Happy Nowruz (new day) to all my Persian, Kurdish, and Turkish friends, and Happy New Year to colleagues throughout the Indian sub-continent! Best wishes on this first day of Spring (astronomical vernal equinox) to all others in the northern hemisphere…

Did you hear that winter’s over? The basil

and the carnations cannot control their

laughter. The nightingale, back from his

wandering, has been made singing master

over the birds. The trees reach out their

congratulations. The soul goes dancing

through the king’s doorway. Anemones blush

because they have seen the rose naked.

Spring, the only fair judge, walks in the

courtroom, and several December thieves steal

away, Last year’s miracles will soon be

forgotten. New creatures whirl in from non-

existence, galaxies scattered around their

feet. Have you met them? Do you hear the

bud of Jesus crooning in the cradle? A single

narcissus flower has been appointed Inspector

of Kingdoms. A feast is set. Listen: the

wind is pouring wine! Love used to hide

inside images: no more! The orchard hangs

out its lanterns. The dead come stumbling by

in shrouds. Nothing can stay bound or be

imprisoned. You say, “End this poem here,

and wait for what’s next.” I will. Poems

are rough notations for the music we are.

—Rumi (The Music We Are)

Previous posts about Nowruz (aka Norooz, Norouz, Newroz, Newrooz) here.

Winnipeg, Canada

Two months ago I announced the online launch of The Canadian Gallery, a collection of exquisite outdoor and nature photographs by long-time friend and client, Mike Grandmaison. (The Canadian Gallery offers images of our great land specifically selected for their appeal to collectors—as fine art pieces, for corporate decor, and for use as corporate gifts).

The Canadian Gallery’s physical exhibit space opens with a vernisage this evening (19 March) at Photo Central, 2nd Floor, 499 Notre Dame Avenue in Winnipeg… and I’ll have the honour of introducing Mike. Check out some of the imagery on display here.

Above: a few select images from The Canadian Gallery. All ©2011 Mike Grandmaison.

—Bertrand Russell (thanks to friend and client Chris Maxfield for the quote)

Canberra, Australia

Doug Jackson is an educator and security consultant with over 25 years of electronics and computing experience. Some years back, he designed the Word Clock as a project to help educate others about simple electronic design and construction, empowering them to “do the things they dream of.” Shown above are a few pics from Doug’s website where he generously offers various pre-constructed and tested clock modules as well as design files and manuals. Good on you, Doug!

Thanks to friend Bruce Hildebrand (who knows how much I like clocks) for providing me with the link to Word Clock.

(a re-post… from 2008)

Not to get weird about it, but the Ides of March have freaked me out ever since I first learned of them in elementary school. In the year 44 BC this day marked the treacherous demise of Julius Caesar (I’m not making a value judgment here, it’s just a historical thing); in 1917 it was the day that the last tzar of Russia, Nicholas ll, was forced to abdicate the throne (three years before my dad was born into the turmoil of Molotchna, and part of the remarkable unrest following WWI); in 1933 it was the day that Adolf Hitler first expressed his nascent dream of The Third Reich (and six years later to the day that Nazi troops invaded Bohemia and Moravia [then Czechoslovakia]).

More recently, it was the single day in history that more people on the face of the earth than ever before gathered together in a unified action for peace (400,000 marched in Milan, 300,000 in Barcelona, 120,000 in Madrid, you get the picture… )—to no avail, George W. Bush simultaneously prepared to lead the (bullied, cowed, coerced) “coalition of the willing” nations into the U.S. empire’s most recent war against Iraq.

It remains a poignant day for me… five years ago today I was in Mumbai, India on a network-building sortie with Icograda—six days later while in Ahmedabad (Mahatma Gandhi’s home town), we watched in surreal disbelief as the U.S. reigned down an unprovoked firestorm on the ancient city of Baghdad (one of the the world’s “cradles of civilization,” and onto its hundreds of thousands of terrified citizens).

Indeed, beware the Ides of March… (don’t say I didn’t warn you).

Images: Caesar’s demise as painted by Vincenzo Camuccini; Tsar Nicholas ll of Russia; Adolf Hitler of Germany; George W. Bush of the U.S. of America.

Tehran, Iran

Leave the Basiji bullet in my heart,
fall to prayer in my blood,
and hush, father
—I am not dead.

More light than mass,
I flood through you,
breathe with your eyes,
stand in your shoes, on the rooftops,
in the streets, march with you
in the cities and villages of our country
shouting through you, with you.

I am Neda—thunder on your tongue.

—poem by Sholeh Wolpe

On 20 June 2009, Neda Agha Soltan, a 26-year-old Iranian woman and a student of philosophy who was attending a demonstration in Tehran protesting the vote-count fraud was shot in the heart by a Basiji hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. In the jittery cell phone video of a bystander who captured her murder, we hear her father wailing her name, begging her to stay, not to leave… as blood gushes from her chest and streams out of her mouth.

The name Neda in Persian means “The call.” And the call continues…

—George Orwell (aka Eric Arthur Blair) with a nod to Wikileaks…