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Happy New Year 2020

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Smooth

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Smooth by Siv Parker Update Tuesday 23 February 2015, 12.30pm:  This blog post was prompted by a recent incident in Australia.   Rob Thomas best known as singer/songwriter of Matchbox20 is currently touring.  H e said some things at a concert. It triggered a social media firestorm.  He apologized quickly, twice on Facebook (links included below). That was good enough for me.   I decided to make some comments of my own. Rob Thomas’s response is also linked below.   If I had known the page hits to my blog post would be over 30,000 in 24 hours I may have taken longer than an hour to write it, but it is what it is.   Thanks for reading.   The last time I heard Smooth , it was a Sunday afternoon in January. A cover band was playing at the country pub down on the corner from my house. It sounded pretty good.   It wasn’t Santana featuring Rob Thomas, but it was kind of awesome to listen while ...
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#NaNoWriMo - rolling blog post

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Things I Learnt from #NaNoWriMo2015 ~~ 3 January 2016 It’s fun – it feels like a month long writers retreat. The Twitter NaNoWriMo dedicated accounts and all the participants make sure that the hashtag runs hot for the entire month with tweets and photos. Photos of writing spaces, writing food, writing inspiration. You get the picture, it is dedicated to everything that is on a writer's mind.  I imagined my part of NaNoWriMo World was a large castle.  The dining room is open all hours and I was kept well informed of what people were eating and drinking.  The grand estate had beautifully appointed rooms, gardens galore: landscaped, secret rooms, running brooks and shady passages.  Freshly brewed coffee was on offer by the gallon, copius quantities of cats (mostly) kept us company and I could read a blow by blow account from other writers via the hashtag of how the words were falling on to the page. Will Self said recently, that a writer sentences ...
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#TweetYarn

I use my blog to announce what’s next; pitch ideas & invite collaborations. Disclaimer: I am not associated with any group or organisation unless specified. UPDATE 23 October 2014: the links to these tweetyarns have been removed, pending publication of my blog to book, On Dusk which will be available for purchase from Amazon December 2014. In the meantime - please feel free to download a FREE anthology of Indigenous Australian writing, which includes one of my tweetyarns 'Maisie May' (mentioned below) and a short story that does not appear anywhere else...'Epilogue to Maisie May' here UPDATE 25 July: Six new tweetyarns - links [are no longer] here I’m an emerging writer/screenwriter. I use social media to promote my writing & my ideas. I wanted to see what was possible using new technologies so I created '  #tweetyarns '. I am Aboriginal. ‘Yarn’ has special significance to Indigenous Australians. I started telling...
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CEO for a Day - 6 May 2015

Some background on why I asked to be considered to be included in Generation One’s campaign for Indigenous Australians to have a ‘CEO for a day’ experience. Melbourne CBD on dusk. #CEOforaday comes with a great view. Can't wait for tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/jpnNoBxjCq — Siv Parker (@SivParker) May 5, 2015 The GenerationOne CEO for a Day campaign is aimed at giving all Indigenous people the hope and belief that they too can be a CEO, of any organisation, one day. It is well out of what would ordinarily be considered a writer’s comfort level.   I spend most days writing in my designated writing space, a short walk down the hallway from the other areas in my house that also from time to time serve as writing areas.  My movements depend on the weather and the time of day, and whether the kids walking to school outside are especially rowdy during the day, or the lowing of the cows in the paddock down the lane are too much of a mou...
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Review #FirstContactSBS Part 2

In case you weren’t aware, please know there’s a campaign to have Indigenous people recognized in the Australian Constitution.  It’s been going for a while now. It has a lot of support from people from all walks of life. If also has it’s detractors. They come in all shapes and sizes too. So there are two other campaigns. One is to throw out some alternative ideas to recognition. A Treaty is one idea.  The other is to derail the Constitutional Recognition campaign. This goal splinters again into even more objectives. Confused? If you think that is confusing, then you are some way to understanding why some Aboriginal people do not like #FirstContactSBS.   Politics. Conflict. Suspicion. Blackout. If you are not aware that a writer or a spokesperson or a media identity is opposed to the Constitutional Recognition campaign then you wouldn’t get that because First Contact has some links – be they ever so faint – to the governme...
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DUFC 84th Edition May 2015

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The following submissions cover writing on feminist issues from Australian and New Zealand bloggers, for the 84th edition of the Down Under Feminists' Carnival . Thanks so much to Rebecca, Stephanie, Scarlett, Deborah and Mary for making submissions. My approach was straight forward – I read them all. The overlaps in subject matter defeated my attempts to organise them around themes so I decided to collate in order of receipt. ** From Hoyden About Town, Anna in the third of a series, writes about Hildegard von Bingen born in 1098 and dying in 1179 at the age of 81 one of the great medieval Christian philosophers.   **     Jennifer Wilson from her blog No Place for Sheep writes ‘ If you can’t deal with vulnerability you’ve no business being in government ’ “They’re “putting it on” is a particularly invidious perspective to take on the vulnerability and distress of others.” and   On the moral outrage of t...
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The Pennants

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       Archived 2016         The General Store [side view, the centenary mural]  This tweetyarn is an installment in my online series ...   'An Outsider: Yarns from the fringe'  ... 28 June - 5 July 2014,  updated daily. 'The Pennants' All rights reserved. In 81, my hometown won Australia's Most Boring Town. Most fun to be had was reading the bowser to see if the numbers had changed over night. — Siv Parker (@SivParker) July 1, 2014 Several locals disputed this and said it was more fun to lay flat on your back outside the General Store and count the nails in the ceiling. — Siv Parker (@SivParker) July 1, 2014 A question was asked in Canberra, 'does the Minister intend to use his influence to improve road access, so that tourism may be encouraged?' — Siv Parker (@SivParker) July 1, 2014 On hearing this, a local remarked, they'd have to first relocate the three sheep that spent most days...
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Boots

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Archived 2014 I’ll admit to a fleeting desire to change places with Sharon once, but otherwise I've always thought her welcome to her ugly life. I lived in the ugliest town in the Pilbara, and if my bulimic best friend forever hadn’t knocked herself out when she stumbled weakly in her laundry, I wouldn’t have watched Sharon try to force her ugly foot into my boot. Hand tooled leather, they had gaped at the calf and rendered me knock kneed with a Cuban heel. I was never more proud of my tiny feet while I watched Sharon grunt in despair. I’d had some concern because the boots were a little too big for me, but on her, there was no way she was getting her long kangaroo foot around the ankle bend. Sharon had invited herself around, then informed me we were going to the fair. They’d set up in a vacant lot close by, and I could see the ferris wheel rotating above the ridge of company houses at the end of my street. I didn’t want to go, not at the time she bashed on my...
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Writer's Note August 2026

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  Image: A spray of blooms in a white vase in a dim lit room. How do you meet people? Reluctantly.  I’ve met thousands upon thousands; at times it felt like more than my fair share.  Observe and fix was a role.  Now I observe and wonder aloud.  This week, patches within the mist revealed I’d completed a full cycle mapping the night sky; Rigil Kentaurus and Toliman appeared front and centre to my writing desk.  Medium density at night, dogs off their leash to fuck in the street. Snarling and snapping at each other, no-one's picking up their shit.  So I looked up, and nothing compares. Image: chart of blog hits over the past 30 days, seven thousand, seven hundred and ten approximately. Thank you for your interest gentle reader.  Siv Parker House of Abundant Peace 2026
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Review: Midnight Sun

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Review Midnight Sun 8-part series, currently screening on SBS On Demand Directed by Marlind & Stein, the team behind Scandi-noir success The Bridge, Midnight Sun follows the investigation of the brutal murder of a French citizen in Kiruna, a small Swedish town in the Arctic Circle where the sun never sets. What ensues is the discovery of a ten-year-old secret conspiracy that no one could ever imagine. As social media increasingly doesn't provide the entertainment it once did, I've returned to an old companion for amusement. I have started watching television again. I recently settled in to binge watch a new Scandinavian drama. It had all the elements I expect from a Swedish-Danish-Norwegian-Icelandic police procedural investigating a murder. Slightly mismatched pair of detectives – check. Lots of exterior shots – check. The Artic Circle is very picturesque in their warmer months. And then it became very interesting – riveting in fact. I sent long t...
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