Beauty unlike the rest of the gifts handed out at birth does not require dedication patience and hard work to pay off. But it's also the only gift that does not keep on giving.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse the illicit the absurd.

The winner's edge is not in a gifted birth a high IQ or in talent. The winner's edge is all in the attitude not aptitude. Attitude is the criterion for success.

Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera theater music and dance are thriving all over the world but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s.

And currently there are four to five new works in the pipeline for upcoming celebrations such as the Sydney 2000 Olympics Australian Federation my 50th Birthday and Sydney Dance Company's 25th Anniversary.

Each year on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth America has the opportunity to reflect on our nation's progress towards the realization of his dream.

I made some friends who are still friends and this is the city of my birth. I love living here when there's a reason to other than just moving here. I still don't like the winters here but it's an amazing city and I love it.

Everyone says 'You give birth you go home and you have this amazing baby and it's just beautiful'. And I walked in and I just started sobbing.

Maybe I was just lucky but I had the best pregnancy and I loved giving birth. It was just the most amazing thing so surreal but so real.

Giving birth was the most amazing thing I've ever done. I'd been living in a Third World country and I said 'I'm going to just squat behind a tree.' I basically did that but in a chair in my living room. I didn't want a sterile hospital room. I didn't want doctors. I had a midwife.