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The following is a slightly modified version of a speech given by Martin Hawes at the launch of ‘Watersmeet Haiku’ at the Hobart Bookshop on November 9th, 2005.
I’d like to begin by sharing two experiences. The first happened many years ago. I was sitting on the shore of a lake in the Southwest, a lowland lake surrounded by rainforest. And I heard a bird. To this day I don’t know what sort of bird it was, but at the time I was convinced it was a young bird calling for its parents. There was something about the urgency and desperation of its call. The voice of that bird was the voice of every sentient being that finds itself alone and apparently abandoned in a strange and uncaring universe.
The second experience happened about a week ago, when I was driving down the Brooker Highway on my way home from another trip in the bush. Hobart’s not bad as cities go...but when you’ve just spent several days in wilderness and are driving down the Brooker Highway, the phrase ‘descent into hell’ does spring to mind! There were trucks and billboards and powerlines and traffic lights. There were liquor stores and machinery yards. The sky was grey.
My mind must have been casting around for some kind of relief, some sign of hope, when I found myself approaching an overpass. A young woman was walking across it – probably she was only a teenager. At the moment I looked up at her, the wind caught her hair and sent it out it a flowing stream.
Several thoughts went through my head. One of them was whether a man of my age ought to be eyeing off young women! I thought of the innumerable images of flowing hair that have been exploited in Sunsilk advertisements and fashion magazines. I marvelled at the fact that human beings are near-naked apes, yet the hair that remains to us can be wondrously decorative. All this and more flashed through my mind. Yet neither the chattering of my mind, nor the 10,000 Sunsilk advertisements, could alter the fact that there on that bridge, in the midst of all the drabness and traffic, something of great beauty had just taken place.
When I was invited to give this talk I began thinking about what I’d say, and these experiences came to mind. It occurred to me that they were what might be called ‘haiku moments’. They were not the sort of experiences you’d normally write home about. They were not ‘enlightenment’ in the ultimate sense of the word – if there is such a thing as enlightenment. They were, nevertheless, awakenings of a sort; they were moments in which the deeper nature of things is revealed, when one is reminded of the beauty and mystery that lie just beneath the surface of the seemingly mundane.
My hunch that they were ‘haiku moments’ was confirmed while I was researching what I would say in this talk. (I don’t know much about haiku, and I didn’t want to sound completely ignorant.) While surfing the internet I came across the following two haiku by the 17th century Japanese poet Basho, who has been described as the ‘Father of haiku’:
Your song caresses
the depth of loneliness,
O high mountain bird
Wrapping dumplings in
bamboo leaves, with one finger
she tidies her hair
How sensuous those dumplings are!
What is it that’s special about haiku? Indeed, what are haiku? It’s been said that no other form of literature has so many rules. I found one website listing over 50 rules, some of them mutually contradictory! No one can say for certain what a haiku is because the form is constantly evolving and none of the rules are unbreakable.
Nevertheless, one thing we can all agree on is that haiku are short! And one of the golden rules of writing is that the shorter a piece is, the harder it is to write. To convey a scene or an idea in a few short sentences demands great skill and maturity. The skill lies not just in the choice of words, but in choosing what to leave unsaid. Behind the best haiku are whole realms of experience, whole lifetimes of patient observation.
Haiku generally deal with everyday things – birds, dumplings, the moon, the wind. Yet they reveal these things to be mysterious and extraordinary. Haiku also tend to be contemplative and reflective – that is, the insights they contain and the experiences they describe are the fruits not of judgment but of quiet observation, not of self-seeking effort but of humble acceptance.
So haiku represent a dissenting voice to the prevailing ethos of our time. We live in a world where material values are all-important, where the emphasis is on sensation and endless acquisition, where appreciation of simple things is not only neglected but despised as a hindrance to economic progress. Ours is a world where dumplings are commodities and images of beautiful hair are used to boost sales. In a quiet and unassuming way, haiku take a stand against this world and suggest a different way of living.
So personally I felt very heartened when I was given a copy of Watersmeet Haiku. It’s a tribute to the Watersmeet Group and to the 11 poets whose works are represented in the book. It’s also a tribute to Pardalote Press, and in particular to Lyn Reeves who founded Pardalote. It’s a beautiful book and it contains many gems – allow me to quote just four of them.
sinks under waves
of dune grass
What an exquisite haiku! In two short lines we are taken out to sea, then brought back to the shore and the dinghy’s final resting place.
after all these years
in the hallway – hakea pod
For me this conjures an image of a hallway in a Federation house, perhaps a bit musty. And here’s this hakea pod that’s been sitting on a table somewhere, cut off from the natural world, probably forgotten – yet all these years the miracle of life has been waiting inside it, waiting to burst out. It reminds us of the resilience of nature and of the way hope can endure against the odds.
a winter’s morning
wind ruffles grey feathers
on the heron’s back
I can’t add a single word to this poem! Like the heron, it stands alone and complete.
the Huon sunset smudged
with bushfire smoke
For me, these few lines encapsulate so much about Tasmania. Here is the glossy tourist image of green fields and apple orchards – and here are the bushfires, probably lit by Forestry Tasmania, that symbolise the bleak reality of what’s happening to our environment. Even the word ‘smudged’ suggests that the pretty picture is being clumsily and irreparably damaged. Of course, that’s only my interpretation; another reader might see the bushfires as part of the natural cycle of things. The haiku’s strength lies in its use of the phrase ‘apple blush’ to evoke both the pretty picture and the darker side of Tasmanian life.
I’d like to tell you one more story. A few years ago I was in Japan, in a place far away from the tourist circuit. I was walking along a road in the mountains when I came upon a small shop. The young man in the shop was delighted to see me – probably he saw very few Westerners – and he was eager to have a conversation. This was difficult, as I knew almost no Japanese and he had very limited English. Nevertheless, he somehow managed to convey to me his great love of modern Western culture. He even sang me the first verse of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ in faultless English.
After a while he made it clear that he wanted me to follow him. We went outside and got into his car. I had no idea where we were going – for all I knew he was going to cut my throat! As a traveller one acquires a certain recklessness! We drove for several kilometres before he pulled up at the base of a small hill. We climbed the slope, and there on the hilltop was the objective of our journey – a shrine to Basho.
I found out later that Basho was something of an outsider and nonconformist: he lived in a hut and spent much of his life on long journeys walking across the Japanese countryside. It must have been difficult to be a nonconformist in 17th century Japan. Yet in his own day Basho was revered as a poet, and over 300 years later there are probably shrines to him all over the country. It’s a sign of the appreciation that people have for the insights he expressed in his haiku. Perhaps, 300 years from now, there will be shrines to the Watersmeet Group.
The introduction to Watersmeet Haiku includes the sentence: ‘Reading and writing haiku develops a keener awareness of the world and of the value of everything in it.’ Our world needs more of that awareness. We could all do with more haiku moments in our lives. We can discover those moments if we can learn to live simply, sit quietly and walk with open eyes and hearts.
Buy this book and give copies to your friends. It reminds us that, as Basho said, ‘Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home’.


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Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) grabbed one award it probably wasn’t aiming for: NFLX stock was officially the single worst performing stock in the S&P 500 Index in the first half of 2022. This came as the company’s subscriber base stopped growing recently, and investors have extrapolated that to mean that the company is heading for terminal decline.
To be fair, we can’t rule out the possibility that Netflix has peaked. However, as I’ll argue, rumors of Netflix’s demise are greatly overblown. The company still has a lot of merit for investors, and at its current share price, the valuation is far more compelling as well.
Netflix Is Already Wildly Successful
From the tone of some of the recent coverage around the company, you’d think Netflix was in a death spiral. Yet it’s one of the healthiest media businesses on the planet.
In fact, over the past 12 months, Netflix brought in $30.4 billion of revenues. Even better, virtually all of that came from subscribers. Subscriber revenue is the king of the new media landscape, as it proves that viewers are willing to pay for your content. For television and film companies, subscriber revenue is much more reliable and durable than that from advertising or licensing sources.
Even if Netflix never manages to grow its subscriber count again, which is highly unlikely, this is already a $30 billion a year business. That is far beyond what is necessary to make Netflix a strong and highly profitable company. People talk about Netflix’s subscriber stall as if it teeters Netflix on the brink of disaster. But $30 billion of annual subscriber revenues is far more than enough to ensure that Netflix can stay in a dominant position in the television industry going forward.
Netflix Has Levers to Pull
Most legacy media companies have the problem of not having sufficient scale on streaming. There’s a host of also-ran streaming services that are struggling to get a meaningful number of subscribers.
Netflix, by contrast, already has the brand and user base taken care of. Yes, it has problems. It needs to do a much better job of licensing quality content over just churning out endless amounts of filler. Areas like password-sharing could be much more tightly controlled. And the company may be able to earn money from advertising, though there is a fine line to balance there in terms of not damaging the core product.
Regardless, the underlying business is healthy. If Netflix gets its costs down to, say, $23 billion per year — which would still give it a gargantuan budget for making new content — it would be earning $7 billion a year in profits and a roughly 25% net income margin. Those are enviable numbers for a media company and would support a much higher share price than where Netflix trades today.
Again, that’s assuming no additional growth from here at all. Simply cutting some excessive spending and realizing some operational efficiencies can turn Netflix into a cash flow machine.
NFLX Stock’s Bottom Line
For two decades now, Netflix has pursued growth above all other aims. And that has worked out quite well. Netflix emerged from a tiny DVD rental firm to one of the leading content producers in America. Additionally, until a year ago, NFLX stock was one of the best-performing growth names out there.
However, in every company’s life, it has to pivot. Netflix is at the point now where it can’t grow at an explosive rate forever anymore. Now it needs to curtail costs and make the most of its existing content and resources. Given Netflix’s past successes, there’s every reason to give the company the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
Sure, things could go wrong for the company even now. But with shares off nearly 70% year-to-date, that risk is fully priced into NFLX stock and then some. The market capitalization of $80 billion is simply unreasonably low for a company with $30 billion a year of high-quality recurring revenues. When growth stocks recover, Netflix will be one of the firms leading the rally.
On the date of publication, Ian Bezek did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.

domain: economics


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WARMACHINE—Khador: Battlegroup Box Set Plastic
Crush All Beneath Your Iron Might! Khador’s powerful warjacks epitomize the national ideals of strength and resilience and are as relentless in battle as the frigid winters of their homeland. Under the icy gaze of Kommander Sorscha, the magical ice axe of the Juggernaut chews through iron plating like kindling while the powerful bombard cannon of the Destroyer obliterates all before their unstoppable might.
This starter box (PIP 33064) contains quick start rules and a complete battlegroup of three plastic models, each model featuring a completely new sculpt for Mark II, and corresponding stat cards for WARMACHINE including a Warcaster Kommander Sorscha, a Destroyer Heavy Warjack, and a Juggernaut Heavy Warjack
Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at email@example.com.

domain: hobby


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Here's the client journey on crowdspring:
1.The client completed an interactive design brief.
- The brief is customized for each project category.
- The client specifies what they want (and don't want).
- Simple and proven process (takes just a few minutes).
2.Our über-talented designers created dozens of unique designs.
In a typical Logo project on crowdspring, many professional designers submit dozens of custom designs based on your brief. See all designs submitted to this project.
- 220,000+ designers from 195 countries.
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Have questions about custom Logo?Get a free, no obligation design consultation
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After collaborating with multiple designers, the client picked their favorite design, reviewed proofs, requested and received tweaks, and approved final files. The client received high resolution final design files and a signed intellectual property agreement giving the client full ownership to the design.
- Collaborate with the winning designer.
- The designer will implement final adjustments.
- The client receives full intellectual property rights.
Tell us what you need
What is the exact name you would like in your logo?
Adult Placement Network
What is your industry?
What are the top 3 things you would like to communicate through your logo?
What logo styles do you like (image + text, image only, text only, etc.)
Please provide ideas.
We've found creatives are good at driving the ideas to us.
We will update the proposal when ideas ARE or AREN'T working.
Do you have any other info or links you want to share?
My industry is Senior Housing Assistance as a Senior Housing Advisor in
independent living, assisted living, residential care facility placement, referral for related services
This can be a time of crisis for families when a loved one is unable to return home after an accident or illness. See website at www.adultplacementnetwork.com
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domain: design


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This tip was provided by:
Calvin Trostle, Extension Agronomy, Lubbock, 806-746-6101, firstname.lastname@example.org
Planting Grain Sorghum: I. Row Spacing Width
The average Texas grain sorghum field has narrower row spacing than 20 and 30 years ago. The impetus to do so incudes better understanding of plant growth response, improved sorghum shading of the soil for reducing evaporation and suppressing small weeds, more conservation tillage, and in some cases the desire to push for higher yields with more uniformly spaced plants. And finally, when sorghum producers (as well as corn, cotton, and other crops) push for higher yields there is a common belief that higher plant populations may enable you to realize that most years. But as any Texas farmer knows, weather varies from year to year, and a crop will not respond the same way each year. Higher plant populations can limit your sorghum’s ability to respond to environment, especially rainfall.
Whether a farmer moves from 40” rows to 30” rows in the High Plains, from 36” or 38” rows to 30” in South Texas, or to 15” or 20” row spacing anywhere in the state, there is tendency to increase seed drop thus resulting in a higher population. I tend to believe this increased seed drop is a neutral to negative effect in most Texas sorghum fields because many farmers are in fact already at the upper end—or beyond—what seed drop they should be using (see below where to get AgriLife suggestions). I recommend that farmers initially do not increase seed drop when they reduce row spacing width. Instead, let the more uniform spacing of plants in the field be your friend and potentially increase your yield. That alone is likely an improvement in agronomic practices.
I will cover in-row spacing in a future Sorghum Tip.
What if I am drilling my grain sorghum?
Some Texas sorghum farmers, at least in the High Plains, may even drill their grain sorghum. Compared to 30” rows or even 40” rows, should they increase their grain sorghum seeding rate? I usually say ‘no.’ First, it is hard to set drills to plant a targeted seed drop. They are designed to plant seed in volume, like wheat. You may not be able to get a sorghum seeding rate low enough without taping off 1 in 3 drill rows, or even 1 in 2 drill rows. Again, let the spacing of your seed and the subsequent plant be your friend. I will concede, though, a 10% increase in seeding rate if drilling due to the inferior ability of a drill to place seed like a planter does. If the ground is rough and thus seedbed planting conditions are less than desirable, I might increase seeding rate 20%, but know that if you get the rain you hoped for, all the seed could germinate, and you are immediately overpopulated.
What grain sorghum seeding rates should I be using?
In some areas of the state we truly don’t have good data, or it may be 30 or more years old. We don’t discount the data from the distant past, but as hybrids have changed some, tillering ability may be different, etc. it would be good if AgriLife could bring you recent multi-year and multi-site data for each region of the state. For our current general suggestions see the United Sorghum Checkoff Program pocket grain sorghum production guides at http://www.sorghumcheckoff.com/farmer-resources/grain-production/ There are three editions that cover Texas (South & Central Texas; South Plains/Concho Valley/Rolling Plains (the West Texas edition), and a third edition that covers the Texas Panhandle. The former two guides were prepared by Texas A&M AgriLife staff, the Panhandle edition was a joint effort between Texas A&M and Kansas State.

domain: agronomy


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Hedgeworth Factors Limited (HFL) is a financial services company incorporated as a private limited liability company in Nigeria. The Company offers broad spectrum of financial services and its products are designed to meet the needs of different strata of clientele including small, medium and high threshold businesses through services such as invoice discounting, factoring, supply chain financing and asset based lending. HFL is an equal opportunity employer and seeks to deliver highest possible standard of services by hiring experienced and professional staff to fill the below position:
Job Title: Marketing Manager
Job Role: Sales
Sales Management /Research
Required Qualification, Experience and skills Education:
Application Closing Date
Monday 16th November. 2015.
Method of Application
Qualified candidates should send suitability statements (not more than 300 words) and CV‘s as one attachment to; firstname.lastname@example.org stating the position title as the subject of the emails.

domain: finance


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St Paul's parish nurse Kathy Kolcaba, of the Federated Church, pictured here with medical students Kristen and Tim, Ohio City Power volunteers.
Ops. Mgr. Albert Wagner shows O.C.P. medical school volunteers around St. Herman's.
OCP volunteers and medical students Kristen and Tim, pictured here outside St. Paul's church.
The Ohio City Power Blog publishes our community news, updates and stories.
Ohio City Power helps the homeless, drug addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill, children of incarcerated parents and Veterans who went on to become Police Officers.

domain: medical


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Rundholz Black Label Ankle Vert Boots 3985204
Stunning Rundholz black label ankle boots in Vert. Distressed suede they are easy to put on with a side zip, they have a seam detail to the side with asymmetric stepping. There is slight black distressed effect on the front and on the back of the ankle. Would work well with skirts, dresses and trousers.


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Butterfly Footed Cake Stand by Tipperary Crystal | Footed Cake Stand
- We are delighted to present The New Cafe Range from Tipperary Crystal, the Butterfly Collection!.
- These high quality designs come wonderfully presented in vibrant and stylish rigid gift boxes… keepsakes in themselves!
- They make the perfect gifts for any occasion or a treat for yourself!!

domain: artistic