Our latest stockist is the best darn ‘corner’ store on Waiheke Island (just off the coast of Auckland, New Zealand). It’s called Waiheke Fruit & Veg, but generally goes by its nickname ‘The Top Shop’ and its owner Emily MacDonald is a pretty top lady herself. Not only is she still in her twenties (maybe even early twenties), but she’s transformed what used to be your pretty average shop into something really special. She stocks the best organic produce and gourmet goods (local if poss) like I love Pies, No. 29 Olive Oil and Cable Bay Wines, all the produce is labeled with its English AND Maori names and now it stocks Dumbo feather!

Waiheke Fruit & Veg is also the base for an incredible project Emily’s set up. Two years ago she visited the war-ravaged province of Gulu, Uganda and was inspired to do something to help the children there. In 2009, TheVillageProject raised over $60,000 from the sale of limited edition t-shirts and artworks. This year they’ve already raised half that again, this time by selling over 1,000 stainless steel water bottles too … Emily’s also on a mission to make the island plastic water-bottle free! You go girl.

We know Alison Thompson’s interview in Issue 17 touched many of you. This Australia Day, her extraordinary spirit was recognised when she was awarded a MEDAL (OAM) OF THE ORDER OF AUSTRALIA IN THE GENERAL DIVISION for “service to humanitarian aid, particularly the people of the Peraliya region of Sri Lanka following the Boxing Day 2004 Tsunami.”

We’d exchanged a few emails with Alison lately, and knew she was planning on coming back to Australia (from New York) to receive the award (although we were sworn to secrecy), but nature had other plans. When the earthquake struck Haiti on 12 Jan, Alison being Alison shelved all her plans for an Australian summer holiday catching up with family to go straight there with Sean Penn, a couple of other friends. On 24 January, Alison wrote an email to her parents …

“Dante would describe it as hell here.  There is no food and wAter and hundreds dying daily. The aid is all bottlenecked and not reaching here . The other day i assisted with amputation ( holding them down) while they used a saw to cut a young boys leg off with no pain killers…” The full email can be read here.

Photograph by Juliet Coombes

Alison Thompson : Issue 17 : Introduction

Alison Thompson has been charged by twelve hippos, nine elephants and two rhinos. She has travelled to all the continents of the world, including the South Pole. She is an Australian who has been living and working in New York for more than 20 years. While she’s tried many things like being a mathematics teacher and an investment banker, it’s in film-making, and its ability to move people to take action, that her passion lies. Being spurred into action is something Alison knows about first hand. When the World Trade Centre was hit on 11 September 2001, she was one of the first there to volunteer. It gave her a taste for volunteering and she realised how easy it could be. So, in 2004, when the ‘Boxing Day’ tsunami hit, she jumped on a plane to Sri Lanka. The footage she took during that time formed the basis for ‘The Third Wave’, a film about volunteering which has captured the souls of viewers from Cannes to Sydney.

Last year Mag Nation started doing a semi-regular spot on their blog where they’d ask people in mag-land to nominate their five favourite magazines. First up was Kate Bezar, Dumbo feather’s founder and editor with her picks and lately, Becky Smith, the founder of UK mags, Lula and Twin, shared her faves (one of which was Dumbo feather, even if just for our name!).

It got us wondering what your favourite magazines are?? Leave us a comment below with your top five, excluding Dumbo feather (we’ll assume that’s a given ;). Please give web addresses if they’re a bit obscure so others can find them …

We’re a bit slow off the mark here, but if you’ve got time before the 19th Dec and you’re in Melbourne, this exhibition of writing, drawing and photography by John Warwicker (Issue Ten) at The Narrows Gallery is a must see. The exhibition is timed to celebrate the launch of John’s book, ‘Floating World:Ukiyo-E’, which has been seven (!!) years in the making! More spreads from inside the book here.

John Warwicker : Issue Ten : Introduction

It might seem ridiculous for someone widely regarded as one of the world’s best designers to admit, “I don’t know what design is at all”, but John Warwicker understands that embracing the ‘not knowing’ can be your greatest strength. Whether you’re familiar with the work of Tomato (of which John was a founding member in 1991) or not, you’ll no doubt appreciate taking a walk inside his mind. There’s something deeply reassuring in hearing that even someone of John’s calibre, and who has the world’s most design-savvy corporations as clients, is as unsure of his abilities as the rest of us. He too struggles with the difficulties inherent in balancing the demands of a commercial career with nurturing one’s own creativity. John was creative director of Da Gama (1981-1984), head of Art and Video at A&M Records (1984-1987), creative director of Vivid I.D. (1987-1991) and was the first foreigner to be admitted into the Japanese Type Directors’ Club. He directs short films and commercials, designs album covers, treats type like oil on canvas, is about to have his first monograph published, and, after spending most of his career in London, has recently moved to Melbourne… for love… Df

If Issue 21’s still fresh in your minds you might remember Kali Arulpragasam talking about her next Superfertile jewellery collection which she described as, “another quite ironic collection about current affairs; the economy and the recession. It’s about the truth, a sentence like ‘There’s 5o million people without healthcare in America’, but glamourised with stones so it looks like it’s overflowing with diamonds and things. It’s about welfare, and the economy, and unemployment, and repossession of houses, and how the value of houses is lower than the actual mortgage is, and how much the war’s cost; all that stuff.”

In an email to us this morning Kali elaborates; “It’s pretty tough to pull off Numbers and Statistics in the form of Pie charts and Bar charts in hand paved stones, without being boring … or nuts! It’s something that demands us to look at jewellery in a new light and opens up possibilities of what we can say with them. Maybe it’s the beginning of ‘Glitzy truth’ …”

The collection, called CRA$H, was launched at Paris Fashion Week, but doesn’t seem to be up on the Superfertile website yet, so here are a few more pics … They’re pretty fabulous.

BUY A SUBSCRIPTION & GET $10 OFF THE NEXT ONE!

For the rest of November only we’ve got an extra special deal going … When you purchase a subscription you’ll be emailed instructions for how to get $10 off your next (and any subsequent) subscription purchases.

That brings a subscription down to only $35 -!

In December, we’re going to continue the offer, but the discount will be $5, so best to get in quick.

If you’d like to know more about how to give gift subscriptions this Christmas read on.

1. Visit our online Shop, go to the Subscriptions section and decide whether or not you want to give them a 12 or 24 month sub (scroll down the page for more options).
2. Select the Subscriber Location from the drop-down menu. Make sure this is the location of the person who’ll be receiving the subscription, not yours.
3. Select when you would like the subscription to commence from the next drop-down menu. If you choose ‘Immediately’ we will send a copy of Issue 22 asap. If you choose ‘15 December 2009′ we will send a copy of Issue 22 on 15 December so that it should* arrive just prior to Christmas Day.
4. Go to checkout, put both your and the lucky recipient’s address details into the form and … Bob’s your uncle.
5. Please note: your Paypal receipt will indicate that the mag is being delivered to your address – this is not the case. We will override your address with the address you entered for the gift recipient.

With every gift recipient’s first copy of Dumbo feather we enclose a letter which begins, “Dear so-&-so, such-&-such has kindly gifted you a 12/24 month subscription to Dumbo feather …” so they will know who it’s from! We will also put a sticker on the back of the envelope saying ‘Not to be opened until 25 December’.

* Note: we will send the magazine out on this date, but can’t take any responsibility for whether or not they actually arrive prior to Christmas … that is in the capable hands of Australia Post.

Last night, on Auckland’s best radio station, bFM, ‘Pennie Papercuts‘ reviewed Dumbo feather and gave us 5 out of 5!! … Word on the street is that 5-out-of-5’s don’t come from Pennie P very often so we’re particularly chuffed! It’s a great review – she’d obviously done a fair bit of research as she seemed to know stuff we didn’t think anyone did … What she didn’t seem to know was that Df’s founder Kate has just moved back to her hometown of Auckland (New Zealand) to run the mag from there – lovely timing. Have a listen here;

Pennie Papercuts’ review for bFM Nov09

PS. If you were listening and have stopped by because you’re a curious monster, kia ora! Feel free to have a perve around …

UPDATE: On 17 Dec 2009 ‘Dumbo feather’ was named by Pennie Papercuts as one of her favourite mags of the year.