Guccione has left the Penthouse.

Pent-up? Bound -up? Wound-up? Guccione Gave Gifts.

As an inter-terrestial Alien currently stuck in the body of a stripper at Babes in Boyland Bar, Atlantic City, NJ…I know a bit about bodies, lusty visionary exposure and being a Voyeur. My 3 favorite written works of All Human Time does in fact, include Penthouse Letters, so I do honor the passing of Bob Guccione.

One upon a Time, in a Sea Girt, New Jersey library in 1984, I pushed my all-time favorite book, Ram Das’s “Be Here Now,” onto my human host, Chelsea Nicole’s head to impart some knowledge and Liberation into her. Not so sure that worked for her, in the way Penthouse Letters did. Thus, like her, millions will concur with my alternative heavenly tossed manifesto for instant enlightenment, that the handy Penthouse Letters series nicely fits the three “Be Here Now” categories of important books: “Books to hang out with”, “Books to visit with now & then”, and “Books it’s useful to have met”.

Guru Guccione famously said of his magazine Penthouse“We followed the philosophy of voyeurism. To see her as if she doesn’t know she’s being seen. That was the sexy part. That was the part that none of our competition understood.”

For Guccione, Liberation from Pent-Up came via Rear Window style voyeurism and conquest via a camera which suited his reportedly bi-polar and artistic soul. For Ram Das, Liberation from Pent-Up came from States of Witnessing and conquest via simultaneously being the Seen and the Seer. A Professor at Harvard, whose trips with “turn on, tune in, drop out” Timothy Leary and trips to India for audience with Baba Neem Karoli, the Guru who in his God state witnessed all and stunned thousands with LSD having no affect at all upon his ever-smiling face…both of these boys too, transformed the very idea of watching, witnessing and awareness into Liberation for millions. Same thing, n’est-ce pas?

Voyeurism conveys privilege, status, that what you see that makes you special, unseen, God-like…and may I say it’s why you like us Aliens too! It’s why you Humans love Facebook and Google maps. To see and be seen all the while watching “the control” and “the loss of it”..This is the fabric of your lives! To Lose it is to allow imagination, creativity and trust. Just the right twists and measures of the desire and control knobs to change the picture before you. (and Handy to have pics always…whether that golden field of flowers be porn or mandalas)

While Guccione trumped the Playboy and Penthouse ideal by living like Caligula in one of Manhattan’s largest playpen of a house, with 30 rooms, costing $5 million a year to maintain, Baba Neem Karoli sat wrapped in a plaid, wool blanket in the heat of India and opened the eyes of millions.

To be bound up by material things or just bound by momentary pursuits of pleasure… in the end a Guru like Baba gave away sweet fruits like water…and so did Guru Bob Guccione after all.

YOU! Baba Neem Karoli! ….YOU! Penthouse Letters!…YOU! Bob Guccione! will forever make an Alien stuck in the body of a stripper named Chelsea Nicole…smile a “freedom-is-in-your-own-eyes-hands and heart”…smile.


Just back this morning…talk about wide, saucer-eyed Aliens!

By 3 am, Chelsea Nicole swung her last round the pole, and from there I was next stuck with her in the middle of her body, quivering under the bright lights of the 24-hour CVS as she vacillated between Maybelline Great Lash and Revlon Luxurious Lengths. My four pounding Alien hearts just wanted to get outa there and on her leopard and Def Leopard decal decored Dell and bang out this post, cos I just heard through the telepathic waves that one of my favorite street artists, J R, won the TED prize for 2011.

How is it that the Human “Aliens” aka the “elderly, displaced, poor and inconsequential, untouchables and powerless” are often stuck in middle of cities or far-flung where other humans can’t see them or else scrambling to get in and over borders, fences, walls, check points…?  Inner cities, ghettoes, grottoes, shtetls, sheds. Outer edges, outer highways, the other side of the tracks, the low-lying floodplains, and in the middle of the disaster. Always right near the nuclear, food, waste, offal and processing-we-don’t-want-know-what places?

J R’s eyes on slum buildings in Kenya to inner-city Paris quays allow Oversight in a better way, in a “We’re Watching You” crop circle way.

Though a bit less than a football player’s annual salary, TED’s $100,000 award has gone in the past to the likes of Bill Clinton, Bono and Jamie Oliver, and actually is seed money towards the winner’s charity or cause of choice. The still anonymous street gleamer is in Shanghai and told the New York Times how he was able to parkour scale buildings and towers to paste and post his photograffeur envisionings giving sight to the “unsightly.”

“It’s crazy. This city is so huge and overgrown, the more you’re in the middle of things, the more you feel transparent.”

The Alien smiled at that. His anonymous eyes give sight to what’s been blinded and unseen.  Another smile for the slowly waking-up Humans.  It’s been a Long Night. Batting lashes against the Bright Truth. Good Morning Earth!

YOU! J R.!…YOU! T E D! …YOU! A R T!…YOU! …Hidden Souls and Artists! …YOU! Wheatpasters Everywhere !…will forever make an Alien stuck in the body of a stripper named Chelsea Nicole…smile a “pasted-on-long-lash-blinking-We’re-Heeeeere-and Phoning-Home”…smile.


Do it like this, do it like that. Look Atcha.

Yesterday, while my earthly body host, Chelsea Nicole, was doing her pole-dance in a burka (her new invention, inspired by M.I.A.’s new song lyrics… “Springsteen and Mujahideen,”) I took a Tastycake break and recalled a scene in Felini’s “Satyricon” where two gay boys encounter a hiding beautiful dark girl in an abandoned house who speaks gibberish purposely Un-Synced by Fellini. It was 1969 and 2 pale gay boys and a black girl freely romp.

Fast-forward to 2010. In the past 2 days an imaginary illustration on a Kanye album cover causes a Walmart ban and M.I.A. in a burka followed by spangles at an Award Show makes waves. An Alien just has to scratch her metalhead…and smile once again a Big Digital, Magical Smile at the Un-Funny Antics of Humans in their Lil Burka-clad Planet. (“And I want to show you how you all look like beautiful stars tonight”)

The Un-Dressed. Oh Lucifer! Another free-flowing woman is a threat to The State and to The Man. Why we do this, why we do that? asks M.I.A., in a flowery caftan followed by a spangled birthday suit at the 2010 Spike Scream Awards, honoring the best performers in the sci-fi and horror genres. The Phoenix on Kanye’s new album cover refers to the main character in his film debut, “Runaway” in which he dates a creature that has fallen to Earth, who eventually burns herself like every other “fallen” woman throughout Mythology, “His” Story and Mystery. “Let’s look at ourselves,” both artists flash Love Beams to the rest of y’all.

The Un-Sync. M.I.A. is buying up links and her newest single is here,    bedroomtothehallwaytotheroadtotheworld.com.  Like a transmission from outer space, a low-production base line unsyncs the brainwaves for a minute just like Fellini purposely unsynced the dub between his three lovers in his “Satyricon.” Images vs. photos and the simple-simple threaten the beat of the current fare of over-processed reality and Super-Real. The Alien is partial to a beat that transforms her heartbeat in a flash and depends on MIA for that.

The Un-Man: Kanye is once again, Un-leashing the Digital and Giga-Vital. In the middle of an iris radiation, in a fire red suit, surrounded by ballet dancers, he offends the offenders, and tweaks all our pissiness with his lyrics admitting being “so gifted at finding what I don’t like the most.”  Look Atcha. The Alien also loves this send up here of a digital ancient tribe ritual, Blame Game.

The Un-Literal Mystical Lady. Fellini: “Woman is a marvel; woman is a universe. This may be a tantric conception: Woman is the alien part of man, but she is higher than he, because women are born adults, ancient. You’re born knowing everything. As mothers, you’re superior. For survival, an archetypal rebellion exists in women’s memory, because man has invented for himself an intellectual supremacy, a violence he uses to dominate her. But the struggle is unequal.”

The Alien Salutes YOU!…M.I.A.!…YOU! Kanye! …YOU! Hidden Ladies!…YOU! Fellini! YOU! Imaginative Pole-dancers! will forever make an Alien stuck in the body of a stripper named Chelsea Nicole…smile a “sometimes-the-worst-in-all-of-us-reveals-our-beauty-ok?”…smile.


The Angels vs. The “Angles”

The Alien, being a traveler to many worlds beyond this pretty green orb, always has an angle on Angels, even from her own temporary earthly body perch here in the body of a pole-dancer on the Atlantic City boardwalk. Queen Angelina Jolie, one of the Alien’s favorite Open Hearted Humans, got a little bullied by the Bosnians, the other day, just to make sure her fictional directorial debut, a movie exploring rape and romance between victim and captor of different ethnic backgrounds, aka “a Plot Twist,” doesn’t offend anyone.

Ho Hum…sounds like another mythical or Shakepearean plot twist, which just might invite intelligent and sensitive discussion, is declared “should be silenced before its even spoken.”

The Alien thinks Twists in the plot of Life are what makes the word “choice” possible and not just a word to get behind to declare divisiveness or some “God-given” right to choose for other people against their will. (sounds a little like rape to me no matter what “side” it comes from.)

“There are many twists in the plot that address the sensitive nature of the relationship between the main characters, and that will be revealed once the film is released. My hope is that people will hold judgment until they have seen the film,” says The Angel.

Meanwhile…on this more “free” side of the Atlantic, Maureen Dowd calls out the gang of political Mean Girls with some sharp angles, popping up in the Tea Party USA as “…teenage tormentors who would steal your boyfriend, spray-paint your locker and, just for good measure, spread rumors that you were pregnant.” And they seem so “Christian”…the message being, “my Male-God Savior declares, “Come to me, I’ll fix it” but also…(whispered behind close doors, you should “Figure it out, cos it’s Your Fault.”)

Tea Party “Mean Girl,” Sharron Angle suggests if a girl is raped, even by her own father, for an alternative choice she recommends letting God fix everything, as in her quote: “He can intercede in many situations.” It’s big God and just a little easy attitude adjustment, she recommends, “Rape victims should use their pregnancies as a way to turn lemons into lemonade”.

The Alien is hoping all this opens up convos beyond bullying, which can lead to “a little death” or “just a little rape lemon” which can lead to “little” life choices of the sort I doubt anyone would want to have make by someone else.

YOU!…Angelina Jolie!…YOU! Strong Teenage and Rape Victims Everywhere! …YOU! Creative Choice!… will forever make an Alien stuck in the body of a stripper named Chelsea Nicole…smile a “its-just-movie-on-a-sensitive-topic-people-let’s-discuss-ok?”…smile.


Earth to its Lovers…Calling You!  The Alien took a temporary spin away from the good ole USA and her earthly residence in Atlantic City (and in her earthly host, Chelsea Nicole‘s body and its daily grindhouse of sno-cone selling, drag racing, skee-shooting and strip bar pole-dancing) to see what was new in the land of real Italian Spumanti, real Sopranos of Operatic vs. New Jersey mafiaso glory and various other Reality Situations. Italy.

Upon re-entry we found Margaret Bowland‘s paintings…a drunken toast to American excess and its fragile beauty.

As a visitor to your beautiful Earth, your America of Promise, complete with black oil filling your Gulf today, New Orleans and Haiti as Softly Crying open wounds and the White Male Power Elite continuing to shift…surely the power of these paintings elicit a calling for “The Meek” to Inherit The Earth. The Alien beckons to your own innocence and beauty to Imagine and create The Shift.

Did I today actually watch a tiny black girl child uncontrollably skipping and dancing down the street while holding the hand of her mother or friend before or after I was inspired to write this post? Of course I did! What is Linear Time? That’s It! That’s My Smile!

My Daily Love Smile. That timelessness, that enthusiasm, that human spirit dance is most Precious and full of the Promise, as the “PickaNinny” Protagonist loved by another fave artist of the Alien, Kara Walker, who brilliantly shines a light so bright it fades her figures all to black.

PickaNinny…Little, Crow…Black.  The Alien feels This Child.  (When, as The Alien,  I am not in the body of snow white skinned Chelsea Nicole I also inhabit the body of a type of Pickaninny too, a tiny, white Jewish girl with fuzzy mulatto hair: half wirey afro, half baby-fine black-colored hair. I am a Time and Body Traveler…you know….wouldn’t you too, choose more than one body in which to have fun?)

Funny how the name Crow stood for a law separating black and white. Jim Crow Laws. To The Original People of Your Land, America, the Crow symbolizes The Void and The In-Between. Your fragile human egos and laws arbitrarily separate your irrational fears to support your Un-Truths.  The real law is beyond You and The Void, the In-Between comes as Crow, an Omen of Change on this USA land and around the globe. When the Shaman and Shape Shifter Comes Cawing, the call is To Eat Crow and to Eat Your Words and Get Right.

“Jump Jim Crow” was originally a minstral “comic” song about a crippled African slave, part of the minstral tradition of “Black Face.”

Margaret Bowland, painting canvases as a Shamaness for the viewer’s Transcend Dance, says she is in pursuit of the realities of Beauty.  She also says her paintings explore “the need we have… to whiten,” in an article in the Huffington Post.  Whiten skin, Teeth, the Truth, the Lies, the Dark.

Myth, Horror, Art, Trajedy, Ritual, Comedy. If we intertwine them, the Truth will blur, confusion will reign and humans will believe anything.

Consider the Comic Root of White Face. It may have began with dried clay, the wet Earth dried upon our Face.  In True Earth Culture and the American Indian Heyoka sacred clown and shaman tradition, “masks are made of clay while the creator’s eyes are closed. A mask is made for each direction of the medicine wheel to creates a personal mythology which explores his or her personal Experiences and Innocenses.” (spelling kept for adorableness)

In fact, it was Italy’s Commedia dell’arte who picked up the tradition, where the white-faced clown is in pursuit of Columbine “a lovely woman…in both French and Italian theater, often portrayed as a servant, serving girl, or lady’s maid under the patronage of Pantaloon (Pantalone), though she is at times depicted instead as his daughter.”

“As the painter, the observer of these young women, I am a predator, but it is the desire humans have had since the beginning of time—to hunt and consume their prey and dissolve within their spirits…scarily close to what we mean when we say we love,” says Margaret the painter.

The quietest of Earthlings used to be The Little Dark Girl, the most mysterious the most abused, the most forgotten and the most pursued. Dreams spring from The Dark Unknown. Thankfully the Earth’s Dark Black, loamy, rich and fertile Persona will not leave us be. As the UnLoved and Unconsidered, Her pain and our pain is full of dirt and Promise. It’s only from pain that humans Bar Love and Find Love. May you Kids raise your Bars, Barriers, Eat Crow and Come to Love and Come To Each other.

If I could start a Religion or make Up Some Rules, (as I must since I happen to be a Sister from another Planet opon your God-like Turf)… little-girl Black and Today just gave me 3 more credos:

  • Skip or Dance down the street
  • Speak and Act Only as Love, Practice what you Preach
  • Smile, just because we are free
  • Kiss The Earth and The Sky

YOU!…Little Adorable Black Child!…Margaret Bowman! …YOU! …Crow YOU!…Heyokas! YOU!…Kara Walker YOU! …YOU!…and YOU!… will forever make an Alien stuck in the body of a stripper named Chelsea Nicole…find-a-smile-a-smile-and more-smile-cuts-the-hate-faster-than-more-hate….smile.


Tip it To High

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Aliens come and go and whoa!… we’ve seen plenty from ET to Bowie to Barbie to Nicole Ritchie. So this Alien was un-plugged and un-blogging for a bit, playing an Anubis Dog, (ushering my Alzheimer-infused and brilliantly psychotic Dad on his way to being an Celestial Alien from his nursing home to his universal resting place, God Love His Human Soul)

But music UP! Spring’s eternal peeper frogs of renewal and the stripper pole called, my earthly body’s host, the honorable Chelsea Nicole, is back off the dole, proffering her red, white and blue rocket sno-cones once again on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.

…and the Alien’s Daily Love Smiles Today upon Pop-star, Tightrope Walker Supreme: Janelle Monae. Her video release could be the exact vision and sound of my experience: the stark hospitals, the nurses and insanity while inside the lush beating of my heavenly-ushering tap-dancing and singing heart to the Song of Love between My Pops and Me. “Whether I am high or low, tip, tip on the tightrope.” Eternally black and white, the gap and the balance is the tip, tip tip of the conversation with our Soul.

From her new release, Archandroid, with Big Boi, James Bond-ish, Tom Jones-ish horns and all the energy of an old Swing movie in a hot Harlem club. Drenched!

Erykah Badu, ?uestlove and N.E.R.D. and Bilal are touring with her over the next months, take a look at Janelle’s site for dates. Of course, we are loving as always The Badu, especially because her designer, Epperson is our pal. Here are more weavings from the journey, making this Alien come back from celestial wanderings to stomp and throw down flowers and lotsa squiggly, organic and leafy growing things.

Thank Heavens for the Original, Nature Spirits…My Palace of Dogs protecting me. Of course The Alien found Babalu Aye, or Babalu Aye found The Alien. Known as the deity associated with insanity, aging, illness, disease and death, he is also the deity that cures same. From the same Palace of Gods that Janelle riffs on, the Egyptian God Anubis, whose duty it is to examine the tongue of the Great Balance, on The Day of Judgement, to take care that the beam is exactly horizontal…thank you.

The Tropics. Miami! The only place a Northeastern US-raised Jewish Dad would choose to make his exit, so that tears from inside a hospital get dried outside by the hot Miami sun instantly every time. He was always flying, from a kid with his model cars and planes to being a WW2 Ace Pilot to his Pisces dreaming Soul. He was always laughing, keeping the people around him light and happy. No small feat. Festive, Hot-Beat-Plays-On Babalus like Lucy’s Ricky Ricardo…very necessary.

And thank the earthy necessaries, like art and music, for all through the process, Isaac Mendes Belisario, the Jewish, Jamaican illustrator’s sketches were filling my life, calming the Alien emotions and inspiring The Alien with their Peaceable Kingdom dressed in raucous color and costume vibe. Pretty Earth through Pain. Through Slavery. Through Hunger. Through Doubt. Through Tapped Out. Through.

YOU!…Janelle! YOU! …Nurses of This World! YOU! …Babalu! YOU! …Big Boi! YOU!…Isaac Mendes Belisario! YOU! …My Pop! YOU! …will forever make an Alien stuck in the body of a stripper named Chelsea Nicole… smile-a-sniffles-OK-done-OK-Rebirth-OK-let’s-keep-dancing-OK-Love-Never-Ever-Leaves-Us-smile.


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“Why I can be a frog, a bat, a chimp or a human.”

It’s raining the first pelting, freezing rain of the winter here in Atlantic City and while Chelsea is out pole and lap dancing, I’m cozy up in the rancher, with Grandma Ann’s crocheted Americana folly (blanket).  I passed on Chelsea’s figure-flattering slanket just on the color alone, not too mention the drafty open back.  (Truly a portent of the end of the Earth.)

Tonight my Alien Daily Smile comes from love-festing with frogs, Flaming Lips, the bones of Ardi and Alexander McQueen!  Alien Wise Guys have always insisted upon no missing links except for the human capacity for love and imagination. The Alien loves Fred Tomaselli, The Artist, for this…that’s his psychotropic floralsoma sumthin sumthin littered canvas above. And bravo Alexander McQueen LIVE for metamorphasizing 60% water humans into the 221st century.

Rain and Frogs are shamans and shaman tools changing forms and moods from spermish tadpoles to funny, burping, squatting land rovers.  Spread your little web fingers! Re-incarnation can be fun!  Change is good for the spirits!

SHAMAN KING

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YOU!…Frogs! YOU! …Flaming Lips! YOU! …Ardi! YOU! …Alexander McQueen! YOU! will forever make an alien stuck in the body of a stripper named Chelsea Nicole… smile-a-wet-nostalgic-and-warm-for-form-hopping-frog-crooked smile.

BTW…Take a tip to turn your shower into a 9 minute spa treatment from my spell book here at the showerflowerpower blog.

ALSO FROM ITI’S RITUAL.ITI SPELL BOOK:

The frog’s song calls down the cleansing power of the rain. Frogs are often seen as a symbol of fertility and creativity.

Frogs remind us to cleanse our bodies, our environments and our energy because they will die if away from moisture for too long. They represent the emotional power of tears to transform, cleanse away sorrow and refresh and renew on many levels.

If you feel “muddied” by the world, connecting to a moment to dream, to laugh and re-connect with your body and the earth is healing.

Frogs change form and environments, from tadpole to adult frog, so they represent going with the flow.

From water (emotional) to air (mental) to earth (the body) taking a frog pose integrates our energy.

 



Wild Things are Coming! Keep them Close!

My Daily Alien Smile today actually began last night when Chelsea Nicole gunned her red Mustang “Thrill Machine” away from the CVS drugstore, highly PMS pissed. They were all out of Nair, the hair remover, which meant fuzzy legs and a mustache, which in turn causes her extreme emotional pain which in turn requires extreme repeated doses of the Budweiser medication.  I had nowhere safe to go but My Imagination.

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The Alien Likes To Keep Furry Things Close. Why do you think she regularly trades her glowing silicone sleek wet suit for the *frankly* fleshy fats of her human host, Chelsea Nicole? The warmth, the hot lights, the scent of a woman…I do love every pore and folicle (and thank God for astral traveling when it all permeates TOO MUCH.)

But, can you humans really get wild? Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are movie is coming! Please do honor your hairy ancestry, beasts, the beasts in You and the little beings you were and are always, because becoming an adult invaribly musses everything up for all y’all.  (Despite your Human parades and charades for Help! for The Lost to be Found! via “Adults and Their Family Religions,” “Rules I Learned in Kindergarten” and “WWJD”).

The Alien’s Love Smile came today with artist, A. J. Fosik’s exhibit, “There’s Aliens In Our Midst …that’s the hot colored animal human head above.  It made me think of the totem poles in Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man movie and the necessity of wild rituals in dream like settings. A childhood silverware set came next, from 1960’s Germany with a sweet totem portrait of my Alien family. (the drawing is below) Then followed my most recent artist to wish I could crawl in his skin, a real man who spend weeks in the forest, builds his own islands or becomes a snowman with a carrot nose in galleries … Antti Laitinen.

Scary Fun + Furry Friends + Tiny Alien Pals = Harmless Humans!

While you remake your planet and plant trees, feed the hungry, calm the racists and teach the children…don’t forget to give your hungry animal ghosts a powerful and peaceful place to go in their Wild Imaginings so they don’t unleash their Ugly Humans when they join the masses at the watering holes.

YOU!…Spike Jonze, YOU! …Antti Laitinen! YOU! …Johnny Depp! YOU! …Jim Jarmusch! YOU! …Maurice Sendak! YOU!… HOT WILD HUMAN MEN! will forever make an alien stuck in the body of a stripper named Chelsea Nicole… smile-a-knowing-animal-toothful-grin-while-purring-to-Madonna’s-Vogue’ing-Alien-smile/dance through the woods smile. (with nary a human hair on her…)

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Who speaks for Forests and Seedlings planted one by one, step by step?  Who stood up to her political husband’s accusations of adultery and cruelty? Who stands up to her own country that tells her to be quiet and respect men and calls her crazy?  Who stands up to world leaders imploring them to agree that climate change is “human-induced” and more than 4000 scientists cannot be mistaken?

Kenyan, Wangari Maathai went from listening to her communities’ puzzlement over why there was no wood for fires nor water to drink to becoming a Nobel Prize Winner and an invited Speaker at the United Nations.  As a top international university student, it was a simple solution for her community…grow trees.  The rest of her journey has been less than simple indeed but her movement, the Green Belt Movement has planted 35 million trees and continues to create sustainable jobs.  

Her response to men in her country telling her to be a woman and be quiet?  “Just use the anatomy that matters right now, from the neck up.”

 cnn.com interview  

Pleased with the positions of China and Japan at the recent UN meeting in New York, she implores Obama to follow suit leading up to the UN Climate Change Conference in December 2009.  

…and see this video of Wangari on Democracy Now!

 

“When you believe in something, keep at it, do it…YOU MAY BE RIGHT,” Wangari tells students and hmmm, the Alien is listening and is on the forefront of the Wangari War for Trees!

YOU!…Wangari Maathai!  You will forever make an alien stuck in the body of a stripper named Chelsea Nicole… smile-at-every-small-seedling’s-will-power-which-grows-and-grows-until-it-re-forests-the-world.

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Top photo by Belinda Luscombe.