia and the Pacific. Sure, the current hot proxy war between the US Empire and Russia happens to be in Europe but the big target is China, and the cold war to prevent its rise is warming by degrees with every day that passes. For Australia – America’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier” and its “deputy sheriff” in the Pacific Region – the signs are all very ominous. The commandant of the US Marine Corps, General David Berger, was in Australia this week, urging the government to ramp…

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Who are these Excelsior girls?

Excelsior! I might have known Longfellow had something to do with it. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I think of him as a kind of American Tennyson: the pair of them are corny balladeers whom I can’t help liking, at least a little bit, just on the strength of their word music. Epic poets of the Victorian era, pumping out metred rhyming stanzas packed with sentiment and imagery that was just right for its time. Mind you, I rate Tennyson a few leagues ahead of Longfellow just on the strength of In Memoriam, where I can dip and…

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