Climate Change Harinam

On the left, the Warrapa dam during the drought. On the right, the dam at 9am on Wednesday.

Brisbane has received half its annual rainfall in the first two months of 2010.

Dams are at 80% of capacity now, the highest since 2002. Water restrictions introduced in 2005, and ramped up over the next three years to "extreme", have now been relaxed to allow residents to use water for activities such as watering their gardens.

More information.

I love Keka's Australia Day rants - and this guy has the right idea.

Straight from the (down-)under ground!

The part about plant consciousness is around 22:00.

We are going to have three special Harinams to help publicise the upcoming Krishna's Birthday Festival. These harinams will be on:

• Wednesday 19th August 5 pm
• Friday 21st August 5 pm
• Saturday 22nd August 12 pm

The meeting point is Govindas in the city.

Please come out to help us spread the chanting of the Holy Names!

Every Town and Village is our ongoing attempt to fulfil the instruction of Caitanya Mahaprabhu to chant the Holy Name in every town and village. Our definition of a "town or village" is a suburb with a distinct postcode. Since 2007 we have chanted in more than 50 of Brisbane's 150 postcodes. You can read more reports here

This week we went to Rocklea. I had no voice, but I was able to concentrate a little more on playing the accordion, especially with some of the novel tunes that Mangal Vaisnava busted out. I moved my mouth during the kirtan to make it look like I was chanting to onlookers, but no sound.

Rocklea is mainly an industrial area, but there are some residential streets being slowly constricted by the encroaching industrial / heavy commercial zone. The houses there are unmaintained, and the people a funny mix of those who were overjoyed to see us, and came out to dance, including a lady who looked like an ex-hippie; and some real dark hill billy characters who looked like they would run us out of Dodge, or worse, if they had their druthers.

Pretty much after this I collapsed from exhaustion. You can see me fading out at the end. What little voice I had left disappeared after that. I had to call someone for work in the evening and it was a torturous experience for both of us.

the association between sonar and whale deaths “is very convincing and appears overwhelming.”

Full story originally published in New York Times, available here: Watching the Whales Watch Us.

An amazing piece that indicates that whales are extremely intelligent. Maybe Star Trek is closer to fact than fiction...

A giant blob, up to 15 miles long, of organic marine algae of an unknown type has been found floating off the coast of Alaska - full report in the Alaska Daily News

Every Town and Village is our ongoing attempt to fulfil the instruction of Caitanya Mahaprabhu to chant the Holy Name in every town and village. Our definition of a "town or village" is a suburb with a distinct postcode. Since 2007 we have chanted in more than 50 of Brisbane's 150 postcodes. You can read more reports here

This morning I was chillaxing in Sherwood Forest with the KKK - Krishnapada's Klan and Krew.

Today is Krishnapada's birthday, and also the birthday of his son Shyamasundara:

Here's a shot of me hanging with my homeboy DJ Vraj and his flygirl Bhakticandrika:

Param Satya got some good sun, but started to fade around the time we left for the harinam. She still has no voice, and is slowly getting over the flu she has had:

Prahlad gets on his "Plants vs Zombies" face:

Here's one of the birthday boys, Shyam:

And proud mum, Tulasi:

Afterwards we rocked over to Sinnamon Park to do this week's harinam. I swung by Prem's place first to pick him up, but he was doing the haribol thing and shaving up five minutes before kick-off time (!). My personal motto is "Better Dead on Time than Alive and Late", and we also had to help Vinita move at 3pm, so we left those cats behind and hit the street with what we had:

Here's Prahlad leading the kirtan party that consisted of me on mrdanga, Param Satya (with no voice) clapping, and Prahlad on cartals and leading. Getting him to lead was the only way to ensure that he would participate, and I needed everything I could get.

The disadvantage of doing harinam at this time in the afternoon is that the sun is low on the horizon, and when you're headed due West, it's pretty much shining straight into your eyes.

Vraj and the boys showed up about half an hour later, looking all pukka and shaved up.

We continued with them for another 15 or 20 minutes, then left them to mop up while we went to Vinita's to help her shift.

The photos of the harinam were taken with my cellphone camera, so they look pretty whack compared to the ones taken with KP's megapixel monster. I left my other camera in the car.

Every Town and Village is our ongoing attempt to fulfil the instruction of Caitanya Mahaprabhu to chant the Holy Name in every town and village. Our definition of a "town or village" is a suburb with a distinct postcode. Since 2007 we have chanted in more than 50 of Brisbane's 150 postcodes. You can read more reports here

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Corner of Windermere Ave and Seventeen Mile Rocks Rd
2 pm, Sunday July 19th, 2009