Jeff Deck's Fearless War On Typos

Mild-mannered New Englander Jeff Deck, 28, from Manchester, New Hampshire, hated typos so much that he founded the Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL). Then on March 5 he set out on "a crusade to edit America", an epic journey that took him to the U.S. west coast. He's now in Wisconsin on his way home.

He has stopped off at more than 100 cities, towns and villages, fearlessly using a paintbrush and marker pen to correct the thousands of typos he spots wherever he and his "cuddle partner" Jane go. His friends Benjamin and Josh accompanied him for parts of the journey.

Sadly, his well-meant help (cynics might call it nitpicking) isn't always appreciated, and has led to some tense situations. Here's an extract from Jeff's amusing blog, describing his visit to a bar in Spokane, Washington:

There were only a couple of other customers in the place, and the music was plenty loud enough to go around. A big dude manned the bar inside. I approached, and he said, "What can I do for you?"

"I... uh... I noticed that your sign outside for margaritas spelled it M-A-R-G-I instead of M-A-R-G-A."

"Yeah, and?"

"I was wondering if you had an extra A, so that the sign could be corrected."

"Does it really matter?" He had a kind of threatening joviality in his responses, like he was either amused or ready to explode or both.

"Yeah, it does. I'm actually going around the country fixing typos, and thought I could... help you out."

"Well," said the bartender, still perched on the edge of volcanic emotion, "I don't have any extra letters, or the key to open that sign. I'll let my boss know that he can't spell, though. Is this really what you came in for? You're not going to order a drink?"

"Noooo," I said, and it was time to skedaddle.

In Las Vegas, Jeff noticed posters at the Circus Circus casino (including one in lights) announcing 'Welcome to the world's Greastest Greastest Circus!' Jeff wrote in his blog:

GREASTEST! GREASTEST! An abomination against all that is right and true. We needed to inform someone in charge. It was our only hope for seeing this perversity wiped from the land. The problem was, we couldn't actually find anyone in charge... everyone in the garb of Circus Circus was trying to sell us something. We wandered around until, finally, someone directed us to a thick-necked man scowling at some register tape. His reaction to our crucial piece of intelligence?

A blank look, then: "I'll... uh... have to tell someone about this."

Which you can recognize by now, cherished readers, as a synonym for thudding indifference. We tried to help you, Circus Circus. We wanted to end the era of you looking like a fool. But it seems that era will go on into the foreseeable future.
Reading of those encounters prompted us to send an email to Jeff, asking if he had been assaulted by any unrepentant misspellers. He replied: 'No, no violence or police involved anywhere, thankfully. We did encounter someone in LA who called us a naughty word, though.'

Asked if he thought his epic trip had been worthwhile, he said: 'Certainly it's been worthwhile! There are a lot more people out there now carrying Sharpies [a brand of markers] around with them.'

Jeff's well-written blog attracts a healthy following by some of the world's many other typophobes. Here are comments from two of them:

Bless your heart for reassuring me that I am not the only spelling and punctuation nut left in North America! The print media, mainly newspapers but not excluding books, magazines, and the internet, make me crazy with their pretense of proof-reading, and the poor spelling (and general indifference to spelling) of today's generations infuriate me on a daily basis. I rant and rave about it, but have never had the guts to do what you are doing to bring it to folks' attention. Way to go, Jeff! - Ruth M. Newton.

Thanks for the laughs, and cringes too! I can barely read our local newspaper without finding typos in the first few moments of sitting down to read. It's so highly annoying, I stopped reading the local newspaper and currently get most of my news online instead. Not that there aren't typos online...- Kathleen.

Thanks to Jeff Deck for permission to publish extracts from his TEAL Web site:
http://www.jeffdeck.com/teal/

To see a Good Morning America video of Jeff fixing misspelled signs, visit The Human Spell Check:
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2323700/7292670

Centenarian Columnist's Californian Comeback

Thirty years ago Californian Frank Pelatowski decided that as he had reached the age of 70 he would stop writing his weekly column in his local newspaper, the Mariposa Gazette, http://www.mariposagazette.com/ and enjoy retired life. Now, as a sprightly centenarian, he has revived the feature, which means he is probably the world's oldest columnist.

His nearest rivals for the title are thought to be Australia's Ken Sillcock (97) http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=382345&rel_no=1 and Britain's Henry Jackson (95) http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=382207&rel_no=1

'I decided to come back because I've lived long enough to set one record and the Gazette has been in print long enough to set another,' he says. 'You see, not only is the Gazette an old paper, it's the oldest continuously-published weekly newspaper in all of California. On Jan. 20, 2004 it turned 150 years old, having never missed an issue.

'Some people say I have a lot of energy for a 100-year-old man. They may be right. I'm not only going to write new columns, but I'm still doing other writing, including a book titled "The Wit and Wisdom of Frank Pelatowski", which will be in bookstores later this year.'

Frank was born in Massachusetts on August 10, 1907, when Theodore Roosevelt was his nation's president. His parents were Polish immigrants. He grew up in Connecticut, with 10 brothers and sisters.

In 1923, after leaving High School at 16, he joined the U.S. Navy - so young that he needed a note from his parents. He served on the then new battleship USS West Virginia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_West_Virginia_(BB-48) cruising down the Atlantic coast, through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific Ocean to Australia and New Zealand.

Nearly 20 years later, in World War II, the Navy recalled him to serve a second term, as a chief petty officer.

Here are extracts from Frank's website:

I've been married twice, both wives died while married to me. I have no children, but consider many children to be like grandchildren to me.

Like my father before me, I spent most of my life as a builder. I was also involved in the community; I even ran for office once - and lost.

That was enough of politics; but I served for years as an officer in the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Lions Club and other groups right here in Mariposa.

I've been a writer all my life, and my work has appeared in several publications. I've completed children's books and have two or three unfinished manuscripts in my files.

Though I moved 'down the hill' and have lived in Merced for many years, I have fond memories of Mariposa County and have many friends in the area.

I'm hoping to visit often, to renew old friendships and create new ones. I want to meet Gazette readers and learn about their lives.

Frank lives in an old folks' home in Merced. Like most centenarians, he has failing eyesight. He dictates his columns to his friend and fellow writer David Burke, who hopes to syndicate them to other newspapers as well.

Frank's first column written after he turned 100 was titled 'World's oldest column returns to the Gazette' http://www.mariposagazette.com/opinion/contentview.asp?c=239967

His second column was a nostalgic story about his Navy days, called 'Rollin' in my sweet hammock's arms' http://www.mariposagazette.com/opinion/contentview.asp?c=240503.

Frank has also made a YouTube video that's well worth checking out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9WLE1wBuYM&eurl=http://worldsoldestcolumnist.blogspot.com/

He says he likes writing stories with happy endings.

FOOTNOTES. Merced (population 210,554) is a county in California's Central Valley, north of Fresno and and southeast of San Jose. Mariposa (population 1,373) is the county seat (administrative center) of Mariposa County. Its name is the Spanish word for 'butterfly', after early explorers saw flocks of Monarch butterflies http://www.kidzone.ws/animals/monarch_butterfly.htm there. Mariposa and Merced, 40 miles apart, both call themselves 'The Gateway to Yosemite.' Mariposa being 30 miles from the national park.

The passenger liner SS (Steam Ship) Mariposa maintained a regular service linking the US west coast with Australia and New Zealand before WWII, when she became a US Navy transport troopship. http://www.pinetreeline.org/metz/photos/pm-55c.html

Here's another centenarian journalist!

Mildred Heath, of Overton, Nebraska, is only five months younger than Frank Pelatowski. Born on January 4, 1908, she works five days a week as the Overton correspondent of the Beacon (Nebraska) Observer. She may be the world's oldest working journalist, but her present job does not qualify her to compete for the 'oldest columnist' crown.

'Residents of Overton, a farm town of 646 people east of Lexington, marvel at Heath's energy,' says Omaha World-Herald staff writer Paul Hammel. http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=1219&u_sid=10224210 'The only concession to her 100 years is an electric scooter she rides one block to work. She broke her hip five or six years ago...

'Her main chores are answering the phone and filing photographs, although she still calls local residents to check for news of their families. She asks most people to write up their items and drop them off at the paper, but she still uses an electric typewriter regularly.'

Is Ken (97) world's oldest columnist?

London's famous journalist Henry Jackson (95) is probably Britain's oldest columnist, but Australia's Ken Sillcock has trumped him by two years for the world title.

"Hey, we have a bonzer 97-year-old columnist," (Bonzer is an Australian slang word meaning excellent) Alan Wheatley, editor of Melbourne's Bonzer! webzine ("The Online Monthly Magazine by, for and about Wise Elders") exclaimed when he read our story about Henry Jackson. http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2008/03/worlds_oldest_c_2.php

During World War II, Ken (born 8 Oct., 1910) was a wireless (radio) operator in the Royal Australian Air Force. He served in the UK in Bomber Command, in Lancaster aircraft making perilous destructive raids over Europe.

Checking some of Ken's recent stories in the Bonzer! archives reveals much about his varied and eventful life.

He has written a biographical book called "Three Lifetimes of Dairy Farming in Victoria" about his grandfather and father and his own work as a dairy herd tester before he became Deputy Chief of Agriculture for the state of Victoria.

"Science for me seemed to end in 1930, two years into a four-year degree course, when the Great Financial Depression intervened," he recalled last November.

"Through life, skills which seem unrelated can combine to change one's destiny. For me, this happened in music. Until the end of 1924 my mother taught me to play the piano tolerably well. Ten years later I joined the local brass band as a learner and bought a cornet, just as a hobby, until I joined the AIF [Australian Army] in 1940 as a bandsman/stretcher bearer. This, together with my background in science, led to me being chosen for anti-malaria training.

"My elementary training in entomology was put to use in 1940 when the AIF sent me to a school on malaria control conducted in the Jordan Valley, where the disease was endemic and control work was in place. We applied our new skill in Lebanon and, later, in Sri Lanka.

"That ceased, for me, with our return to Australia, but in 1943 my previous studies of Physics and Mathematics were most helpful when I transferred to the RAAF and studied Radio Theory as a major subject in the Wireless Operator course. Science became a dominant interest again when, in 1945, I had the opportunity to complete my degree course, and in my subsequent career."

Ken attracts young as well as old readers to his writing. Here's a tribute written by Sarah, a 24-year-old Brisbane blogger http://todaysapatheticyouth.blogspot.com/2005/11/remember-this.html

"We still have old guys like Ken Sillcock alive at the moment, who are trying their best to pass on to us the lessons they took away from their painful experience of war. But we're not even listening, and soon, there'll be nothing to remember."

Here's a sample of Ken's lucid writing, from his latest column in the April edition of Bonzer! http://home.vicnet.net.au/~bonzer/p-o-v.html

Our money was fairly reliable when it consisted of alloys of gold, silver and copper, which only a metallurgist could fake, and genuine coins were minted only by the legal government of the nation. In my grandfather's lifetime he carried sufficient money for his daily needs in a spring-loaded case in a waistcoat pocket at the end of a chain.

On one side it held five sovereigns (pounds) and on the other five half-sovereigns. Banks with secure vaults were set up so that people could have their money stored safely when not needed. A fee had to be charged to pay the people who provided this service.

Things started to go wrong when banks started to make the rules. At first they were required to hold in their vaults gold to the value of five-sixths of the gold they held on behalf of their clients. Then note-printing was introduced when the Bank of England was given a licence to print them, and lend them out at interest.

Ken has a word of advice for his readers. He says old people who remain active and interested in their community tend, as a group, to remain more healthy than those who think they are ''too old, over the hill, or finished."

Last December, he sent this email to his friends and admirers:

I havIe an important message for the world, and I ask that you pass it on, especially to those who do not have email. It is: Don't be in too much hurry to help those who are disabled.

That sounds a bit at odds with the Christian spirit and with the beliefs of other codes of life, until I add: First, find out what help they need which will not cause them further damage.

Our bodies were designed long before the wheel and the hydraulic lift were invented. They work on a system of levers well understood by those who studied Physics or Mechanics to Year 10.

Every lever has to move through part of a circle around its pivot. It cannot, for instance, go immediately from the horizontal to the vertical position, but must arrive at it in two stages.

In a chair with arms my technique was to push myself halfway up, then change my grip to include a forward thrust and then steady myself on a firm object or with a walking stick.

So there I was, in my 97th. year, the oldest at our annual Air Force Europe lunch. The chairs didn't have arms, so I sat down through the toasts etc. At the end, when I had to get up, without warning, the two young and fit blokes, barely in their eighties, grabbed me under the armpits and, with the kindest of intentions, hauled me straight up, in defiance of the Law of the Lever.

In the days following I learned that a "crook back" is not just a dull sort of pain. It is that much of the time but. if you make a wrong move, it hits you with an uncontrolled spasm which really hurts. The only way to avoid that is to stand up or sit down in a slow spiral, not straight up or down.

I have just moved out of hospital into my own home, a separate house on my son's block. Indoors I use a wheeled walking frame and have a few grab bars installed, and have help calling to check on me, but I am not yet allowed to go outdoors unaccompanied. Time will heal a cracked vertebra and an apparently strained muscle on my left side.

On the positive side, I have gained this knowledge to pass on, extra compassion for those worse off than I am, and especially for those who have similar injuries much earlier in life.

I can still enjoy some independent living, still in touch with the whole world through Internet.

My family have been most supportive, even sacrificing time they should have given to their work, and the Department of Veterans' Affairs has sometimes anticipated my needs.

Ken moved into a 24-hour serviced aged care facility just before Christmas. He told one of his friends: "As I have to be here I aim to contribute something to the life of the place. I guess that’s what we should aim to do, whatever life deals up to us."

With the approach of Anzac Day (April 25) Australians (and others) may like to read Ken's moving poem, The Jinx Kite http://www.wordandnumberpuzzles.com/bonzer/B/contributions.html

World's oldest columnists' sexpert tease

London's Henry Jackson (95) is the favorite to succeed Rose Hacker (101) as the world's oldest columnist. Rose, a socialist, sex educator, writer and social justice campaigner, died on February 4.

"Mrs Hacker had her first column published [in the Camden New Journal] in September 2006 - when she was 100," said a BBC report http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7227551.stm

The Camden newspaper is continuing to publish her articles: http://www.thecnj.co.uk/camden/rose_hacker.html

Henry Jackson, her probable successor to the Oldest Columnist crown, has been in the newspaper trade all his life, starting as a junior reporter on a local newspaper, then working for Odhams Press, the Associated Press of America, the Daily and Overseas Mail, the Sunday Dispatch and The Observer. He launched his own motoring magazine in 1953 and then added more titles to what became the Bugle Press Group.

These days he's a weekly columnist for Britain's daily literary newszine Open Writing, http://www.openwriting.com/ published in Huddersfield, Yorkshire.

"Henry's entertaining mixture of news and memories, prose and poetry, makes for one of the best reads in any week," says editor Peter Hinchliffe, who often writes feature stories about life in Britain for OhmyNews.

Henry and Peter have given us permission to publish these extracts from three recent columns in a series of candid confessions headed "Looking Back: The Women in My Life":

I was just 23 and working hard five days a week at a job I loved, and to earn more money I took an extra Saturday job on the Sunday Dispatch newspaper. Eileen had her clients and most evenings I would bring her home from somewhere in Chelsea or Kensington. Later on I taught her how to drive and she drove me to work then used the car during the day and brought me home at night.

I was a total sex novice and Eileen was an accomplished teacher. But I was too young and unpractised in the complex art of love making and never achieved sexual equality with her and this caused me great sorrow...

I changed jobs twice quickly on my way up the publishing ladder, each time for more salary, and when the war came I had three jobs at the same time---as a sub editor on the Daily Mail, as a sub editor on the Sunday Dispatch, and as assistant to the Editor of the Overseas Daily Mail. I earned a lot of money and worked seven days a week.

I also changed cars and bought a family car, a Morris saloon, that took us all over the country on holidays. And after I crashed it in the wartime blackout at 1a.m. on my way home from the Daily Mail I bought a Fiat 500 which ran on a whisper of fuel.

Then I left my rented house in Hampstead Garden Suburb and bought a three bedroom house for £16,000 in Mill Hill, on the northern outskirts of London, just when London became a target for German bombers. I built a concrete bomb shelter in the garden and continued on the Daily Mail until I received a call to join the Navy.

Eileen drove me to Paddington Station and I took a train to Torpoint in Cornwall and joined HMS Raleigh, a Royal Navy training camp, as an Ordinary Seaman. My pay was a pitiful 24 shillings and sixpence a week, one fifteenth of my previous weekly earnings. While at Torpoint the camp was bombed by German planes and during the attack one bomb demolished the shelter next to mine and killed all 46 occupants.

From Torpoint I was moved to HMS Raleigh, the Navy barracks at Chatham, then to HMS Wildfire training centre at Sheerness and finally to HMS Auricula, a Flower Class corvette engaged in Atlantic convoys and based in Liverpool.

The war at sea was at its peak and leave was rare but Eileen drove up to Liverpool once to spend the night with me at the aristocratic Adelphi Hotel where they did not like letting rooms to ordinary seamen but the manager changed his mind when he discovered that I was a friend of the owner of the world famous Grosvenor House Hotel in London.

[Fast forward nine years.] The year 1944 was an important year for me. I had returned home after two-and-a-half years abroad in the Royal Navy and the war at sea was still raging. I came home to find my wife living in my house with a Canadian soldier and she refused to give him up.

I was serving in a Fleet minesweeper at the time and the Normandy invasion had just begun. After a minor scuffle with a German mine off Arromanches we came in for repairs at the Royal Albert Dock in London and I managed to scrape some leave. I was 32, angry with the war, angry with my wife, lonely and bitter. My life had fallen to pieces.

The latest instalment of this real-life soap opera begins:

Last week I described my return from overseas during the War to find my wife living in my house with a Canadian soldier so I telephoned Joan, a former neighbour.

I obtained Joan’s number from the new occupants of her house and she gave me such a warm welcome that I went round to see her. The shapely Joan was still an attractive blonde but she had put on a pound or two and she wore a flowery apron that made her look exactly like her mother.

From the bottom of a cupboard she produced a bottle of wine and we drank to Old Times. Then she produced another bottle of wine and we drank to More Old Times. Then the outlook became very misty and there was no outlook and I woke up in bed with Joan. We were both naked....

To find out what happened next, you'll have to read Henry's entertaining column in Open Writing: http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2008/03/yards_of_french_1.php

Intrepid Housewife’s Desert Walk

While soldiers of many nations face danger and hardship in the deserts of Iraq, Israel and Palestine, a party of adventurers from Britain have each paid 250 pounds ($US507) to enjoy a luxurious "desert walk" in neighboring Jordan.

"I have had a few text messages saying that all is well apart from the gruelling temperatures, the swimming in the Dead Sea, having your dinner cooked for you every night and sleeping out under the stars in a desert. What a hard life it is!" stay-at-home husband Simon Elmont scoffs in his family blog.

"Liz is hoping to get back to Guernsey on Sunday evening and back home on Monday morning in time to make my lunch."

Liz Elmont, 29-year-old mother of two young children, had responded to a fund-raising appeal by the British charity Dogs for the Disabled, which required every Desert Walker to raise at least 2500 pounds ($US5075) in sponsorships.

"This is a truly spectacular five-day trek through the Arabian desert in Jordan starting at the Dead Sea – the lowest point on earth – and finishing in the ancient rock city of Petra," the organizers said on the official website http://www.dogsforthedisabled.org/Supportus/OverseasChallenges.htm

"Your personal challenge is to raise funds to train puppies for Dogs for the Disabled – offering confidence, companionship and independence to disabled people across the UK.

"Sleep under the stars each night as we trek with our Bedouin guides through areas of amazing solitude and great beauty.

"Our route takes us from the bottom of valleys to the top of mountains over terrain that is exciting and challenging. The shared experience of this very special hike is guaranteed to be full of friendship and fun as well as a wonderful way to raise money to give disabled people increased independence and companionship."

Here are a few edited extracts from the Elmont blog, recounting Liz's adventures:

Friday, March 9. So this is it! I'm off to Jordan this weekend! I'm flying out of Guernsey tomorrow and should be back in about ten days time all being well. If I manage to get any info through to Simon I'm sure he'll update the blog while I'm away. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Sunday, March 9. I'm stuck in Heathrow Airport waiting to meet up with all the others travelling to Jordan for the Desert Walk. I successfully managed to get here without getting lost once - nothing short of a miracle for me! Hopefully that's a good omen for the rest of the trip.

Thursday, March 13. ...and the headlines tonight:

BONG - Liz got up the mountainsBONG - She doesn’t know what shes been eating for the last few days but is glad she hasn't seen the insides of the catering tent!BONG - she should reach journey's end tomorrow at PetraLiz has inadvertently strayed into a mobile phone area so managed a quick call home earlier this evening to relay the story so far.

Dodging rockets fired from Israeli gunships and whilst trying to pick out the camel meat from her dinner she informed me that all was well apart from a very sore toe and the obligatory dodgy knee.

The Desert Walk was scheduled to be held from March 9 to 16, so it may have ended by the time this story is published. For a last-minute account, click on Liz's fascinating blog http://elmontsonline.blogspot.com/

Simon's Own Efforts
Simon Elmont isn't always a stay-at-home childminder. He took part in The 2005 Polar Race from Resolute Bay in Nanavut (the former North West Territories) to the Magnetic North Pole. Pulling 70kg sledges, competing teams walked or skied more than 400 miles in temperatures as low as -40 degrees centigrade.

The team of Simon Elmont and Steve Wright won third prize, completing the course in 14 days, 22 hours, 7 minutes.

""With all this time on my hands, it has been very easy to get into my own expedition planning mode - that'll teach you to leave me on my own for a few days," Simon wrote to Liz last week.

"I have an offer of a job in Baffin next year for a two week guiding trip followed in 2010 by Steve and me attempting to ski across Greenland, following the famous Nansen route.

"As always, a sponsor is required, so any corporate directors reading this please get in touch!"

This story was first published by the South Korean journal OhmyNewsInternational: http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=382084&rel_no=1

END

Harrods gives Guido a guiding hand

A strange-looking giraffe is just one of many equally bizarre animal images painted by a versatile and talented commercial artist, Guido Daniele, of Milan, Italy, to be displayed for sale at Harrods famous store in London from February 4 to March 30.

You can see the giraffe and some of his other weird hand paintings by clicking on this article from the London Daily Mail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=510990&in_page_id=1770


Clever, aren't they? We were intrigued when we first saw an image of an eagle's head several years ago. It reminded us of those comical hand shadows of rabbits, cats and other animals that we used to project on to our children's bedroom walls at night. Those were illustrated in a book published back in 1859.

Daniele won fame in the early 1990s for his "body painting" illustrations for advertisements by several globally-known companies. To produce eye-catching ads for a chocolate maker, he covered the bodies of attractive models with the client's products.

Three years ago he successfully combined two traditional portrait techniques, photography and oil painting, to produce six enhanced "hand" images, which had to be seen to be believed. Don't just take our word for that. See them for yourself by visiting the Guido Daniele website(see link below).

We asked Guido about those marvellous hand paintings. Using a keyboard without the letter J (J, K, W, X and Y are not part of the standard Italian alphabet) he replied:

"Thank you very much for your appreciation; the hands-animals-painted were a Leo Burnett project in Milano ( Italy ), the art-director called me and asked me if whose possible for me to paint hands as a different animals ....i say 'of course', but not every animal...so I advise which whose best.

"We decide to start with a good photographer , a good model and every day I've paint different subyect just looking some photos printed on paper . Later , my yob whose retouched by computer just a little : as the elephant tooth.

"Cheers, Guido."

Just how he paints his eye-catching pictures is fully described in his website.

FOOTNOTE. While researching this story, we found a fascinating YouTube video of hand shadows by anothr type of artist, Raymond Crowe, "Australia's only unusualist," at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas. It's well worth a visit.

LINKS
Guido Daniele's website http://www.guidodaniele.com/
Children's wall shadows http://mindbluff.com/shadow.htm
Raymond Crowe's video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW-3KwXpkkM

This story has been published by the South Korean citizen reporters' online journal OhmyNewsInternational: http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=381620&rel_no=1

Australia foams at the mouth

Amazing photographs of "Crazy ocean foam ... near Sydney" are so weird that many web surfers (and some real ones) think they must be fakes.

They're real all right, but they were not taken anywhere near Sydney. They show masses of foam four meters (13 feet) deep, washed up at Yamba, a small beach and fishing resort 677km (421 miles) north of Sydney, Australia's largest city, but only 287km (178 miles) south of Brisbane, our third city.

Last week (on January 23) a similar phenomenon occurred further north, at Point Cartwright, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, just north of Brisbane.

It may be significant that Yamba lies at the mouth of the mighty Clarence River, while Point Cartwright is at the mouth of the Mooloolaba River.

A quick check shows that the Yamba photos were the work of a commercial photographer, Bill Counsell, who is more used to recording outdoor weddings. His dramatic pictures of the foam have circled the world, copied on hundreds of websites and blogs, usually without a credit line.

Counsell sold his photos to the Sydney Daily Telegraph and the London Daily Mail, and then they took off in a media frenzy, being copied globally in the press, on TV and the internet, usually without permission.

A website in Ukraine displayed the photos with captions in Cyrillic script.

"I've had an amazing response from all corners of the world, from men's girly magazines to German science magazines and everything in between," Counsell told me,

What caused the foam to form? Counsell, who lives within walking distance of the clubhouse, said he learned of the foam starting to build the day before he took his sensational photos.

"I think the foam was created by a combination of events: no rain at all for two or three months and then a lot of rain over a couple of days at the same time as the sea was in a semi-cyclonic condition -- large swell, strong winds, heavy rain and big tides," he said.

"In lay terms I think the sea was the Mixmaster, the beach was the bowl and the stormwater run-off (full of modern day chemicals and detergents etc) were the ingredients, so with the combination of these factors coming together, the surf was literally whipped up."

Commenting on the story in the US, One Man's Blog said: "This is definitely one of the strangest natural phenomenon I've ever read about. Just imagine dumping enough dish-washing liquid into the ocean to turn all the waves into light and fluffy soap bubbles that are soft enough to blow out of your hand into the air!

"Well, that's basically what happened off the coast of Yamba in New South Wales!

"Here we see kids frolicking and playing in the wonderful ocean foam, oblivious to the fact that it is comprised of dead plants, decomposed fish, and seaweed excretions!"

The London Daily Mail's Sydney correspondent, Richard Shears wrote:
"Scientists explain that the foam is created by impurities in the ocean, such as salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed. All are churned up together by powerful currents which cause the water to form bubbles. These bubbles stick to each other as they are carried below the surface by the current towards the shore.

"As a wave starts to form on the surface, the motion of the water causes the bubbles to swirl upwards and, massed together, they become foam. The foam 'surfs' towards shore until the wave 'crashes', tossing the foam into the air.

"'It's the same effect you get when you whip up a milk shake in a blender,' explains a marine expert. 'The more powerful the swirl, the more foam you create on the surface and the lighter it becomes.'

"In this case, storms off the New South Wales Coast and further north off Queensland had created a huge disturbance in the ocean, hitting a stretch of water where there was a particularly high amount of the substances which form into bubbles."

In Australia, a surfer calling himself Barnacle wrote in a message to the RealSurf forum:
"John Dengate of the NSW Department for the Environment and Conservation was on ABC Radio yesterday and said it was due to small sea organisms that are literally pulverised by the large swell resulting in a very fine protein suspension in the sea.

"The protein mix coats the air-bubbles created by the waves to create a stiff froth, just the same way as egg protein coats air bubbles to make meringue, and beer protein coats air bubbles to produce a head of foam in a beer glass."

Finally, Ian Scott-Parker, from a town called Hurricane in Utah, USA, wrote: "The explanations for the creation of the foam seem too varied to be reliable. Various natural products are foaming agents (extract of horse chestnuts was used in early fire extinguishers) but saline solutions are usually considered to be anti-foaming agents.

"On balance I like the crushed plankton providing protein foaming agent hypothesis, when the high level of fresh water coming in from the Clarence River provides a suitable non-saline environment for the foam to be generated.

"Australia Foaming at the Mouth would be a good headline." [Thanks, Ian.]

He added: "There is already a range of cosmetic products named Aussie on sale in the USA, so I feel sure there is room in the woo-woo sector for All Natural Yamba Plankton Body Wash -- Harness the Power of Cyclonic Weather Systems To Beautify Your Skin. A version for men would be a possibility -- Enriched With Guinness Head for a Whiff of the Pub and the Ocean All in One Lotion."

LINKS
Cappuccino Coast http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=478041&in_page_id=1811
Sludge oozes at Point Cartwright
http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2008/jan/24/monster-deep-emerge-sea-foam/
Bill Counsell, photographer http://www.billcounsell.com/
Ukraine website (Cyrillic script) http://www.4post.com.ua/travel/13689.html?photo=5
Pacific Ocean near Sydney turns to foam
http://onemansblog.com/2007/09/28/pacific-ocean-near-sydney-turns-to-foam/

This story was first published by OhmyNewsInternational, http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=A11100&no=381567&rel_no=1&back_url