My catch-up-on-old-friends tour has now brought me to the East Coast of America, the big USA, sister revolutionary of France (LIberty, the Statue of), and major emigration endpoint of European boat people. It's a privilege to be travelling from France to the USA, mature countries who decided their own destiny all that time ago, and came up with mighty founding documents based on the rights of man.

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Saturday. I was woken this morning by the sound of cowbells. It wasn't David our drummer practising, but cowbelled goats and cattle on the hill behind where we are staying. As I stood on the kerb and tried to zoom up the steep incline to get a photo of them a snazzy little electric car shot by and nearly ended my tour prematurely. Everything here is a mixture of the older than old and the most modern of the modern. We are in Switzerland, actually. We have been lodged in the Swiss house of our hosts,who run the marvellous alternative venue in Feldkirche.

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By Simon Sweetman

Neil Young & Crazy Horse

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Friday July 27th is National Poetry Day.

To celebrate this very special day Phantom Billstickers will be putting 2000 A1 street-posters featuring poems

throughout New Zealand. Look for them on a poster site near you.

Poets you can expect to see featured include:

Tusiata Avia, Hinemoana Baker, Janet Frame, Frankie McMillan, Marty Schofield, Simone Kaho,

Nicola Easthope, Bill Direen, Richard Langston, Jay Clarkson, Kelly Ana Morey, Kirsten Warner, Sandra Bell,

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