Climate Change Harinam

We need a "no mercy" harinam program. ;-)

Added a switch to the battery pack for the Shure wireless headset mic receiver, just in time for tonight's Harinam. 7pm outside Govindas, downtown Brisbane, Australia, every Friday.

Dedicated to Professor Richard Dawkins.

On the left, the Warrapa dam during the drought. On the right, the dam at 9am on Wednesday.

Brisbane has received half its annual rainfall in the first two months of 2010.

Dams are at 80% of capacity now, the highest since 2002. Water restrictions introduced in 2005, and ramped up over the next three years to "extreme", have now been relaxed to allow residents to use water for activities such as watering their gardens.

More information.

I love Keka's Australia Day rants - and this guy has the right idea.

Straight from the (down-)under ground!

We are going to have three special Harinams to help publicise the upcoming Krishna's Birthday Festival. These harinams will be on:

• Wednesday 19th August 5 pm
• Friday 21st August 5 pm
• Saturday 22nd August 12 pm

The meeting point is Govindas in the city.

Please come out to help us spread the chanting of the Holy Names!

Every Town and Village is our ongoing attempt to fulfil the instruction of Caitanya Mahaprabhu to chant the Holy Name in every town and village. Our definition of a "town or village" is a suburb with a distinct postcode. Since 2007 we have chanted in more than 50 of Brisbane's 150 postcodes. You can read more reports here

This week we went to Rocklea. I had no voice, but I was able to concentrate a little more on playing the accordion, especially with some of the novel tunes that Mangal Vaisnava busted out. I moved my mouth during the kirtan to make it look like I was chanting to onlookers, but no sound.

Rocklea is mainly an industrial area, but there are some residential streets being slowly constricted by the encroaching industrial / heavy commercial zone. The houses there are unmaintained, and the people a funny mix of those who were overjoyed to see us, and came out to dance, including a lady who looked like an ex-hippie; and some real dark hill billy characters who looked like they would run us out of Dodge, or worse, if they had their druthers.

Pretty much after this I collapsed from exhaustion. You can see me fading out at the end. What little voice I had left disappeared after that. I had to call someone for work in the evening and it was a torturous experience for both of us.