ABOUT PROVENANCE AND ALL THAT

If you have watched 'The Collectors' on ABC or 'Antiques Roadshow' on a commercial channel? You have? Then you will have heard of this word.

prov·e·nance  (pr v -n ns,-näns) noun
1. Place of origin; derivation.
2.
a. The history of the ownership of an object, especially when documented or authenticated. Used for artworks, antiques, and books.
b. The records or documents authenticating such an object or the history of its ownership.

Here is a surefire way, if you are a Second-Hand Dealer or the operator of a Craft Shop like Country Comfort, or actually make Handcrafted Goods to enhance your sales, increase interest in local producrs or to add value.

People who buy antiques or home-made products have a real interest in where it came from, it's history, how it was made and who made it. You will also know that good Provenance with an object also increases its value many times over. A handkerchief is just that, but a handkerchief that may have been used by Bill Clinton to mop up stains will have additional value because it's a one off, or at least we hope so.

If you want to increase an objects value, even after its sale to someone else then a photo of the maker (yourself?) and a quick biography along with dates times and places would be a great advantage, especially if the photo is of the person actually making the object at the time.

If you are able to I would suggest if you have any knowledge of an object, even if you still have it at home and don't wish to part with it just yet, that you sit down at your computer, Open a write program and record concisely all that you know about your favourite object. Who made it, when it was made or when and where you acquired it. Any historically accurate data that comes to mind.

Having done that you should print it out and store it somewhere safe, preferably with the object. Pasted to the back of a painting is one place or folded up inside that vase or piece of pottery.

Have you ever tried to describe something and ended up looking more like a Marcel Marceau impersonator. Claiming for Insurance can be a nightmare so if you have any valuable objects then I suggest you extend a Provenance to everything of substance in the house.

If you are computer literate and have a digital camera it is also great for Insurance purposes to have a photo of all your valuables as well. Print out a copy of the provenance, insert the image and file it in a place safe from fire and water damage. Note serial numbers and any other identifying marks (this helps if some miscreant decides they want to relocate your valuables to a Pawn Shop.) I have even thought about committing everything to a USB stick and leaving it with relatives. So might you.

Finally. You might have purchased the object just yesterday. But what happens if it lasts longer than the five years things are made for these days. That empty Pickle Jar you collected rather than recycle will, somewhere, sometime, somehow be worth something to somebody. It has provenance already with the 'Use-by-date'. Good wine and even the rubbish wine come to think of it has a vintage or a bottling date for just that reason. Wine Buffs like me who pay anything up to $6.99 for a good bottle of wine set them aside for later consumption maybe a day or ten years later. The longer you keep wine it will either increase in value or tend to morph into Vinegar.

If you cannot do it yourself then I might suggest that paying me around 10 grand to do it for you might be a bit expensive for you but very advantageous for me.

Do it now or forever regret it after you survey the burnt out wreck that used to be your home.

Buyer be sure BUTCH

ABOUT HUMAN DOGS

“ The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog”

Besides being a test for the keyboard it is also the core of this weeks story just in case one might be wondering what diatribe I am about to launch into.

The racing season is over once the Melbourne Cup has been run and the winner decided. I deliberately failed to participate in this years event following a disasterous error in reading the Form Guide.

Maybe this story should alert everyone not to judge a book by its cover, and never to buy yourself a book of common cliché’s and sage sayings.

I very rarely venture into the world of gambling. Being born a tightwad I am doomed to be that way till the end of days. A short flurry with Poker Machines back in the days when they had handles to pull, ending abruptly the day I received my first eviction notice from the owner of Randwick Stables where my Horse and Trap were stored. The possibility of not being able to get to work gave me a start to say the least, and decisions were made not only to stop pulling handles but to grace the lower socio-economic valleys of Randwick Racecourse.

One habit I did maintain, from being born into a dubious line of genetically inclined Trainers, Jockeys and Bookies, was to have a bob each way on the Melbourne Cup. Up until this year that is.

I have never been a lucky person. The only time I ever won a Lottery ended up by my being sent to War. One year, for example I had a dollar each way on 20 horses in the Melbourne Cup. Picking them from the longest odds in the list of runners. Now there is only 23 or 24 horses in the Cup. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out that none of my 20 horses came 1st, 2nd or even 3rd. It cost me a packet and will be an experience never to forget.

I’m so unlucky in everything that if I were to dip my hand into a bag of marbles I’d come up with a second-hand wad of bubblegum.

I’m not even lucky enough to get other people to play by the rules of the game. I am not averse to a little bending but I am to breaking them. When I do point out the error then its only to find out they were playing by one set of rules made up by themselves whilst I was going by the rules as laid down by the founders of the game and they seemed to think their rules were the better and just as legal. If you didn’t like it you could either walk off the field and leave the game or bullied into believing you’d get a punch in the head if you kept it up.

Even when I played Rugby for Randwick I would participate in a bit of bending of the rules such as lurching sideways in a lineout accidentally knocking our opponents off their feet like ninepins, or forcing the Ref to keep counting how many arms were outside the scrum to calculatre how many might be inside bashing the shit out of some opponents face. That’s sport, and sportsmanship with all its niggly little activities like slanging is really part of the game and almost tolerated by Referees.

But a good luck streak has to come my way one day.

For instance I am a member of an association in my local district that is not playing by the rules. Regardless of what I do I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. The Referee doesn’t seem to care about the multitude of breaches in the way the game is run and I worry that a ‘sporting’ organisation has taken to bending them so far that it almost feels like I’m in a totally different game altogether.

What bothers me is that I seem to be the only one who plays by the rules and cannot get the rest of the team to see where they are breaking them. The other players look at me as though I was some sort of eccentric, quizzical looks upon their face when I cite examples of where they are going wrong, or a bloke tolerated just to make pay the annual fee and up the numbers in the team.

I wasn’t able to get my way while I was on the field, so I’m going to give it a go from the sidelines. My team have just packed up their bags and gone home to prepare for the next game, the opponents go into a huddle to work out what dirty tricks they might get up to next, the Referee just keeps reiterating we must play by the rules without doing anything about it and I seem to be left standing in the middle of the oval on my pat malone as if I had just been shat on by a monstrous smelly bird.

Whether it be the Melbourne Cup, playing Rugby, trading in the Money Market (did you know that Westpac pay 2c on the $ U.S less than the publicly quoted price?), Poker Machines, Lotteries, Powerball or the dreaded Footy Tipping I never seem to be able to get a clear run.

Many people around me wonder why I sometimes spend inordinate amounts of free time worrying about how the community runs itself, how democracy is not being seen to be done when it comes to being a member of an organisation, and wonder why I want to see things being run by the rules of the game when our society and its regulators appear to have no interest in ensuring everyone plays by the rules.

Except when losing money very few people give a damn. So I wonder why I shouldn’t just shut up, pull my head in, and

“ Let sleeping Dogs lay “

ABOLISH THE PARTY SYSTEM?

One place where one learns all the tricks of the trade, how to outgun your opponent, sidestep his strategy and demolish his defence is to work with a left of centre law firm like Slater and Gordon. Of course left of centre is where all potential antagonists gather, so if you want to piss off the establishment left of centre is a potentially a lucrative position to argue from. One very successful graduate of Slater and Gordon was our ex-Prime Minister Julia Gillard, but some would argue that she is not really someone S&G would be pleased to promote.

Julia, having learnt all about manipulation of intangible knowledge, through various cases involving both big business and politics, was in an ideal position to outgun, sidestep and demolish anything or anyone that stood in her way. She is a master at political strategy, constantly threatening her supposedly supportive colleagues into doing what she wants and not what the country needs. In the end the knife she was wielding was turned against her and with all the aplomb of a vanquished leader left politics altogether, but, not without a nice prime-ministerial pension to sustain her. Now of course she will be passing her vitreolic message to the dumbo’s studying law in Adelaide.

I always thought that the Liberals were the masters of ideological pile-driving, where the ideals of the party bulldozed away any ideals for Australia. But apparently Julia duplicated some of these strategies of the Liberals as Tony had begun to realise that the politics of fear, as practised by One Nation, could be just as useful to the Liberal cause. It is also this ‘fear-mongering’ that keeps the National Party compliant. All three major parties Liberal, Labor and National have really moved to the centre so that voters are confused over which policy really belongs to which party, and the three minor parties decided that one would go to the left (Green) one would go to the right (KAP) and one would move away from the Catholic Church (DLP). We don’t consider Palmer (P.U.P) as going in any direction.

Lets face it a party that represents only a proportion of the electorate is doomed to oblivion and the Nationals unfortunately appear to be taking that path. They are moving, like Labor, away from their heartland, and unless they revert back to the founding principals will find themselves caste out like lepers from their country colonies.

On another note this scribe, who has always been an admirer of anything so far to the left that I’m nearly always outside the common room, and probably the only true socialist in Linton. This is not to be confused with Communism as invented by Joseph Stalin. who like religion was high-jacked by the power hungry mongrel intent on enriching only himself, Stalin did do one good thing. He established that the representatives of the people and the employees of the people government would only have to obey one rule. Rule # 1. Always please the boss. I suppose in an Australian context Julia also adopted this all encompassing rule.

The party system is broken. We have gone the way of the United States and allow self-interest to dictate the countries direction. America admits its system is broken, and like Australia, is being run by chance, luck, happenstance and the everlasting incompetence of the bureaucrats. If we know the U.S system is broken and can’t be fixed unless by the hand of God, then why do we slavishly keep following the U.S and not govern in the interest of Australia and our neighbours rather than some sand-locked god-forsaken corrupt and religious divided backwater that no sensible person would even fly over let alone visit.

Lets get rid of political parties. The only parties to legally exist shall be where we can dance and be happy and get off our faces. It won’t be the chaos that some predict, nor shall the nation become ungovernable (politicians don’t govern) the state won’t collapse, although States should.

When a Private Members Bill comes up, as they do now from independents, all the other members of the house either agree or disagree with it, not on party lines but on what they believe their electorate would want and would be advantaged by. Groups of similar minds would band together to adopt, amend or defeat the law or policy. Nobody would be standing over our representatives,

Parliamentary Secretaries, Ministers and Prime Ministers would be elected by the both houses as with one example put forth by Republicans for the selection of a President/Governor General. The best woman or man would be elected to the most appropriate positions and the one most suited to their talents. There would be no free for-alls but mini-elections within parliament itself.

The beauty of this system is that the electors, you and I, would be voting for somebody we potentially know, somebody we believe has our interest at heart and somebody, if they don’t represent us that can be easily removed from office. The thing that keeps a politician on his toes is the next election.

A MOMENT WITH MARY

As usual I went spilling over the columns edge again last month. So I’m having to continue my story about PETA in this issue. If you didn’t read the last one I’m not about to bring you up to speed, you’ll just have to grab The Astonisher more often.

You’ll recall that there will be 11 billion stories in Victoria just about sheep by 2025. We’ve discussed the problems with the sheep now we should look at some of the other issues confronting us if we all become Vegans. You’ve obviously seen the TV ads about all the noxious gases given off by animals including ourselves. What are we going to do as humans beyond inserting plugs similar to those we shove in our ears or maybe insert plastic tubes and collect all the methane for cooking and heating? Of course we might have a bit of an entanglement problem.

What are the consequences to plant life as we know it. Well, say goodbye to any plant under 110cm tall, except maybe bloody pine trees. The vegetable garden that you’ve been tending carefully with sheep poop will require some hefty fencing, no more little strips of plastic or upturned bottles, and of course give up any hope of a garden unless protected by steel girders that can hold back an elephant. PETA sees fencing them in as cruelty too, you can say ta-ta to national parks, botanical gardens and roadside flora of any significance. I don’t know if even Goats will eat Gorse.

Expect to drive very slowly through unruly mobs of sheep walking along our Expressways and increased tension between customers and sheep in the Supermarket car-park.

There will be a whole new meaning to ‘packing a trunk’, or ‘feeding the chooks’. Some sayings will quickly get you into strife like ’stone the crows’, ‘smacking the monkey’ or ‘I’ll go and stuff the Chicken’.

PETA have a principal and I respect that but they obviously don’t have any members who are mathematicians or they would see the ridiculous folly of their cause. I would love to hear from any vegetarian (vegan or not) to argue their case. Come on now someone out there must be upset with this article?

AND VEGANS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO WEAR JUST PLAIN CONDOMS EITHER.

'To that end, (contraception) Trojan makes latex condoms as well as ones made of biodegradable LAMBSKIN. Other brands offer a vegan variety that replaces the dairy product in latex condoms with cocoa powder. And no, they don't all taste like chocolate'.

Excerpt from an article in TIME (Oct 25,2009)

Adiós Mary Firstcross

A BIGGER OPENING THAN BEN HUR

The Astonisher attended the official opening and delayed breakfast of the Linton Replica Railway Station and Rural Pursuits Centre adjacent to the Linton Sporting Complex and the Bridge Over Non-existent Waters.

All three levels of government were present, those with lawyer black suits (one with sunglasses probably from A.S.I.O) along with a scraping from the Community Co-ordinators Group and a disparate cluster of delegates from the Historical Society. The event was of such major importance that even a representative of the towns Tradesmen was in attendance.

Much was said about this magnificent ‘Bike Station’ and the fact that it was decided to locate the Linton Replica in Linton. Mention was made of the half million spent on the project, which we hope was for all three projects in Linton, Rokewood and Teesdale as it seemed a bit excessive to this observer for just this complex alone. There is also some question as to the origin of the $10,000 contribution from the community considering that there are no groups in the community that could afford to be that generous. One might hazard a guess that maybe it was left-over ‘encouragement money’ from local political or corporate interests.

We noted that there was a comment from one of the speakers about how lovely it was to have so many of the towns children attending the event, and (despite it being School Holidays) suggested that they probably should have been at school.

Despite this rag giving the impression that the Precinct Project as a whole would be a ‘white ellingfant’ we must unequivocally retract any such suggestions to make a positive comment that since completion it has attracted a good spattering of tourists to our ‘One Stop With Shop’ at one of the towns entrances and we would also like to congratulate the Progress Association for not standing in the way of Progress.

The headline was generated by the reporter who was reminded of the film Ben Hur when some undersized stunt riders from Linton hurtled themselves around the dirt track to the applause of an appreciative audience. The skateboard display was marred a little by the fact that O.H & S has banned the use of skateboards in Shopping Centres and on Council property and some of the children had to be satisfied with running up and down the skateboard ramp just wearing their safety helmets. Despite several calls the Lady Mayor was not inclined to give the thumbs down to any of the participants in the ’Linton Arena Spectacular’.

BUTCH THE MARKETING GURU

DRESS AS CHINESE DIGGERS DAY.

For those who watch South Park you will remember the episode where they had to make sure everyone in the Frontier Theme Town ‘stayed in character’ regardless of the consequences. For those who don’t watch it because it’s a bit too ‘risqué’ you will be wandering what the hell I’m talking about. The theme of the show was that South Park Schoolchildren visit their local version of ‘Sovereign Hill’. While they are their they are held hostages by Terrorists and the the F.B.I and C.I.A are caled in to rescue them. Even with adults and children being slaughtered all around them by incompetant federal agents the staff and volunteers of the theme park stay in perfectly character and even ask about things not invented in 1860 - like telephones and wristwatches.

There should be some way that we can celebrate our Gold Mining Heritage and the unsung, extraordinary hard work of the Chinese in this areas history. So much is owed to these ‘diggers’ and ‘shop-keepers’ that we should respectfully demonstrate our willingness to recognise their work.

A day should be set aside once each year where all of the townsfolk of Linton, taking a leaf out of the Railway Social Club Dress-up Book, should deck ourselves out as any of the peoples of Asia but especially the Chinese and spend the day going about town in this attire. The important thing for the day would be for everyone to stay in character, and with all seriousness, refuse to understand any English being spoken by people passing through and Tourists. A shrug of the shouldesr would be a common answer to most questions by strangers.

Very little effort is required and not a lot of planning but like Red Nose Day and Blue Jeans Day and come in Mufti to work day, it has the psychological effect of putting ourselves in their shoes for just a little while and getting a little enjoyment from the experience.

Imagine when they got home all the travellers would be talking about this little townthey stopped at just outside Ballarat where they were astonished to find nobody spoke any English?

What a great learning experience too for the children from Linton Primary to participate.

更下个的月 Butch

FROM THE DESK OF ROLAND ALONG

Binge Drinking, Teenage Drinking, Public Drunkenness, Domestic Violence, Physical and Verbal Abuse are all known to be closely connected to the use and/or abuse of alcohol. So why do our elected officials hypocritically criticise the misuse of alcohol on one hand whilst making it increasingly easier to get on the other and then think that raising the drinking age will solve the problem.

Do you believe the advertising industry thinks of the negative impacts when promoting their products, of course not. Just as the car industry worries about pollution the breweries worry about drunks.

Holy Mother of Mary in some places you can even get a haircut while being able to get a drink. I doubt it will be very long before you can buy a Jim Beam at the Mc.Donald’s Drive-thru (sic) or the Churches install bars in the Parish Hall. When a Pole Dancer waves it in front of your face it’s hard to ignore and it’s the same with booze.

Oh! Dear we need a law to stop binge drinking but not one that stops kids from buying it. We need a law to prevent young people buying it but not one that prevents them from serving it. We need a law that stops people from drinking and driving but not driving with drink. Only the other day I was at the NQR checkout when a customer tried to buy alcohol and was refused. The Cashier was under the age of 18, and fearful either of us might have been with the Thought Police told the customer they would have to come back when someone older was manning the shop. The look I got from the other customer was that of total disbelief.

Once it was only ‘people of good character’ who were licensed to sell alcohol now it’s the unchecked and possibly under-aged operators of Aldi, Woolies, Coles and twenty dozen Bottle Shops who are allowed to shove it in your shopping bag.

We forget that children can access drugs and alcohol easier than they can access schools or training courses and unable to get one will go for the other, and lest we forget the era of ‘Prohibition in America’ when organised crime took off like an Atlas Rocket and is still out of control. And don’t get me onto the subject of C.I.A backed Heroine which flooded back into the United States with returning troops from Vietnam.

But is it just alcohol or a combination of alcohol and drugs? I believe illicit drugs are far more dangerous than alcohol will ever be, and a few pills popped with your Red Bull can be far more devastating than a bottle of Vodka. As cigarette smoking was reduced by education of the health effects and not by price so the same can be done for all manner of drugs whether they be prescription or not.

From an early age we are teaching our children to pop pills for all manner of health control or benefi and making it a positive activity. Our kids become so involved with pills that make you feel ‘better’ it is not a very big step to take before pills that make you feel ‘good’ are just as readily consumed without any thought of the consequences, after all Mummy gave me pills three times a day and they didn’t do me any harm.

Much of the problem of alcohol fuelled violence is with a combination of booze and drugs together, not just alcohol on its own.

In the end it is really drinking at home that is the problem. It’s not what is consumed it is where it is consumed. In the pub there is a certain amount of social and managerial control, step out of line and you soon get to know about it but in the privacy of the home it is unchecked open season for violence, abuse and assault with no social controls or supervision. Maybe it’s not drinking and driving that’s the real social problem but the home environment in which it is consumed.