Grow your own

Save on high food costs by planting your own. 

As all drivers know, expensive diesel means expensive everything else, especially food. Which is why now is the time to have the family start a food garden back home.

Got no space for a big vegetable garden back home? Check out how the Garden of Life project recycles old tyres, plastic bags and 2-litre bottles to create micro gardens that feed entire families in Boitekong in the North West, Kanyamazane in Mpumalanga, Mamelodi in Gauteng and Strandfontein in the Western Cape.

Volvo's truck builders mark 20 years in Mzansi

To build up to 14 trucks a day at Volvo assembly plant in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, the line has to move every 35 minutes -- except when it's birthday time. 

Volvo Trucks South Africa on 19 August briefly stopped the assembly line to celebrate 20 years of building what most drivers rate as the strongest trucks at the assembly plant in Umbogintwini in KwaZulu-Natal. 

Plant director Vuyo Sabata and over 160 men and women who build up to 14 trucks a day at the plant, were on hand to welcome Stuart Potter, MD of Volvo Trucks South Africa from Johannesburg; Per-Erik Lindström, Senior Vice President of Volvo Trucks International from Sweden; and councillor Cyril Xaba, mayor of eThikwini, among several VIPs who attended the event.

Smart birds hint at very clever dinosaur ancestors

Current (and lowest common) thinking is that dinosaurs were dumb, despite living and evolving for 165-180 million years in the not exactly user-friendly environs that was the Mesozoic era. 

This thinking neglects to add that long, looong after those after-effects of a big meteor had wiped out the big 'uns, their tiny, obviously very intelligent, problem-solving, song-making, sentient-proven avian survivors added another ~60 millions years, which they continue to do to this day. 

Writers that worded my thinking

Bookshelves are where the best memories are held until a suitable mind comes along to share it with.

The six writers below made me see my tiny role in the bigger picture, while the many more listed below my "Big Six" helped to word my thinking. Which is huge, for our thoughts become our words become our deeds become our lives.

Robert Ardrey, the OG fight club guy who scripted hits on Broadway and in Hollywood before returning to his actual training as philosopher to report direct from the conflict zone that was (and still is) archeology in Africa. 

How airports became the new Limbo

Gemini created this image that captures so much of the joys of the aisle seat.

The post below was a comment to the excellent Please Return To Your Seat essay on Substack by Scot Monaco. IT IS A FUNNY, so hold off with the brandished crucifixes and angry martyrs OK? Because why I have long overpaid my dues as former lay youth pastor and have doubly earned the right to douse in a heavy sense of humour any belief system.

That airports and flying have become a hell-lite experience, is mostly the fault of faithfull Catholics and Islamists (and a few Judaists). Stay with me now -- for quantum physics and faith systems are about to mix and birth a postulate in public.

Die Koolkop Prinses en mense se harte

Sien jy die lig aan die einde van die goue pad deur die vreemde woud? 
Kopiereg

Eendag, lank lank gelede, was daar 'n koolkop wat 'n storie gehoor het. Sy was 'n prinses koolkop, soos mens kon sien met die pers sap in haar phloeme. Die storie wat sy gehoor het, was oor die olifante wat in erdwurms wegkruip.

Wat gebeur het, sien, was lat die Skepper per ongeluk van tevredegeit gesug het, net presies toe die Skepper die laaste fraiings grys klei tussen die hanne so van mekaar af gevryf het. Die Skepper was vol van tevredegeit want behalwe vir die laaste grys fraiings in die Skepper se palms se plooie, is al die grys klei in 'n lielike, groot, grys diere omskep. 

Footsteps In The Museum

I've met all the people named below, though not in the Natural History Museum of Pietermaritzburg with those giant beetles, ants, praying mantes and that truly disturbing spider on the roof. One of them (the people, not the goggas) told me about the ghostly footsteps in an old building late at night. The rest is not his story -- but a ghost story of mine.

Pay attention to the timeline, the plot thickens around the fatefull day of 2 February 2022.

28Feb2023	2Feb2022	29Feb2023	2Feb2022
29Feb2023	5Sept2023	8Nov2023	9Nov2023

They all know me at the museum. 

“They” being the card-carrying members of the Night Shifters – the security staff; the cleaners; the odd student reading actual books in the musty back rooms to research a thesis. 

People who work nights at the museum are my type of people. We are a tribe of reclusive weirdos who do not judge each other. Not like the people you meet outside. That is why I only go outside when I am low on coffee beans.