Travel

In February 2018 we travelled to Hawaii.
Hawaii has a special place in my family's lore because it was here on my father's 25th birthday, December 7 1941, "a date which will live in infamy", that Japan committed to war with the United States.
With this in mind I determined to find out more about the events leading up to that Sunday morning on Oahu, as they led my parents' marriage and so to my conception.
Thus what happened here and I are linked - in that these events were essential to my being here to contemplate them.
If you are similarly interested in the events leading to your birth you might like to read my researches.  For example, why the US Pacific Fleet was in Pearl Harbor in the first place?
Otherwise you might skip forward to the less dramatic chapters relating our travel experiences.
 

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Travel

In October 2017 we returned from the United States where for over six weeks we travelled through a dozen states and stayed for a night or more in 20 different cities, towns or locations.
In these travel notes I've provided a separate chapter for each significant stop along our way, whether we stayed overnight or not.  My notes have turned out to be very long but could well have been much longer - as it's a fascinating country that has so much history, culture and language in common with us that it's extremely accessible and interesting.
Much of our time was spent in states that were for a short time in a separate country: The Confederate States of America.  Thus slavery, The Civil War and its consequences loomed large there. 
By far the longest chapter is Andrew Jackson's Hermitage - Tennessee that contains an explanatory short history leading up to that period and beyond that informs many of locations we travelled to.
Readers might like to 'cherry pick' chapters that could interest them for other reasons, like Graceland or NASA or the Grand Canyon, from the contents table.

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Ideas

The  musical comedy: The Book of Mormon has begun a run in Sydney so if you are considering going you might like to read my review.
We saw it in Melbourne in July 2017.
It brought back memories of a visit I had in 1964, very much like the one depicted at the beginning of the show.
I soon began to smile; then to giggle; and then to laugh uproariously; mopping my eyes. And the happy ending is very clever. I loved this musical.
It had topped off a Sunday during which we also visited couple of churches and a synagogue. So it seemed especially relevant.

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History

Continuing the religious theme, 2017 also marked 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his '95 theses' to a church door in Wittenberg and set in motion the Protestant Revolution.
It's caused me to recall an exhibition in Germany in 2016 - Luther and the Witches - and to wonder how much impact this superstitious man might still have on my decedents, two of whom are German.
My research and speculations made this article quite long enough. So if you're interested in the witch hunts Luther contributed to click on the linked album within and see the exhibition for yourself.

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Travel

Here is the story of our 2017 Japanese sojourn, when we took a short introductory package tour: Discover Japan 2017 visiting: Narita; Tokyo; Yokohama; Atami; Toyohashi; Kyoto; and Osaka.
Japan has been an important theme throughout my life.  Their unconditional surrender came exactly four weeks before my birth, as a result of the first A-Bombs. 
So that my life spans the nuclear age, the cold war, the space race, Japanese recovery, détente, the digital revolution, biomedical science, and the rise of China.
I couldn't help making one or two historical observations.

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Travel

After our trip to Japan, reported above, our little group returned to Hong Kong.  From here Craig and Sonia headed home to OZ while Wendy and I headed into China once again. Here are some observations on developments in Hong Kong and China.

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Travel

The biggest news last year was on American Independence Day, the 4th of July 2017, when North Korea had launched a rocket that travelled vertically to reach an altitude of 2,802km (1,731 miles) well beyond the orbit of the International Space Station. Thus demonstrating that they could put a nuclear weapon into orbit, to strike anywhere on the planet. That N Korea is not bound by The Outer Space Treaty, the convention that prohibits putting these weapons in orbit, is a point the media seemed to ignore.
Since then there have been even better performing rockets and an H bomb test.
So in the new year I've brought this article up the list a bit and added a further update.  Yet irrespective of these recent advances, not a lot has changed. 
As was already evident last July, it is now even more obvious that a land attack on N Korea would risk a retaliatory nuclear attack on the US or an indefensible ally like Australia and ,as ever, any solution needs to be diplomatic.
But like Kubrick's Dr Strangelove, we've learned to 'stop worrying and love the bomb'.
This is largely because of MAD - mutually assured destruction.
So, strangely, I find I'm not too worried.
Unless President Trump really is mad.

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Travel

In mid July 2016 Wendy and I took flight again to Europe. Those who follow these travel diaries will note that part of out trip last year was cut when Wendy's mum took ill. In particular we missed out on a planned trip to Romania and eastern Germany. This time our British sojourn would be interrupted for a few days by a side-trip to Copenhagen and Roskilde in Denmark (later posts to come).
We spent the initial week in London and after our return from Denmark, toured about the West Country to Cornwall and then east along the South coast as far as Sidmouth.

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Travel

Today I'm feeling pleased, as if I'd finally got around to repairing that annoying scratch on my car. All I had to do was commit a full day to inserting the images to publish my notes from Denmark last year. Now only Germany and Japan remain before our next trip. Anyway, better late than never... so here is Denmark:

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Travel

Here it is at last.  I've finally given up my fight with Google Pictures and accepted URLs the length of small essays, just so that I can store my images in The Cloud.
The essay on Southern England uses the old Picasa image storage. But in the middle of writing this, a few days later, Google withdrew it and introduced their mega-URLs. Then, before I could get any further with a solution, I found myself in hospital.  See below.

Anyway I hope this was worth the wait - particularly for those of you who like to travel and have not yet been to Romania.

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Environment

Partly in response to my article Carbon Footprints (below) several friends and acquaintances have told me that Climate Change is a myth.

Might this be true?

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Energy

The deal is now signed.  South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has contracted Elon Musk to provide the world's biggest battery, a 100 MW/129 MWh Tesla Powerpack, in a 100 days... 'or our money back'.  
Federal Energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg, cautiously welcomed the forthcoming delivery of "the 'world's largest' lithium-ion battery to help secure South Australia's power grid", while humbly submitting that: "it will not solve all the state's energy problems".  
Was he implying that 100 MW is a drop in the bucket, in a State with 1,600 MW of rapidly fluctuating wind generation?  
In an attempt to regain the initiative Josh proposed his 'superior' solution - a bigger bucket - 'package' pumped hydro-electricity.  The present cost of both these storage methods certainly brings water to the eyes. Yet could both 'fixes' be woefully inadequate?
Nevertheless, like Ol' Blue Eyes': 'ant and the rubber tree plant' both Jay and Josh have 'high hopes'.

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News

For my 70th Birthday Wendy took me at my word and bought me a voucher to go Skydiving.  I've always wanted to try it and 75 is a limit for insurance. Not that I was likely to benefit from any insurance payout.  Skydiving accidents are usually fatal.

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News

On the subject of death, I was subsequently restored to life after being dead for several hours. 

'Really?' you say, 'dead?' What does: 'dead' really mean?

At one time a person who was no longer breathing; who had no heartbeat; was limp and unconscious; and failed to respond to stimuli, like being poked with a knife; or having their heart removed; was pretty certainly dead.
Yet while a death certificate may well have been issued for me in the not so distant past, today we set no store by the heart or the lungs or even reflexes as indicators of life but rather the potential recovery of the brain and central nervous system.

Thus I was not actually dead. The colony of cells that is me remained relatively undamaged, still a viable living organism thanks to continuing oxygenated blood supply. In particular my brain was undamaged, so my mind could be restored to awareness when anaesthesia ceased. 

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History

This is the story of the McKie family down a path through the gardens of the past that led to where I'm standing now.  Other paths converged and merged as the McKies met and wed and bred.
Where possible I've glimpsed backwards up those paths as far as records would allow.
In six generations, I, like most people, have 126 ancestors.  Around half have become obscure to me. But I know the majority had one thing in common: they lived in or around Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England.

During that time Newcastle grew from a small port town into one of the World's most important and innovative cities.  Thus they contributed to the prosperity, fertility and skill of that blossoming town during the century and a half when the garden there was at its most fecund.

So it's also a tale of one city.

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Fiction

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