Winning the toss.
It’s always dangerous to make judgments about issues when not in possession of the full story, and it goes without saying that a story like the confrontation in Sydney, in January 2008, between the Indian and the Australian cricket teams, will be distorted by the much larger interests in the two countries. It would seem, therefore, that the wise thing to do would be to refrain from comment. But Australians in significant numbers seem to be doing exactly the opposite, and, astonishingly, in the land of the Cronulla riots, seem to overwhelmingly on the side of the Indian team. This would seem to be an gratifying revelation: we really can deal with a crisis in cricket in the spirit of…. well, cricket. I’d really like to leave it there and bask in self congratulations on behalf of the people of the land of the fair go. But something is nagging me about the whole thing. I’ve already acknowledged that I don’t have the full story, so here I go on the basis of the story as I do have it.
Firstly, is Ricky Ponting’s sense of what a press conference is, a bit self serving? An Indian journalist asks him a question that challenges his sense of what went on on the field, and Ponting retorts, If you are questioning my integrity you shouldn’t be standing here. Talk about dum’n’duma. I hope Cricket Australia tells him what press conferences are for before he has to do it again. If a journalist questions one’s integrity, denying their right to do so is not proof of one’s integrity. It is proof of one’s unsuitability for leadership. If someone’s question really is a slur on one’s character, a truthful answer is the necessary and sufficient response. Petulant obfuscation leaves the observer in no doubt about who’s on the right track – a point I will return to shortly.
Secondly, the Indian position seems to be twofold: there is no proof, other than the assertions of some members of the Australian team, that Harbhajan Singh actually called Andrew Symonds a monkey; and anyway, calling someone a monkey is not insulting from an Indian point of view.
On both counts they are being disingenuous.
On the issue of whether or not Singh used the word monkey, the question has been asked, How can the umpire take the word of Australian players and not that of Indian players? Oh dear! It’s Dum’n’duma at it again! You can get away with asking a question like that only if you know the accusation is false – in which case you don’t need to ask it. It is enough to deny the accusation and know that you are right. If others choose not to believe you, they’re the ones with the problem. Knowing and speaking the truth is the proof of dignity. If you know the accusation is not false, however, asking the above question means that you are indirectly accusing the other side of lying, knowing that to be false – in which case you condemn yourself by asking it. Rhetorical obfuscation (as in Ricky Ponting’s case) shows that one has something to hide. This, I contend, is also precisely what the Indians have done.
How can one be confidant – as distinct from know – that the spokesmen for the Indian position are in fact the ones who are lying? Simple: look for obfuscation in what else they have said.
There might well be a god in the Hindu pantheon who is a monkey; and India may well be among the many country in the world in which people affectionately call others, usually children, monkeys. These are two grounds on which the accusation of intending insult are disputed. This is obfuscation.
International cricket is played by sophisticated people capable of using the word monkey in a variety of ways, some of them endearing and others intended to be insulting. Furthermore, the spectators at international cricket are capable of the same distinctions, even though they’re not all as sophisticated as the people on the field. And players as well as spectators are capable of seriously gross miss-behaviour, no matter what country they come from. Thuggish behaviour on the sidelines or on the pitch is thuggish behaviour, regardless of where it happens. We’re all capable of it, as well as being capable of recognising it. But the Indians seem to be saying that people on the sidelined in India aping… well, apes, cannot be accused of intending to insult Symonds, any more than Singh could be accused of intending to insult the same player, had he called him a monkey. This is just plain stupid – obfuscation of the highest order. Had the Indians said no more than that their man did not use the offending word they would be right about it being their word against the word of the other team. And they would have the appearance of dignity, even if they were lying. But to say that no one ever intended to insult Symonds by word or deed is so patently absurd that it raises the question, Why did they feel the need for such denial? Answer: they are lying about the crowd’s intent because they know that they are lying about what Singh said and his intent. Have I proved my case? No. But I am very confidant. Would I have suspended Singh? No, because the Indians are right: there is no proof – well, there are no independent witnesses, anyway. But because of their petulant obfuscation, the whole world, with the possible exception of a billion people in one part of it, knows the truth.
Personally, I’m very happy that Australians are capable of kicking their sacred cow – the national cricket team – when it deserves it, and barracking for the other side when they deserve it. But please! Let’s be prepared to recognise the cow shit that is being flung around by the Indians for what it is. Sledging a cricketer by insulting him is one thing, but insulting the intelligence of the world? It is looking very much like India is “winning the toss”.
Sunday, 13 January 2008
Sunday, 6 January 2008
Driving with children
On I Spy, Buzz and Prime Numbers
One of John’s nieces with her husband and three kids – eldest starting high school in 2008 – stayed with us for four days from Boxing day. A good time was had by all, going fishing, making things out of clay, eating, more eating, and finding – perhaps making – room for even more food. We did a bit of driving – a trip to Nimbin; another to the Cold Roast (Gold Coast for those no up on your Strine) with the kids swapping cars as we went. The favourite game was I Spy With My Little Eye.
It occurred me after a while that it’s a game that adults would benefit from – and about which someone could almost certainly write a thesis. I won’t go into too much detail here, but how often have you heard jaded grown ups complain about the boring car trip they had just done? That would be because they didn’t pay attention, wanting to be somewhere else, perhaps – the destination rather than the journey. Imagine the most featureless scene you have ever… well, seen… There’s always more there than immediately “meets the eye”. Actually, if something’s there, it meets the eye, given 20/20 vision, but it may not get your attention. So I Spy played in what would normally be thought of as a boring and unstimulating place will generate attention to details not normally noticed. It may even give rise to the need to name phenomena previously unknown to one or more of the players. The special challenge when driving is that one has to choose categories of objects that can be seen, while moving, for at least as long as it takes players to answer correctly or give in. The kids did this without even being aware of it – until, that is, one of them nominated something that was not observable once we had gone past it, and one of the others articulated the rule that had been implicit until that point. If I were to say to you that everything we do/know is theory-laden your eyes would probably glaze over. But I just gave you an example of what I would be talking about, were I talking about it – which I am. The kids recognised that the rules that applied in static situations would not work in dynamic situations and adopted a new set of behaviours to deal with the changed situation; and only when it became necessary, clarified the way the rules had changed. Now imagine trying to explain that to them. It can be done, but not while they’re playing the game.
Now imagine a society in which I Spy With My Little Eye is not just a game but the sacred ritual that mediates their sense of who they are, and must be played five times a day at precise times. This society existed long before there were trains cars and aeroplanes, and developed their ritual in a world that was virtually static; and concealed the fact that they developed the ritual by telling themselves – and coming to believe – that the ritual was written on a stone tablet that was lowered from heaven on a golden rope. In time their neighbours begin to travel in trains, cars and aeroplanes. But because an object cannot be seen once they have passed it, they find they cannot perform their ritual. Well, they can if they travel in cars, because they can stop while they do their thing. But trains and planes won’t stop for them, and anyway, what’s there to see at 30,000 metres, and when the train, plane and even the car takes them beyond the landscape they know to landscapes they have never seen before, and therefore cannot name, how could they play their game? What would they do? Refuse to travel in trains and planes to far away places, and travel by car only within the landscape they know? Or change the ritual? Maybe even abandon ritual altogether for want of the theory that ritual is context dependent – indeed condemning as “Modernism” such a theory when it arose. See what I mean about the potential for a thesis. And all because I overheard kids playing a game.
At the risk of frightening you to death, I want to tell you about another game that I don’t think they understood at all. It is called Buzz. One person says a number – it can be either odd or even. The other person says Buzz. The first person says another number, but if the first number was odd, the second has to be odd. If it is not, the other person has a turn. On this set of rules, the result is that someone who knows the difference between odd and even numbers and can count to 100 gets to say every odd or even number between 0 and 100 and stays in for the whole time. Boring. No one played by that set of rules for long. Which set me thinking. They must have misunderstood the rules. It would be so simple to modify them. Succeeding numbers had to be the opposite of the numbers that preceded them, for example. I say an odd number, my partner says buzz, and I must then say an even number, otherwise it is my partner’s turn. But even that can’t have been the intent of the game. What could it be? I had an idea. Maybe it was a game about Prime Numbers. So I asked the Tatum, who had just finished grade one, how many twos in four. Two, she said. How many twos in two? One. OK, I thought, she knows about division. So I said, tell me a number that can be divided with nothing left over by itself or one. What? the problem was the word divided. She knew how to do it but not how to name it. And what about “with nothing left over”? Well, I said, how many threes in eight? More than two but not three. Yes, two with something left over. Oh, yeah. OK, now tell me an number that can be divided by itself or one with nothing left over. Long pause. They all can, she said. Another long pause as I pondered what had gone wrong. I was trying to steer her towards the concept of prime numbers and was facing the prospect of all numbers being prime numbers if I didn’t refine the rules of the game. Yes, I said. Now tell me a number that can be divided only by itself or one with nothing left over. Four, she said. No. there’s nothing left over when you divide four by one and by four. But how many twos in four? Two, she said. And nothing left over, I prompted. Oh yeah. What about five? Yes. Give me another one. Not six, she said. Why? Because there are three twos in six. Correct. Another. Seven. Yes, another. Not eight. Correct. Nine she said triumphantly. There’s four twos in nine with one left over. Ah, I said, but how many threes in nine? Three, she shot back. Oh! And nothing left over. Yes. Now do you see how it works? I want numbers that can only be divided by one or themselves with nothing left over. So now we have a new set of rules for the game Buzz. I say a number and you buzz me. My next number must be one that can only be divided by itself or one with nothing left over. Long pause. Say that again. OK but before I do, lets give the numbers we’re talking about a name. What will we call them? Long pause. I don’t know, don’t they already have a name? Well, yes, actually, they do. What is it then? They’re Prime Numbers. Can we play I Spy With My Little Eye Again? We never did get to play Buzz with prime numbers. Oh, and by the way, later on I thought that maybe there are various stages to the game. First you just get odd or even numbers sorted; then deal with both; and then with primes.
One of John’s nieces with her husband and three kids – eldest starting high school in 2008 – stayed with us for four days from Boxing day. A good time was had by all, going fishing, making things out of clay, eating, more eating, and finding – perhaps making – room for even more food. We did a bit of driving – a trip to Nimbin; another to the Cold Roast (Gold Coast for those no up on your Strine) with the kids swapping cars as we went. The favourite game was I Spy With My Little Eye.
It occurred me after a while that it’s a game that adults would benefit from – and about which someone could almost certainly write a thesis. I won’t go into too much detail here, but how often have you heard jaded grown ups complain about the boring car trip they had just done? That would be because they didn’t pay attention, wanting to be somewhere else, perhaps – the destination rather than the journey. Imagine the most featureless scene you have ever… well, seen… There’s always more there than immediately “meets the eye”. Actually, if something’s there, it meets the eye, given 20/20 vision, but it may not get your attention. So I Spy played in what would normally be thought of as a boring and unstimulating place will generate attention to details not normally noticed. It may even give rise to the need to name phenomena previously unknown to one or more of the players. The special challenge when driving is that one has to choose categories of objects that can be seen, while moving, for at least as long as it takes players to answer correctly or give in. The kids did this without even being aware of it – until, that is, one of them nominated something that was not observable once we had gone past it, and one of the others articulated the rule that had been implicit until that point. If I were to say to you that everything we do/know is theory-laden your eyes would probably glaze over. But I just gave you an example of what I would be talking about, were I talking about it – which I am. The kids recognised that the rules that applied in static situations would not work in dynamic situations and adopted a new set of behaviours to deal with the changed situation; and only when it became necessary, clarified the way the rules had changed. Now imagine trying to explain that to them. It can be done, but not while they’re playing the game.
Now imagine a society in which I Spy With My Little Eye is not just a game but the sacred ritual that mediates their sense of who they are, and must be played five times a day at precise times. This society existed long before there were trains cars and aeroplanes, and developed their ritual in a world that was virtually static; and concealed the fact that they developed the ritual by telling themselves – and coming to believe – that the ritual was written on a stone tablet that was lowered from heaven on a golden rope. In time their neighbours begin to travel in trains, cars and aeroplanes. But because an object cannot be seen once they have passed it, they find they cannot perform their ritual. Well, they can if they travel in cars, because they can stop while they do their thing. But trains and planes won’t stop for them, and anyway, what’s there to see at 30,000 metres, and when the train, plane and even the car takes them beyond the landscape they know to landscapes they have never seen before, and therefore cannot name, how could they play their game? What would they do? Refuse to travel in trains and planes to far away places, and travel by car only within the landscape they know? Or change the ritual? Maybe even abandon ritual altogether for want of the theory that ritual is context dependent – indeed condemning as “Modernism” such a theory when it arose. See what I mean about the potential for a thesis. And all because I overheard kids playing a game.
At the risk of frightening you to death, I want to tell you about another game that I don’t think they understood at all. It is called Buzz. One person says a number – it can be either odd or even. The other person says Buzz. The first person says another number, but if the first number was odd, the second has to be odd. If it is not, the other person has a turn. On this set of rules, the result is that someone who knows the difference between odd and even numbers and can count to 100 gets to say every odd or even number between 0 and 100 and stays in for the whole time. Boring. No one played by that set of rules for long. Which set me thinking. They must have misunderstood the rules. It would be so simple to modify them. Succeeding numbers had to be the opposite of the numbers that preceded them, for example. I say an odd number, my partner says buzz, and I must then say an even number, otherwise it is my partner’s turn. But even that can’t have been the intent of the game. What could it be? I had an idea. Maybe it was a game about Prime Numbers. So I asked the Tatum, who had just finished grade one, how many twos in four. Two, she said. How many twos in two? One. OK, I thought, she knows about division. So I said, tell me a number that can be divided with nothing left over by itself or one. What? the problem was the word divided. She knew how to do it but not how to name it. And what about “with nothing left over”? Well, I said, how many threes in eight? More than two but not three. Yes, two with something left over. Oh, yeah. OK, now tell me an number that can be divided by itself or one with nothing left over. Long pause. They all can, she said. Another long pause as I pondered what had gone wrong. I was trying to steer her towards the concept of prime numbers and was facing the prospect of all numbers being prime numbers if I didn’t refine the rules of the game. Yes, I said. Now tell me a number that can be divided only by itself or one with nothing left over. Four, she said. No. there’s nothing left over when you divide four by one and by four. But how many twos in four? Two, she said. And nothing left over, I prompted. Oh yeah. What about five? Yes. Give me another one. Not six, she said. Why? Because there are three twos in six. Correct. Another. Seven. Yes, another. Not eight. Correct. Nine she said triumphantly. There’s four twos in nine with one left over. Ah, I said, but how many threes in nine? Three, she shot back. Oh! And nothing left over. Yes. Now do you see how it works? I want numbers that can only be divided by one or themselves with nothing left over. So now we have a new set of rules for the game Buzz. I say a number and you buzz me. My next number must be one that can only be divided by itself or one with nothing left over. Long pause. Say that again. OK but before I do, lets give the numbers we’re talking about a name. What will we call them? Long pause. I don’t know, don’t they already have a name? Well, yes, actually, they do. What is it then? They’re Prime Numbers. Can we play I Spy With My Little Eye Again? We never did get to play Buzz with prime numbers. Oh, and by the way, later on I thought that maybe there are various stages to the game. First you just get odd or even numbers sorted; then deal with both; and then with primes.
2007 December Bulletin
Hello Y’all,
Anyone who is in my monthly email group please bear with me as I address an opening request to people who will receive this by snail mail.
Please, please, please. If you haven’t given me an email address, please seriously consider doing so. And if you think you have but did NOT get an electronic Christmas card from me this year, it means one of two things: you haven’t given me an email address; or it’s not current.
Of course, not everyone has the means of using email, so I will still stay in touch if you don’t give me an email address, but for those with the means, I really would prefer it didn’t have to be by snail mail.
You can give me your email address simply by emailing me at
paulvincentsmith@hotmail.com
You don’t have to write a letter: just put “Add my address to your contacts”, and it shall be so.
Furthermore, I have personal email addresses of 146 people in my list of contacts, of whom 44 have elected to be in my monthly bulletin group. If you would like to be on the list, please send an email with the words “Add my address to your monthly bulletin group”. I will NOT be overwrought if you do want to receive a monthly email from me. It would be nice to have an email address for you for occasional contacts – like Christmas, and maybe even birthdaze if I can get my act together and resurrect my birthday list. If you haven’t told my your birth date just…. you know… do it.
˜ ™
Some of you may already know that John has finished his Diploma in Ceramics and was selected to represent the North Coast Institute of TAFE at a state wide ceramics exhibition in Sydney in January. We were going to drive, but now we are flying, and will consequently be away from home for only three days instead of nearly two weeks. John has enrolled in the Advanced Diploma in Ceramics for 2008 and has been offered an exhibition at the Regional Gallery in Murwillumbah – normally he wouldn’t be able to get in until late 2009, but the gallery director was here on Sunday to see his work and offered to squeeze him in so that he can fulfil the requirements of his Adv. Dip. AND… BREAKING NEWS!! He’s just had an intriguing offer from Newcastle University. We don’t know what it means yet, but we’re hoping ……..well we don’t know what we’re hoping. We’re just hoping.
The choir I am in did its thing in November – a two hour programme, the major item of which was Vivaldi’s Gloria. Apologies to those who have already heard this: it went like a Harley – you know, better than a Triumph!!. I am now setting out on The Messiah. I’m also adapting about half of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass for solo work; and transliterating the 4th movement of Mahler’s 4th Symphony. My music teacher is very happy with my progress. I am also getting quite serious about sewing – mainly from a problem solving point of view; but having found out how much better hand made clothes are than shop bought ones, I am sneaking into the TAFE library photocopying parts of books on tailoring; and getting interested in geometric theorems and their application to drafting. I’m not talking fashion design, by the way. Think shorts, t shirts, trousers, long sleeved shirts, that sort of thing – although I have not forgotten the idea of ceremonial clothing that I mentioned to a few people some time ago. I’m also making soft toys with a view to making stuff for John to turn into porcelain fossils. See
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/
for pictures of his final year exhibition; and also the designs for a set of Stubby Coolers I have just made. You are invited to see innuendo in them. Consider the range of occasions when you might select on for a specific purpose. If you like I’ll design a set for you too. You can supply the pictures or consult my extensive collection. And while on the subject of Flickr, I’m still waiting on courageous individuals to email photos of themselves to caricature. For those hearing about this for the first time click on Caricatures in the right hand column of my Flickr page to see my what I mean – and then send your picture for inclusion in the Hall of the Game. Maybe you’d like a set of stubby coolers with pictures of yourself/family/friends looking frighteningly fiendish.
I very bravely set out to write a blog around the middle of the year, and was going gangbusters for a while, but, as I was warned, I stopped rather suddenly because it was taking up too much time. I’m not sure that I will ever get back to it, but it is going to be a convenient place to post documents such as John’s Artist statement. I have posted it today, as well as the monthly bulletins from June to November. If you want to read John’s artist statement click on
http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/
Finally, have you been watching the series Monarchy on TV? Last night it was about how the Stewarts (James I, Charles I, Charles II, James II) adopted a self serving ideology and tried to make Britain in their own image, resulting in Charles I losing his head. How strangely familiar that tale is – vaguely reminiscent of a certain politician who came to believe his own publicity that he thought he could remake a certain wide brown land in his own image, and ended up losing his seat!! Not that I’m gloating or anything. But, with apologies to those who have already heard this line, we must have all died and gone to Kevin.
Go Jollily!!
˜ ™
PS
Sox and Boof send their blessings.
See Flickr The Household for pictures of both of them and other family members who have joined the Communion of Saints.
PPS
After a couple of years of regular visits to a Urologist, I finally have a combination of medications that works. If you didn’t know I had been going to a specialist, you have missed all the drama. But don’t worry, I’m sure that at my age, there’ll be more. Life really IS short. I can remember so vividly that brief period of my life when mortality seemed like something that other people had to think about. And I look at bright young things now and relate as never before to poems like To his coy mistress (Type the following into Google if you are not familiar with the poem – or simply click on this link if you are reading this in an email Andrew Marvell: To his Coy Mistress. "Had we but world enough and ... )
Anyone who is in my monthly email group please bear with me as I address an opening request to people who will receive this by snail mail.
Please, please, please. If you haven’t given me an email address, please seriously consider doing so. And if you think you have but did NOT get an electronic Christmas card from me this year, it means one of two things: you haven’t given me an email address; or it’s not current.
Of course, not everyone has the means of using email, so I will still stay in touch if you don’t give me an email address, but for those with the means, I really would prefer it didn’t have to be by snail mail.
You can give me your email address simply by emailing me at
paulvincentsmith@hotmail.com
You don’t have to write a letter: just put “Add my address to your contacts”, and it shall be so.
Furthermore, I have personal email addresses of 146 people in my list of contacts, of whom 44 have elected to be in my monthly bulletin group. If you would like to be on the list, please send an email with the words “Add my address to your monthly bulletin group”. I will NOT be overwrought if you do want to receive a monthly email from me. It would be nice to have an email address for you for occasional contacts – like Christmas, and maybe even birthdaze if I can get my act together and resurrect my birthday list. If you haven’t told my your birth date just…. you know… do it.
˜ ™
Some of you may already know that John has finished his Diploma in Ceramics and was selected to represent the North Coast Institute of TAFE at a state wide ceramics exhibition in Sydney in January. We were going to drive, but now we are flying, and will consequently be away from home for only three days instead of nearly two weeks. John has enrolled in the Advanced Diploma in Ceramics for 2008 and has been offered an exhibition at the Regional Gallery in Murwillumbah – normally he wouldn’t be able to get in until late 2009, but the gallery director was here on Sunday to see his work and offered to squeeze him in so that he can fulfil the requirements of his Adv. Dip. AND… BREAKING NEWS!! He’s just had an intriguing offer from Newcastle University. We don’t know what it means yet, but we’re hoping ……..well we don’t know what we’re hoping. We’re just hoping.
The choir I am in did its thing in November – a two hour programme, the major item of which was Vivaldi’s Gloria. Apologies to those who have already heard this: it went like a Harley – you know, better than a Triumph!!. I am now setting out on The Messiah. I’m also adapting about half of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass for solo work; and transliterating the 4th movement of Mahler’s 4th Symphony. My music teacher is very happy with my progress. I am also getting quite serious about sewing – mainly from a problem solving point of view; but having found out how much better hand made clothes are than shop bought ones, I am sneaking into the TAFE library photocopying parts of books on tailoring; and getting interested in geometric theorems and their application to drafting. I’m not talking fashion design, by the way. Think shorts, t shirts, trousers, long sleeved shirts, that sort of thing – although I have not forgotten the idea of ceremonial clothing that I mentioned to a few people some time ago. I’m also making soft toys with a view to making stuff for John to turn into porcelain fossils. See
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/
for pictures of his final year exhibition; and also the designs for a set of Stubby Coolers I have just made. You are invited to see innuendo in them. Consider the range of occasions when you might select on for a specific purpose. If you like I’ll design a set for you too. You can supply the pictures or consult my extensive collection. And while on the subject of Flickr, I’m still waiting on courageous individuals to email photos of themselves to caricature. For those hearing about this for the first time click on Caricatures in the right hand column of my Flickr page to see my what I mean – and then send your picture for inclusion in the Hall of the Game. Maybe you’d like a set of stubby coolers with pictures of yourself/family/friends looking frighteningly fiendish.
I very bravely set out to write a blog around the middle of the year, and was going gangbusters for a while, but, as I was warned, I stopped rather suddenly because it was taking up too much time. I’m not sure that I will ever get back to it, but it is going to be a convenient place to post documents such as John’s Artist statement. I have posted it today, as well as the monthly bulletins from June to November. If you want to read John’s artist statement click on
http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/
Finally, have you been watching the series Monarchy on TV? Last night it was about how the Stewarts (James I, Charles I, Charles II, James II) adopted a self serving ideology and tried to make Britain in their own image, resulting in Charles I losing his head. How strangely familiar that tale is – vaguely reminiscent of a certain politician who came to believe his own publicity that he thought he could remake a certain wide brown land in his own image, and ended up losing his seat!! Not that I’m gloating or anything. But, with apologies to those who have already heard this line, we must have all died and gone to Kevin.
Go Jollily!!
˜ ™
PS
Sox and Boof send their blessings.
See Flickr The Household for pictures of both of them and other family members who have joined the Communion of Saints.
PPS
After a couple of years of regular visits to a Urologist, I finally have a combination of medications that works. If you didn’t know I had been going to a specialist, you have missed all the drama. But don’t worry, I’m sure that at my age, there’ll be more. Life really IS short. I can remember so vividly that brief period of my life when mortality seemed like something that other people had to think about. And I look at bright young things now and relate as never before to poems like To his coy mistress (Type the following into Google if you are not familiar with the poem – or simply click on this link if you are reading this in an email Andrew Marvell: To his Coy Mistress. "Had we but world enough and ... )
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
After a long absence
After a long absence
I was warned that I would not be able to keep up writing regular blog posts. And it was so. I can’t say that I will get back to it on a regular basis, because other things are of higher priority. For now I am posting two items.
1. All of the monthly bulletins from June to November. They are all in this one post.
2. John’s Artist Statement re his current work, which appears after this blog.
There is so much more that I would like to say now that a certain putrid smell seems to be dissipating across the wide brown land. We must have all died and gone to Kevin.
–˜™—
May 2007
Hey H’lo,
I am waiting on permission to reproduce something from the Melbourne Age in my blog. In the mean time, I am sending it by email. See attached. Warning, if you like John Howard you might prefer to give it a miss. On the other hand, it is a factual analysis of a claim Howard has made about himself (and compares him with Master K. Rudd Esquire, on the same issues.) It’s worth a read.
It’s approaching two months since I cut loose. I wish I could report two months of worthwhile achievements. You might be interested in my solution to the Zimbabwe question (Blog 10/5/07) and my scheme to provide every artist in Australia (eventually the world) with $1 million each (Blog 29/4/07). There’s also a new group of photos in my Flickr account: Mystrees. They are what the poem …We are surprised is about.
The major addition since last time is the full text of Cyclone Dreaming. (There will be a few of these over the coming months until I have resurrected all of the Celebration Menus we had in our restaurant.) It is in 16 parts. The Introduction is Part 1 and explains what it’s all about. Enough to say here that it’s a meditation on “saving the world” . Just kidding. HALF. If you’re going to read it, you really do need to start from the beginning. I would welcome any dialogue that might flow from it. If you wish to participate, make comments and where you feel prompted, respond to other people’s comments as well as the work itself.
My music lessons are going well. The Maestro gave me some pieces that are infinitely harder than anything I’ve ever done before. John said that is a good sign. I hope he’s right, and that it’s not just the Maestro trying to get rid of me. Compared with his Conservatorium students I’m the equivalent of Pauline Hanson in politics. Please explain.
Have a nice day, and
Love your enemies.
June 2007
Ho Ho Ho,
Just kidding, but at the rate the year’s going it won’t be long. And anyway, it is winter – sort of – so a bit of jollity probably won’t go astray as debate hots up about who’s got the best medicine for global warming, the best IR laws and the biggest barrel of porkies.
What a strange month it’s been. Did I say this last time – I’m busier now than when I was working. Well if I did, you ain’t heard nuttin yet. Actually I need a holiday. I’ve done a time management course and have been out rounding up herds of escaped minutes, hours days and sending them to the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way where, as you know, estranged bits of space and time are stripped of their spaceness and timeness and reprocessed into quantum packages of space-time for distribution to everyone who’s short of time or squeezed for space. If that’s you, expect your package any time soon. You don’t have to apply, because the universe is like Santa Clause: it knows. (Why I mention the gentleman in red will become apparent if you read my blog.)
Fair dinkum, but, eh – wot with keyboard practice, reading for the courses I am preparing, and finishing off Cert IV in TAA (finished this coming Friday – yippee!!) I haven’t had time to write the great Australian novel, but hold your breath … no, not for it’s publication – someone farted. In relation to the latter mentioned magnum opus, I’ve just done a weekend creative writing workshop and am all fired up. And now I’m looking for the engage leaver. Not another ACE course, I hear someone saying. Well, yes, and two more to go this month. As I said to Carolyn on Sunday, I do ACE courses like other people do recreational drugs.
One of the problems I’ve had this last month is not enough time to blog. There’s new stuff there, but there’s even more on my hard drive awaiting completion. What’s been added in the last month is mainly political stuff. Some people will prefer not to look. But I commend to you two entries: Your stars as you’ve never seen them; and The Epiphany Celebration Menu. I hope you’ll get a larf out of both of them – in the case of the latter, the definitions at the end of the piece.
Ho! Ho! Ho!!!
July 2007
What a difference a (cold) day makes. It’s taken the onset of winter to finally make me start behaving like someone who doesn’t go to (paid) work every day. For the first three months I would wake up early, as was my want, and either get up or lie awake berating myself for not getting up. But the third or fourth day of the cold weather saw me not even waking up, let alone subjecting myself to the ravages of 10 degrees more or less. The first couple of days was hell. The third day I debated what to do and decided I was staying in bed. After that I threatened the cats with reprisals if they did not stop telling me they wanted breakfast. Get used to it I told them. Daddy’s taking care of himself from now on. So now instead of getting their ration of the national symbol (They like fresh Kangaroo meat, They like it served up warm, They like dining night and morn: They’re our pussies, They’re our cats, They’re the Nemesis of Rats.) at 5:00 am they get it at 7:30. Gosh! In the old daze I’d been at work half an hour by then.
For those who don’t liven in The Shire, good news. Next time you come to visit, we’ve got freeway all the way from the border to the Mullumbimby turn off. The final bit was finished last Sunday. We went for a drive on it today. It’s like living on another planet. So here to Brisbane is going to be “Beam me up Scotty.” Well, except for the Tugan imbroglio, of course, but even that will be fixed soon. South of here the freeway peters out somewhere between Byron Bay and Ballina. That’ll be next.
For the second month in a row I have done almost nothing on the blog – in spite of having decided to make it a priority. The problem is that when not going to (paid) work every day, things that “pop up” tend to demand immediate attention – and one tends to give in. But I’ve done a couple of ACE courses in Renewable Energy and Eco-Living. See blog.
Did I mention last month that I have joined the Mullumbimby choir? Singing lessons are going well. I’m in the tenor section, but at the moment I’m more like a fiver. Hope to get to the second G above middle C in the near future. We’re learning Vivaldi’s Gloria for a concert in November. I’m also being taught sight reading and performance technique. I’ll let you know when the Opera House concert is on.
I hope someone out there can help me here. Some time ago I loaned two talking books to someone and did not enter them into my loan register. I’m hoping it’s someone in this email group. If I’ve loaned them to you, could you please let me know? I don’t need them back at this time, but I’d like to know who’s got them. They’re both by Andrew McGahan; The White Earth, and Last Drinks. I’m also looking for the fifth book in the Earth’s Children series by Jean Auel. It’s called Shelters of Stone in hardback. I know I loaned it to someone but I can’t remember to whom, and someone else has asked for it.
Finally, we will be having a party here on 25 August 2007 from about 1:00 pm. If you wish to come could you please let us know by 17/8/07 so that we know how many limos to order. It’s John’s birthday on 28th. He’s back at TAFE and now in the home stretch – his final semester of the Diploma in Ceramics. His new thing is fossilised soft toys. You’ll just have to come to the party to see what that is but. Eh?
August 2007
Ah yeah g’day,
There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.
Something!??
Goll-EEEEEEEE I’d like to tell you everything,
but if I did,
I wouldn’t have to kill you –
you’d do it yourself.
Such is the burden of knowing it all.
Just ask me.
N E way, here’s the thing. In case you’re wondering how come you get emails from me that appear not to be addressed to you, here’s what I do. I put one of my email addresses in the To field, and everyone else’s in a group in the Bcc field. That way everyone’s address remains un-viewed by everyone else. I don’t know that that is necessary, but it’s what I do. It’s a hang over from a life of having to be aware of confidentiality issues. Why am I telling you this? Well, because you might think that you’re the only one getting the email, and gosh, I’d hate you to think I go to all that effort just for you. Um….. no…. that didn’t come out right…. But what the hell…. I’m sure you know what I mean.
Well another month and still no new blog posts. And so much has happened, both in the public domain and here on The Avenue, that has gone unremarked. It’s because two things have taken over my life. Singing and writing.
The Mullumbimby choir had a rehearsal with the Bangalow choir and the local chamber orchestra recently at St Martins in the Fields – well St Martins in Mullum, anyway, but doesn’t In the Fields sound so much nicer? Did I mention that we are doing one of Vivaldi’s Glorias? I have been working really hard on that – I’m not kidding, when you don’t know how to sight sing, it’s a slog. But I’m confidant that by November it will be all good, as they say. But then last Monday night I found out about all the other bits that are in the concert. So I have a significant repertoire to get my tonsils around. Consequently not much work is being done on the ACE courses. And I am doing a six week course on sight singing to catch up. By the way, I will soon graduate from being a fiver to a tenor. I am reaching the second G above middle C with ease these daze.
The other thing I am doing is getting back into the book. I was made aware of a publisher who is reading people’s first chapters and, though I really could have done without it at this particular time, I decided to take up the challenge, because, you know what they say – life is what happens when you’re making other plans. So I thought I had better… um… what’s that word I used to use … ah, yes: reprioritise.
The thing I feared most has happened as a result. As I started revising the first draft of Chapter 1 – written so long ago that it was virtually a former life – I got the urge again. No, not that urge, but it’s a feeling just as powerful. Paragraphs written in haste to “get it down” are now breaking open with rich and complex possibilities. I can be in the middle of doing something, like washing up, and I’ll be captured by an insight that becomes a stream of consciousness, to coin a phrase, and then a veritable torrent – a white water ride to who knows where. It really is like a drug. I become helpless. I have to obey. Go to your computer and write it down. Do it now! The problem is that I have other things to do. So I really DO have to reprioritise.
And that brings me to the point. As a trainer (Jump Fido! Sit! Stay! Beg! Good boy, here’s a job.) I am well aware of the organisational skills needed to get life under control when paid work is the main thing one does. But this situation is different. It’s not even like being self employed, which I was for ten years. It’s about being accountable to yourself for the opportunity that so few people have. There are so many things to do. They all need to be done. Each and every one of them could absorb my whole attention – indeed I would like each one to do so. But that’s impossible. So I have to become a lot more disciplined than I have ever been. In other words, it’s not the fun lifestyle you might suppose it to be. And here’s the punch line you aren’t expecting (if you are dragging yourself to paid work most daze): enjoy what you are doing. The grass is not greener.
May your daze be full of fruit.
September 2007
Yeehaa!! Or is it Gee Hard!!
It’s almost the end of the month. Almost time to get next month’s letter ready and I haven’t even done this month’s. Too much has happened, yet there’s very little to tell. We had a party for John’s birthday. Those who attended were a bit startled by the quantity and variety of the food on offer. I was a bit wrecked by it. Fourteen hours on my feet two days in a row gave me the worst case of shaggers back I have ever had. In spite of which we went to Gympie a week later for John’s parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Needless to say the drive was excruciating. I’ve only in the last few daze recovered from it. While we’re on the subject of parties, the next is on Saturday 27 October – after 1:00 pm as usual. It’s not for anything in particular. We’re having it because we can. And yes, I have learned. I’m not going to do the heroic catering thing again.
The topic I wish to share with you in this letter is what I have been reading lately – which is nothing. But what I have done is listen to a number of talking books as I tread my mill for twenty minutes twice a day @ 5 kph.
The first was Dirt Music (Tim Winton) – Yes, I know it’s been out a long time, but the title put me off. Silly me. Judging a book by its title. It’s about how two men of unequal power relate to each other and the woman in both of their lives. I almost said share, but that would definitely be the wrong word for her relationship with them. I don’t know how much I should say about it, because if you haven’t read it I might spoil it for you by saying too much. Suffice to say that it is a redemption story. The bloke with the upper hand surrenders his power, and his victim surrenders to the landscape… and what a landscape. The woman, of course, is not in need of redemption, but is instrumental in the reconciliation of the two male protagonists. I haven’t mentioned music yet, have I. Well it is there throughout the story, but comes into full play, to coin a phrase, towards the end of the book. I was going to try to attach a music file to this email, but found I couldn’t. So here’s the thing. The main male protagonist – mmp – (whose name I forget) is given a lift by a couple. She is dying from cancer. At one point she asks hubby to play an Arvo Part disc. “Lets have some Arvo in the arvo,” she says. Much later, when the mmp is as far away from people as it possible to get, he hears the same music in his mind’s ear and realises he has just “witnessed” the death of the woman. The piece of music is called Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten. How do I know this? Trust me. It is. And it is on a disc called “The Best of Arvo Part” EMI. Seriously worth a listen.
Second: The boy in the striped pyjamas (John Boyne) – A nine year old boy moves with his family to a place called Outwith, from a very comfortable life in Berlin. They are important enough to have had the Fury to their place for dinner. As boys of his age often do, he manages to do the impossible (no, this is not Harry Potter) – he strikes up a relationship with a boy about the same age as himself on the other side of the fence that divides their worlds at Outwith. The outcome is breath taking.
Third: On Chesil Beach(Ian McEwan) – It’s 1961. You may not remember this, but in those days it was not uncommon for people to be virgins when they got married – as is the case with the protagonists of this novel. Though the story surveys much about their lives up to their wedding day, the timeline is their wedding night, with a very brief indication in the last chapter of what happens to them in subsequent years. Even though it is rare these days for people to have sex for the first time on their wedding night, everyone who has ever had sex had a first time. This story will not, therefore, be totally unfamiliar. Even if it wasn’t a trauma for you, you almost certainly know someone for whom it was. This is a tragi-comedy. I don’t think it’s meant to be, but I couldn’t suppress several guffaws as I read – um, listened.
Fourth: Underground (Andrew McGahan) – Talk about leaving the good wine until last!!
If you don’t know this author, let me tell you about two of his other books first. The White Earth won the Miles Franklin Award in 2005. It is set on the Darling Downs in more or less contemporary times. A young boy grows up with unrealistic expectations about his future role on the property where his father is the Overseer. He is disabused of his fantasy in the (for him) most humiliating way and spends the rest of his life manoeuvring to gain control of it – which he does, at awesome cost to himself and just about everyone else except his grandson, who moved to the property with his mother after his father dies (on the first page of the book). McGahan draws on political issues that are universal and shows how they unfold as particular stories in particular places. The grandfather starts out looking like a typical Queensland “squatter” and develops in a way that shows how simple our conception of that type of person really is. Queensland politics gave us Joh and Pauline. While this book refers to neither of them, it leaves you in no doubt about just how extraordinarily complex is the social milieu that spawns such “interesting” characters. This book is a political thriller without ever mentioning politics.
Unlike Last Drinks, which is explicitly about politics in Queensland. It is set ten years after the Fitzgerald enquiry and involves half a dozen people who were involved one way or another. It revolves around a brutal death and the attempt of the story’s protagonist to find out who was responsible. Along the way we see into the worlds of people who profited from political corruption – from Ministers and their masters in the Queensland Establishment that (still) manages to live above the law, to sleazy restaurateurs. At the end McGahan fires both barrels at the way things are still done in Queensland. I have to say that, even though I lived there most of my life, there are fundamental things about the way the Queensland operates that I didn’t know – which, of course, is the point of the book.
That beings me to Underground, his most recent book. I needed to tell you about the other two books make the point that McGahan is about political thrillers. Well they don’t get much more political or thrilling than this one! It is set in the very near future. So near that it could be happening now. Canberra is nuked and whole country goes into lock down as the very worst excesses of “security” unfold and facilitate the ascendancy of the loony right. There are conspiracies within conspiracies, and it wouldn’t be about Australia if there wasn’t a resistance movement: the underground of the title, who, like the Anzacs, lose. I haven’t given anything away here: they wouldn’t be Australian heroes if they won. Just when you think you’ve seen the twist towards which the story is moving…. Oops, almost said too much now. But let me add this: imagine that John Howard loses the coming election, and, unable to accept that the people could possibly reject so successful a government, declares that there has been widespread foul play in the election count and suspends the constitution….. Implausible? Well, a little known piece of research done in the late 80s showed that a very large percentage of the Australian military would have supported a military coup if Malcolm Frazer had not been elected in 1975. As McGahan shows in Last Drinks, Queensland has not moved on since the Fitzgerald enquiry. And while it may satisfy the hubris of people from other states to say that Queensland is, well, Queensland, let’s not forget that One Nation got a million votes – most of them from the other states.
Singing is going well. If you live locally the performances the choir is preparing for are as follows:
Sunday 4th October 2007 2:00 pm St Mary’s Church BALLINA
Thursday 7th October 2007 7:00 pm St Andrew’s Church LISMORE
Sunday 11th October 2007 2:00 pm St Martin’s Church MULLUMBIMBY
I don’t yet know how much tickets will be. It’s actually two choirs, from Mullumbimby and Bangalow, with a local Chamber Orchestra. The main piece in the concert is a Gloria by Vivaldi.
John is approaching the end of his Diploma in Ceramics and working frantically to complete work not only for assessment, but also for exhibition as well as for sale. Don’t let anyone tell you life as an artist is fun. It’s really hard work. His latest work can be seen on Flickr. The easiest way of accessing is to type “twogreytoes” into Google. You’ll probably see half a dozen links, one of which will be this one: Flickr: Photos from twogreytoes. Click on it and it will take you to my Flickr site. As of today 23/9/07, John’s photos will appear first. But as I add more they will be down the list a bit. So on the right hand side of the page, click on Porcelain fossils, and that group will open. Oh, and by the way, if you’re coming to my Flickr site for the first time, be warned: in the group called Caricatures you may see a photo of yourself that you are likely to find unflattering or hilarious. If you don’t find one and you’d like to be in there, email me a head shot and I’ll do my best to make you look very peculiar.
Bliss your followers (or follow your bliss as preferred)
October 2007
Howdy foaks!!
Here’s a story to make you wonder. A couple of weeks a go I was in the Barbershop at Mullumbimby and saw a sign: Gourmet Rabbits @ IGA. Mmmmmmmm, I thought. Haven’t had rabbit for ages, so I enquired, but, no luck.
The sign must have been one of those random items of mis-information planted by the world’s security services to focus people’s attention on terrorism. Don’t know how it works? Me either, but they get paid a lot of money to keep us safe, so it must work.
N E Way, not to be deterred, I went to the two butchers in town. Same result. So I just put it down to experience.
Next morning, I got up earlier than usual and sat down at the computer after letting the cats out, but within seconds decided to go back to bed.
Some time later John got up to investigate a noise, and woke me up to have a look at what Boofie (one of our cats) had brought in: a rabbit kitten!!
The poor thing was scarred out of its wits and was playing possum when John picked it up, but when he took it back outside it bolted as soon as he put it on the lawn.
Like I said – makes you wonder.
Did Wooli as usual at the beginning of the month. Took hundreds of photos which I am in the process of selecting and photoshopping for Flicker. Don’t know how long it will be before they’re up, but I’ll let you know when they are. I have had some good reactions from people who’ve previewed them.
In the mean time, have a look at the attached picture.
It’s a Dragonflopter parked on the Wooli Heliport.
Not everyone actually sees it.
You have to believe in faeries just to be able to see it, let alone take the sight seeing tour in it.
Little red sausage.
(Cheerio)
November 2007
Remember November! What a month! The combined choirs and orchestra had our three concerts. They went like a Harley, by the way. You know – better than a Triumph. John finished his diploma – distinctions to burn – and was selected to represent the North Coast Institute of TAFE at a state wide exhibition in Sydney in January. AND! Kevin thrashed Voldemort!! In fact, we must have all died and gone to Kevin.
There are pictures of the work John put in the Graduating Students Exhibition on Flickr. Click on http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/ to view. If the first pictures you see don’t look like stuff in an exhibition, click on the icon for JOHN’S DIPLOMA EXHIBITION on the right hand side of the screen.
I have just finished reading Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth. It is set in the 12th Century, 1123 – 1174, and the pivotal event is the building of a cathedral. I was expecting it to be much more about the design and construction process than it turned out to be. Nevertheless, it is a page turner. It is a good exposition of life shortly after the beginning of the second millennium. Civil war is raging in England and the robber barons can use the fact that there is no King’s Peace as an excuse to do what they like. A master builder is walking the roads of southern England with his family in search of work. His wife dies giving birth to a son who is abandoned by its father and rescued by a priest. The mason and his two children are starving when they arrive at the Cathedral village (sic) of Kingsbridge, where the Benedictine Priory in charge of the cathedral is about to get a new Prior. With them is a woman and her son whom they met up with along the way. That night the cathedral burns to the ground. (If you can’t imagine how a sandstone building can burn to the ground, you’re in for a treat if you read this book.) At the same time the Bishop of Kingsbridge dies and an unscrupulous cleric (is there any other kind – well, yes, actually) manipulates people in the Priory to support his election as bishop. And finally, the Earl of Shiring dies and is succeeded by his power hungry but utterly incompetent son. The mason gets the job of building a new cathedral, and the new Earl and new Bishop conspire to bring down the new Prior, who, in contrast to his persecutors, is a paragon of integrity. Compared with its predecessor, the new cathedral will be spectacular. The cathedral village flourishes and becomes a town. The Earl is jealous and burns it to the ground, but the people rebuild – and notice, incidentally, how few of them become ill after that. The Earl has another go, but… well, you know the mantra: A people united, will never be defeated!! Ah, but what does it take to unite a people? Well read this book and find out, because that is actually what it is really all about. Is power absolute or not; and who stands up to those who would presume to rule without consent? And at what cost to themselves.
Speaking of leadership that makes a difference: what about Get Up?!! Personally, I believe that it was Get Up that turned the tide. Going in to bat for David Hicks reminded those of us who were despairing in the face of the Howard Government’s blatant and successful use of lies and other divide and rule tactics, that power is not absolute in the face of committed resistance. And by the way, if you voted for the coalition and you think Get Up is only for Greens and Labor types, think again. Check it out. Get Up’s structure is actually non-partisan. It campaigns on issues of justice. It is therefore as open to coalition sympathisers, especially now that Labor is in power.
By the way, why is this November bulletin going out in mid December? Well everyone’s busier than bees at this time of year – even people who do not work for money. Singing and sewing can fill one’s day to the point where other important things get left behind. Such is life.
Hope youse are all luvinit. I am.
I was warned that I would not be able to keep up writing regular blog posts. And it was so. I can’t say that I will get back to it on a regular basis, because other things are of higher priority. For now I am posting two items.
1. All of the monthly bulletins from June to November. They are all in this one post.
2. John’s Artist Statement re his current work, which appears after this blog.
There is so much more that I would like to say now that a certain putrid smell seems to be dissipating across the wide brown land. We must have all died and gone to Kevin.
–˜™—
May 2007
Hey H’lo,
I am waiting on permission to reproduce something from the Melbourne Age in my blog. In the mean time, I am sending it by email. See attached. Warning, if you like John Howard you might prefer to give it a miss. On the other hand, it is a factual analysis of a claim Howard has made about himself (and compares him with Master K. Rudd Esquire, on the same issues.) It’s worth a read.
It’s approaching two months since I cut loose. I wish I could report two months of worthwhile achievements. You might be interested in my solution to the Zimbabwe question (Blog 10/5/07) and my scheme to provide every artist in Australia (eventually the world) with $1 million each (Blog 29/4/07). There’s also a new group of photos in my Flickr account: Mystrees. They are what the poem …We are surprised is about.
The major addition since last time is the full text of Cyclone Dreaming. (There will be a few of these over the coming months until I have resurrected all of the Celebration Menus we had in our restaurant.) It is in 16 parts. The Introduction is Part 1 and explains what it’s all about. Enough to say here that it’s a meditation on “saving the world” . Just kidding. HALF. If you’re going to read it, you really do need to start from the beginning. I would welcome any dialogue that might flow from it. If you wish to participate, make comments and where you feel prompted, respond to other people’s comments as well as the work itself.
My music lessons are going well. The Maestro gave me some pieces that are infinitely harder than anything I’ve ever done before. John said that is a good sign. I hope he’s right, and that it’s not just the Maestro trying to get rid of me. Compared with his Conservatorium students I’m the equivalent of Pauline Hanson in politics. Please explain.
Have a nice day, and
Love your enemies.
June 2007
Ho Ho Ho,
Just kidding, but at the rate the year’s going it won’t be long. And anyway, it is winter – sort of – so a bit of jollity probably won’t go astray as debate hots up about who’s got the best medicine for global warming, the best IR laws and the biggest barrel of porkies.
What a strange month it’s been. Did I say this last time – I’m busier now than when I was working. Well if I did, you ain’t heard nuttin yet. Actually I need a holiday. I’ve done a time management course and have been out rounding up herds of escaped minutes, hours days and sending them to the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way where, as you know, estranged bits of space and time are stripped of their spaceness and timeness and reprocessed into quantum packages of space-time for distribution to everyone who’s short of time or squeezed for space. If that’s you, expect your package any time soon. You don’t have to apply, because the universe is like Santa Clause: it knows. (Why I mention the gentleman in red will become apparent if you read my blog.)
Fair dinkum, but, eh – wot with keyboard practice, reading for the courses I am preparing, and finishing off Cert IV in TAA (finished this coming Friday – yippee!!) I haven’t had time to write the great Australian novel, but hold your breath … no, not for it’s publication – someone farted. In relation to the latter mentioned magnum opus, I’ve just done a weekend creative writing workshop and am all fired up. And now I’m looking for the engage leaver. Not another ACE course, I hear someone saying. Well, yes, and two more to go this month. As I said to Carolyn on Sunday, I do ACE courses like other people do recreational drugs.
One of the problems I’ve had this last month is not enough time to blog. There’s new stuff there, but there’s even more on my hard drive awaiting completion. What’s been added in the last month is mainly political stuff. Some people will prefer not to look. But I commend to you two entries: Your stars as you’ve never seen them; and The Epiphany Celebration Menu. I hope you’ll get a larf out of both of them – in the case of the latter, the definitions at the end of the piece.
Ho! Ho! Ho!!!
July 2007
What a difference a (cold) day makes. It’s taken the onset of winter to finally make me start behaving like someone who doesn’t go to (paid) work every day. For the first three months I would wake up early, as was my want, and either get up or lie awake berating myself for not getting up. But the third or fourth day of the cold weather saw me not even waking up, let alone subjecting myself to the ravages of 10 degrees more or less. The first couple of days was hell. The third day I debated what to do and decided I was staying in bed. After that I threatened the cats with reprisals if they did not stop telling me they wanted breakfast. Get used to it I told them. Daddy’s taking care of himself from now on. So now instead of getting their ration of the national symbol (They like fresh Kangaroo meat, They like it served up warm, They like dining night and morn: They’re our pussies, They’re our cats, They’re the Nemesis of Rats.) at 5:00 am they get it at 7:30. Gosh! In the old daze I’d been at work half an hour by then.
For those who don’t liven in The Shire, good news. Next time you come to visit, we’ve got freeway all the way from the border to the Mullumbimby turn off. The final bit was finished last Sunday. We went for a drive on it today. It’s like living on another planet. So here to Brisbane is going to be “Beam me up Scotty.” Well, except for the Tugan imbroglio, of course, but even that will be fixed soon. South of here the freeway peters out somewhere between Byron Bay and Ballina. That’ll be next.
For the second month in a row I have done almost nothing on the blog – in spite of having decided to make it a priority. The problem is that when not going to (paid) work every day, things that “pop up” tend to demand immediate attention – and one tends to give in. But I’ve done a couple of ACE courses in Renewable Energy and Eco-Living. See blog.
Did I mention last month that I have joined the Mullumbimby choir? Singing lessons are going well. I’m in the tenor section, but at the moment I’m more like a fiver. Hope to get to the second G above middle C in the near future. We’re learning Vivaldi’s Gloria for a concert in November. I’m also being taught sight reading and performance technique. I’ll let you know when the Opera House concert is on.
I hope someone out there can help me here. Some time ago I loaned two talking books to someone and did not enter them into my loan register. I’m hoping it’s someone in this email group. If I’ve loaned them to you, could you please let me know? I don’t need them back at this time, but I’d like to know who’s got them. They’re both by Andrew McGahan; The White Earth, and Last Drinks. I’m also looking for the fifth book in the Earth’s Children series by Jean Auel. It’s called Shelters of Stone in hardback. I know I loaned it to someone but I can’t remember to whom, and someone else has asked for it.
Finally, we will be having a party here on 25 August 2007 from about 1:00 pm. If you wish to come could you please let us know by 17/8/07 so that we know how many limos to order. It’s John’s birthday on 28th. He’s back at TAFE and now in the home stretch – his final semester of the Diploma in Ceramics. His new thing is fossilised soft toys. You’ll just have to come to the party to see what that is but. Eh?
August 2007
Ah yeah g’day,
There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.
Something!??
Goll-EEEEEEEE I’d like to tell you everything,
but if I did,
I wouldn’t have to kill you –
you’d do it yourself.
Such is the burden of knowing it all.
Just ask me.
N E way, here’s the thing. In case you’re wondering how come you get emails from me that appear not to be addressed to you, here’s what I do. I put one of my email addresses in the To field, and everyone else’s in a group in the Bcc field. That way everyone’s address remains un-viewed by everyone else. I don’t know that that is necessary, but it’s what I do. It’s a hang over from a life of having to be aware of confidentiality issues. Why am I telling you this? Well, because you might think that you’re the only one getting the email, and gosh, I’d hate you to think I go to all that effort just for you. Um….. no…. that didn’t come out right…. But what the hell…. I’m sure you know what I mean.
Well another month and still no new blog posts. And so much has happened, both in the public domain and here on The Avenue, that has gone unremarked. It’s because two things have taken over my life. Singing and writing.
The Mullumbimby choir had a rehearsal with the Bangalow choir and the local chamber orchestra recently at St Martins in the Fields – well St Martins in Mullum, anyway, but doesn’t In the Fields sound so much nicer? Did I mention that we are doing one of Vivaldi’s Glorias? I have been working really hard on that – I’m not kidding, when you don’t know how to sight sing, it’s a slog. But I’m confidant that by November it will be all good, as they say. But then last Monday night I found out about all the other bits that are in the concert. So I have a significant repertoire to get my tonsils around. Consequently not much work is being done on the ACE courses. And I am doing a six week course on sight singing to catch up. By the way, I will soon graduate from being a fiver to a tenor. I am reaching the second G above middle C with ease these daze.
The other thing I am doing is getting back into the book. I was made aware of a publisher who is reading people’s first chapters and, though I really could have done without it at this particular time, I decided to take up the challenge, because, you know what they say – life is what happens when you’re making other plans. So I thought I had better… um… what’s that word I used to use … ah, yes: reprioritise.
The thing I feared most has happened as a result. As I started revising the first draft of Chapter 1 – written so long ago that it was virtually a former life – I got the urge again. No, not that urge, but it’s a feeling just as powerful. Paragraphs written in haste to “get it down” are now breaking open with rich and complex possibilities. I can be in the middle of doing something, like washing up, and I’ll be captured by an insight that becomes a stream of consciousness, to coin a phrase, and then a veritable torrent – a white water ride to who knows where. It really is like a drug. I become helpless. I have to obey. Go to your computer and write it down. Do it now! The problem is that I have other things to do. So I really DO have to reprioritise.
And that brings me to the point. As a trainer (Jump Fido! Sit! Stay! Beg! Good boy, here’s a job.) I am well aware of the organisational skills needed to get life under control when paid work is the main thing one does. But this situation is different. It’s not even like being self employed, which I was for ten years. It’s about being accountable to yourself for the opportunity that so few people have. There are so many things to do. They all need to be done. Each and every one of them could absorb my whole attention – indeed I would like each one to do so. But that’s impossible. So I have to become a lot more disciplined than I have ever been. In other words, it’s not the fun lifestyle you might suppose it to be. And here’s the punch line you aren’t expecting (if you are dragging yourself to paid work most daze): enjoy what you are doing. The grass is not greener.
May your daze be full of fruit.
September 2007
Yeehaa!! Or is it Gee Hard!!
It’s almost the end of the month. Almost time to get next month’s letter ready and I haven’t even done this month’s. Too much has happened, yet there’s very little to tell. We had a party for John’s birthday. Those who attended were a bit startled by the quantity and variety of the food on offer. I was a bit wrecked by it. Fourteen hours on my feet two days in a row gave me the worst case of shaggers back I have ever had. In spite of which we went to Gympie a week later for John’s parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Needless to say the drive was excruciating. I’ve only in the last few daze recovered from it. While we’re on the subject of parties, the next is on Saturday 27 October – after 1:00 pm as usual. It’s not for anything in particular. We’re having it because we can. And yes, I have learned. I’m not going to do the heroic catering thing again.
The topic I wish to share with you in this letter is what I have been reading lately – which is nothing. But what I have done is listen to a number of talking books as I tread my mill for twenty minutes twice a day @ 5 kph.
The first was Dirt Music (Tim Winton) – Yes, I know it’s been out a long time, but the title put me off. Silly me. Judging a book by its title. It’s about how two men of unequal power relate to each other and the woman in both of their lives. I almost said share, but that would definitely be the wrong word for her relationship with them. I don’t know how much I should say about it, because if you haven’t read it I might spoil it for you by saying too much. Suffice to say that it is a redemption story. The bloke with the upper hand surrenders his power, and his victim surrenders to the landscape… and what a landscape. The woman, of course, is not in need of redemption, but is instrumental in the reconciliation of the two male protagonists. I haven’t mentioned music yet, have I. Well it is there throughout the story, but comes into full play, to coin a phrase, towards the end of the book. I was going to try to attach a music file to this email, but found I couldn’t. So here’s the thing. The main male protagonist – mmp – (whose name I forget) is given a lift by a couple. She is dying from cancer. At one point she asks hubby to play an Arvo Part disc. “Lets have some Arvo in the arvo,” she says. Much later, when the mmp is as far away from people as it possible to get, he hears the same music in his mind’s ear and realises he has just “witnessed” the death of the woman. The piece of music is called Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten. How do I know this? Trust me. It is. And it is on a disc called “The Best of Arvo Part” EMI. Seriously worth a listen.
Second: The boy in the striped pyjamas (John Boyne) – A nine year old boy moves with his family to a place called Outwith, from a very comfortable life in Berlin. They are important enough to have had the Fury to their place for dinner. As boys of his age often do, he manages to do the impossible (no, this is not Harry Potter) – he strikes up a relationship with a boy about the same age as himself on the other side of the fence that divides their worlds at Outwith. The outcome is breath taking.
Third: On Chesil Beach(Ian McEwan) – It’s 1961. You may not remember this, but in those days it was not uncommon for people to be virgins when they got married – as is the case with the protagonists of this novel. Though the story surveys much about their lives up to their wedding day, the timeline is their wedding night, with a very brief indication in the last chapter of what happens to them in subsequent years. Even though it is rare these days for people to have sex for the first time on their wedding night, everyone who has ever had sex had a first time. This story will not, therefore, be totally unfamiliar. Even if it wasn’t a trauma for you, you almost certainly know someone for whom it was. This is a tragi-comedy. I don’t think it’s meant to be, but I couldn’t suppress several guffaws as I read – um, listened.
Fourth: Underground (Andrew McGahan) – Talk about leaving the good wine until last!!
If you don’t know this author, let me tell you about two of his other books first. The White Earth won the Miles Franklin Award in 2005. It is set on the Darling Downs in more or less contemporary times. A young boy grows up with unrealistic expectations about his future role on the property where his father is the Overseer. He is disabused of his fantasy in the (for him) most humiliating way and spends the rest of his life manoeuvring to gain control of it – which he does, at awesome cost to himself and just about everyone else except his grandson, who moved to the property with his mother after his father dies (on the first page of the book). McGahan draws on political issues that are universal and shows how they unfold as particular stories in particular places. The grandfather starts out looking like a typical Queensland “squatter” and develops in a way that shows how simple our conception of that type of person really is. Queensland politics gave us Joh and Pauline. While this book refers to neither of them, it leaves you in no doubt about just how extraordinarily complex is the social milieu that spawns such “interesting” characters. This book is a political thriller without ever mentioning politics.
Unlike Last Drinks, which is explicitly about politics in Queensland. It is set ten years after the Fitzgerald enquiry and involves half a dozen people who were involved one way or another. It revolves around a brutal death and the attempt of the story’s protagonist to find out who was responsible. Along the way we see into the worlds of people who profited from political corruption – from Ministers and their masters in the Queensland Establishment that (still) manages to live above the law, to sleazy restaurateurs. At the end McGahan fires both barrels at the way things are still done in Queensland. I have to say that, even though I lived there most of my life, there are fundamental things about the way the Queensland operates that I didn’t know – which, of course, is the point of the book.
That beings me to Underground, his most recent book. I needed to tell you about the other two books make the point that McGahan is about political thrillers. Well they don’t get much more political or thrilling than this one! It is set in the very near future. So near that it could be happening now. Canberra is nuked and whole country goes into lock down as the very worst excesses of “security” unfold and facilitate the ascendancy of the loony right. There are conspiracies within conspiracies, and it wouldn’t be about Australia if there wasn’t a resistance movement: the underground of the title, who, like the Anzacs, lose. I haven’t given anything away here: they wouldn’t be Australian heroes if they won. Just when you think you’ve seen the twist towards which the story is moving…. Oops, almost said too much now. But let me add this: imagine that John Howard loses the coming election, and, unable to accept that the people could possibly reject so successful a government, declares that there has been widespread foul play in the election count and suspends the constitution….. Implausible? Well, a little known piece of research done in the late 80s showed that a very large percentage of the Australian military would have supported a military coup if Malcolm Frazer had not been elected in 1975. As McGahan shows in Last Drinks, Queensland has not moved on since the Fitzgerald enquiry. And while it may satisfy the hubris of people from other states to say that Queensland is, well, Queensland, let’s not forget that One Nation got a million votes – most of them from the other states.
Singing is going well. If you live locally the performances the choir is preparing for are as follows:
Sunday 4th October 2007 2:00 pm St Mary’s Church BALLINA
Thursday 7th October 2007 7:00 pm St Andrew’s Church LISMORE
Sunday 11th October 2007 2:00 pm St Martin’s Church MULLUMBIMBY
I don’t yet know how much tickets will be. It’s actually two choirs, from Mullumbimby and Bangalow, with a local Chamber Orchestra. The main piece in the concert is a Gloria by Vivaldi.
John is approaching the end of his Diploma in Ceramics and working frantically to complete work not only for assessment, but also for exhibition as well as for sale. Don’t let anyone tell you life as an artist is fun. It’s really hard work. His latest work can be seen on Flickr. The easiest way of accessing is to type “twogreytoes” into Google. You’ll probably see half a dozen links, one of which will be this one: Flickr: Photos from twogreytoes. Click on it and it will take you to my Flickr site. As of today 23/9/07, John’s photos will appear first. But as I add more they will be down the list a bit. So on the right hand side of the page, click on Porcelain fossils, and that group will open. Oh, and by the way, if you’re coming to my Flickr site for the first time, be warned: in the group called Caricatures you may see a photo of yourself that you are likely to find unflattering or hilarious. If you don’t find one and you’d like to be in there, email me a head shot and I’ll do my best to make you look very peculiar.
Bliss your followers (or follow your bliss as preferred)
October 2007
Howdy foaks!!
Here’s a story to make you wonder. A couple of weeks a go I was in the Barbershop at Mullumbimby and saw a sign: Gourmet Rabbits @ IGA. Mmmmmmmm, I thought. Haven’t had rabbit for ages, so I enquired, but, no luck.
The sign must have been one of those random items of mis-information planted by the world’s security services to focus people’s attention on terrorism. Don’t know how it works? Me either, but they get paid a lot of money to keep us safe, so it must work.
N E Way, not to be deterred, I went to the two butchers in town. Same result. So I just put it down to experience.
Next morning, I got up earlier than usual and sat down at the computer after letting the cats out, but within seconds decided to go back to bed.
Some time later John got up to investigate a noise, and woke me up to have a look at what Boofie (one of our cats) had brought in: a rabbit kitten!!
The poor thing was scarred out of its wits and was playing possum when John picked it up, but when he took it back outside it bolted as soon as he put it on the lawn.
Like I said – makes you wonder.
Did Wooli as usual at the beginning of the month. Took hundreds of photos which I am in the process of selecting and photoshopping for Flicker. Don’t know how long it will be before they’re up, but I’ll let you know when they are. I have had some good reactions from people who’ve previewed them.
In the mean time, have a look at the attached picture.
It’s a Dragonflopter parked on the Wooli Heliport.
Not everyone actually sees it.
You have to believe in faeries just to be able to see it, let alone take the sight seeing tour in it.
Little red sausage.
(Cheerio)
November 2007
Remember November! What a month! The combined choirs and orchestra had our three concerts. They went like a Harley, by the way. You know – better than a Triumph. John finished his diploma – distinctions to burn – and was selected to represent the North Coast Institute of TAFE at a state wide exhibition in Sydney in January. AND! Kevin thrashed Voldemort!! In fact, we must have all died and gone to Kevin.
There are pictures of the work John put in the Graduating Students Exhibition on Flickr. Click on http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/ to view. If the first pictures you see don’t look like stuff in an exhibition, click on the icon for JOHN’S DIPLOMA EXHIBITION on the right hand side of the screen.
I have just finished reading Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth. It is set in the 12th Century, 1123 – 1174, and the pivotal event is the building of a cathedral. I was expecting it to be much more about the design and construction process than it turned out to be. Nevertheless, it is a page turner. It is a good exposition of life shortly after the beginning of the second millennium. Civil war is raging in England and the robber barons can use the fact that there is no King’s Peace as an excuse to do what they like. A master builder is walking the roads of southern England with his family in search of work. His wife dies giving birth to a son who is abandoned by its father and rescued by a priest. The mason and his two children are starving when they arrive at the Cathedral village (sic) of Kingsbridge, where the Benedictine Priory in charge of the cathedral is about to get a new Prior. With them is a woman and her son whom they met up with along the way. That night the cathedral burns to the ground. (If you can’t imagine how a sandstone building can burn to the ground, you’re in for a treat if you read this book.) At the same time the Bishop of Kingsbridge dies and an unscrupulous cleric (is there any other kind – well, yes, actually) manipulates people in the Priory to support his election as bishop. And finally, the Earl of Shiring dies and is succeeded by his power hungry but utterly incompetent son. The mason gets the job of building a new cathedral, and the new Earl and new Bishop conspire to bring down the new Prior, who, in contrast to his persecutors, is a paragon of integrity. Compared with its predecessor, the new cathedral will be spectacular. The cathedral village flourishes and becomes a town. The Earl is jealous and burns it to the ground, but the people rebuild – and notice, incidentally, how few of them become ill after that. The Earl has another go, but… well, you know the mantra: A people united, will never be defeated!! Ah, but what does it take to unite a people? Well read this book and find out, because that is actually what it is really all about. Is power absolute or not; and who stands up to those who would presume to rule without consent? And at what cost to themselves.
Speaking of leadership that makes a difference: what about Get Up?!! Personally, I believe that it was Get Up that turned the tide. Going in to bat for David Hicks reminded those of us who were despairing in the face of the Howard Government’s blatant and successful use of lies and other divide and rule tactics, that power is not absolute in the face of committed resistance. And by the way, if you voted for the coalition and you think Get Up is only for Greens and Labor types, think again. Check it out. Get Up’s structure is actually non-partisan. It campaigns on issues of justice. It is therefore as open to coalition sympathisers, especially now that Labor is in power.
By the way, why is this November bulletin going out in mid December? Well everyone’s busier than bees at this time of year – even people who do not work for money. Singing and sewing can fill one’s day to the point where other important things get left behind. Such is life.
Hope youse are all luvinit. I am.
John Walters Personal Statement
John Walters Personal Statement
I have been creating a body of work exploring the technique of porcelain slip dipped recycled objects. These consist of soft furnishings,clothing,plush toys, knitted and crocheted objects. This gives a glimpse of contemporary life in Australia. By careful selecting my subject matter I am able to give a sample of society's activities through our fashion, the toys we purchase not only for ourselves but also for our children, leisure activities and stories we grow up with.
Growing up in a family of craft people, not only were our clothes hand made but also most of our toys and furniture. These skills over time have diminished to such a degree that today few exist. Most things are mass produced in China for various companies in various countries. With globalisation these objects find there way into our homes and lives, eventually ending up as landfill. Over time some may end up as fossils, but more likly they will produce toxic waste.
By slip dipping and firing the objects to stoneware I am able to create an image of the object which is only a façade, similar in features but it noway relates to the original function of the object. They become a memory, an instant fossil of contemporary society. Just like Pompeii frozen in time recording a history of everyday objects and activities. Destined to last much longer than the original.
All these objects in our past history would have probably been made by women, seen as a duty of being a good mum or wife. The skills being passed from generation to generation and classified as crafts. For thousands of years this existed but now due to the ever increasing demands by society, technology, the industrial age and globalisation the skills are no longer being used.
Ceramics like other skills in most cases is thought of as a craft and is diminishing. By marrying clay with other objects which would have originally been classified as craft, I hope to be able to develop a body of work which directly relates to todays society. Reflecting our lives, recording our likes and creating art from crafts and mass produced objects.
I have been creating a body of work exploring the technique of porcelain slip dipped recycled objects. These consist of soft furnishings,clothing,plush toys, knitted and crocheted objects. This gives a glimpse of contemporary life in Australia. By careful selecting my subject matter I am able to give a sample of society's activities through our fashion, the toys we purchase not only for ourselves but also for our children, leisure activities and stories we grow up with.
Growing up in a family of craft people, not only were our clothes hand made but also most of our toys and furniture. These skills over time have diminished to such a degree that today few exist. Most things are mass produced in China for various companies in various countries. With globalisation these objects find there way into our homes and lives, eventually ending up as landfill. Over time some may end up as fossils, but more likly they will produce toxic waste.
By slip dipping and firing the objects to stoneware I am able to create an image of the object which is only a façade, similar in features but it noway relates to the original function of the object. They become a memory, an instant fossil of contemporary society. Just like Pompeii frozen in time recording a history of everyday objects and activities. Destined to last much longer than the original.
All these objects in our past history would have probably been made by women, seen as a duty of being a good mum or wife. The skills being passed from generation to generation and classified as crafts. For thousands of years this existed but now due to the ever increasing demands by society, technology, the industrial age and globalisation the skills are no longer being used.
Ceramics like other skills in most cases is thought of as a craft and is diminishing. By marrying clay with other objects which would have originally been classified as craft, I hope to be able to develop a body of work which directly relates to todays society. Reflecting our lives, recording our likes and creating art from crafts and mass produced objects.
Tuesday, 17 July 2007
Sunday, 15 July 2007
Renewable Energy
…and they shall renew the face of the earth…
Remember how people used to do things? Like grow much of their own food, fix their own cars, invent pedal radio – or build them after someone else had invented it, and talk to strangers far away who had done the same thing. Later on pedal radio was replaced by ham radio. Well, I think something like that might be coming back. Despite the treacherous efforts of John Howard to keep us consuming for the sake of the economy, I have a feeling that the engine of Climate Change will drive the emergence of widespread participation in renewables: energy, water, food production – that sort of thing. I can see a whole new generation of people crawling around on their rooves tinkering with connections and adjusting the tilt of solar panels and so on; sharing tips in the pub and generally renewing the face of the Earth. I recently met half a dozen such people when I did a course on Renewable Energy at ACE in Grafton. I was the only one who was a complete novice. All the others had tales of daring do – like the Argonauts who’d found the Golden Fleece and were having rip roaring adventures bringing it home. I’m looking down the barrel of imminent retirement and have been giving some thoughts to how to cut down recurrent expenses – and give myself something more to do that run five ACE courses, write another book, make websites, sing in a choir, play the piano and everything else that one needs to do to keep busy until one’s 100th year. So I’m doing appropriate courses to get myself started, and I thought I’d share something with you. If you’re going to go solar do seriously consider doing such a course if there’s one on offer in a classroom near you. It’s a much more complex undertaking than I imagined – but seriously worth the effort, I hasten to say. There are many critical issues that a supplier might not give you adequate advise on (to cut costs, i.e. increase profit margin) if you’re not aware of them. Do you remember Ohm’s Law from school physics? E = I x R. This and its variants are what you use to determine such things as the cross section of your delivery cables and much, much more. Connect to the Grid is an option worth considering for anyone who can afford it. The disadvantage of this system is that when the grid goes out you go out as well. So why would you bother, I hear you say? Because connecting to the grid means that the power your system supplies reduces your power bill. The most significant point is that you become a producer of green power. Stand Alone systems cost more – much more - because of the need for batteries. And required battery capacity will come as a shock when you hear about it – which you are about to. When you have calculated your energy requirement (not at all a straightforward process), you need to install battery capacity 5 (yes FIVE!) times that amount!! Because you can draw only 20% of your battery capacity on a daily basis. Drawing more will seriously reduce the life of your batteries. Part of the course also looked at wind power. The summary verdict is don’t bother – unless you intend to buy one of those really big industrial strength numbers. I also did a course on Climate Change and Eco-Living. It was interesting but not as informative as I had expected. Soon I will do a course on permaculture. Oh yeah, and I’m growing my hair so that I can have dreadlocks – and brushing up on my hippie lingo: peace man…. Um I mean bro – gotta keep uptdate eh…. and don’t mind the gender problem in the language – hippie blokes were never know for their feminist credentials.
Remember how people used to do things? Like grow much of their own food, fix their own cars, invent pedal radio – or build them after someone else had invented it, and talk to strangers far away who had done the same thing. Later on pedal radio was replaced by ham radio. Well, I think something like that might be coming back. Despite the treacherous efforts of John Howard to keep us consuming for the sake of the economy, I have a feeling that the engine of Climate Change will drive the emergence of widespread participation in renewables: energy, water, food production – that sort of thing. I can see a whole new generation of people crawling around on their rooves tinkering with connections and adjusting the tilt of solar panels and so on; sharing tips in the pub and generally renewing the face of the Earth. I recently met half a dozen such people when I did a course on Renewable Energy at ACE in Grafton. I was the only one who was a complete novice. All the others had tales of daring do – like the Argonauts who’d found the Golden Fleece and were having rip roaring adventures bringing it home. I’m looking down the barrel of imminent retirement and have been giving some thoughts to how to cut down recurrent expenses – and give myself something more to do that run five ACE courses, write another book, make websites, sing in a choir, play the piano and everything else that one needs to do to keep busy until one’s 100th year. So I’m doing appropriate courses to get myself started, and I thought I’d share something with you. If you’re going to go solar do seriously consider doing such a course if there’s one on offer in a classroom near you. It’s a much more complex undertaking than I imagined – but seriously worth the effort, I hasten to say. There are many critical issues that a supplier might not give you adequate advise on (to cut costs, i.e. increase profit margin) if you’re not aware of them. Do you remember Ohm’s Law from school physics? E = I x R. This and its variants are what you use to determine such things as the cross section of your delivery cables and much, much more. Connect to the Grid is an option worth considering for anyone who can afford it. The disadvantage of this system is that when the grid goes out you go out as well. So why would you bother, I hear you say? Because connecting to the grid means that the power your system supplies reduces your power bill. The most significant point is that you become a producer of green power. Stand Alone systems cost more – much more - because of the need for batteries. And required battery capacity will come as a shock when you hear about it – which you are about to. When you have calculated your energy requirement (not at all a straightforward process), you need to install battery capacity 5 (yes FIVE!) times that amount!! Because you can draw only 20% of your battery capacity on a daily basis. Drawing more will seriously reduce the life of your batteries. Part of the course also looked at wind power. The summary verdict is don’t bother – unless you intend to buy one of those really big industrial strength numbers. I also did a course on Climate Change and Eco-Living. It was interesting but not as informative as I had expected. Soon I will do a course on permaculture. Oh yeah, and I’m growing my hair so that I can have dreadlocks – and brushing up on my hippie lingo: peace man…. Um I mean bro – gotta keep uptdate eh…. and don’t mind the gender problem in the language – hippie blokes were never know for their feminist credentials.
Saturday, 14 July 2007
Did George Pell Threaten The NSW Parliament?
The case for the affirmative
In the lead up to the vote on therapeutic cloning legislation in the NSW Parliament, George Pell warned Catholic parliamentarians that a vote for the legislation would have consequences they might not like. This was all but universally interpreted as a threat to deny access to the sacraments – the Eucharist, in particular – or even excommunication. This was not an unreasonable inference. Not everyone would remember the confrontation Pell had with the Rainbow Sash movement, but those who do would be forgiven for thinking that Pel was preparing to fry bigger fish.
The case for the negative
As Pell himself has said, he did not explicitly say anything about denying access to the sacraments, much less excommunication, and therefore did not threaten anyone. Warning that consequences would flow from a vote for the legislation is no more than factually correct. For example, other Catholics who oppose the legislation might not vote in future for someone who supports the legislation in parliament. On the face of it supporters of Pell might claim that any threat is in the eye of the beholder, and that he cannot be held responsible for how other people interpret his words.
What’s it about?
Consider the Rainbow Sash issue. For anyone who doesn’t know, a group of gay Catholics in Sydney wanted it to be known that they were Catholic and gay. They wore rainbow sashes to identify themselves and were refused communion when they attended Mass. George Pell’s position was that standards had to be seen to be maintained. Homosexuality is declared by church doctrine to be a sin. Therefore anyone identifying as gay is not in communion with the faithful, and must be made to understand this by denying access to the sacrament of communion. Those who wore the rainbow sash wanted to draw attention to the fact that communion was available to gays who did not publicly acknowledge their sexuality. In their view this was hypocritical and had more to do with the exercise of power than discipleship. It became an issue after a long period of pastoral dialogue with gays, when some Bishops were not afraid to go on record as saying that being gay is like being left handed, and that the conscience of the gay person was the only judge of whether or not s/he was in communion with the faithful. Then, out of the blue, John Paul II declared that one cannot be gay and Catholic. It was at about this time that Pell made a point of saying that the church has never taught the primacy of conscience. This is the critical issue for the vote on therapeutic cloning as well. Pell went on record again with the same assertion, after his statement about the consequences of voting for the legislation. So what it’s about is conscience vs power.
Blind Freddie’s verdict
It should come as no surprise that some, perhaps many, senior clerics don’t like the idea of the primacy of conscience. But lying about it is another matter. And the simple fact is that Pell is lying when he says that the church has never taught the primacy of conscience. As a schoolboy I learned about the primacy of conscience from no less a source than the catechism. Since then there has been a general council of the church that, while not marginalising the clergy, enfranchised the laity in a way that required the proactive exercise of conscience.What is contestable is what the primacy of conscience means in practice. Some bishops have coped with this development in the relationship between clergy and laity. Others haven’t. Pell’s repudiation of gay = left handedness, and his attempt to assert his authority over the NSW parliament are manifestations of the same thing: his refusal to accept that people who do not agree with his views can have a properly formed conscience. He was always going to get away with taking a baseball bat to the Rainbow Sash movement, but throwing his weight around with other people in power was either very brave or very stupid – either way it was very poor leadership. It sets up the confrontation of contrary positions rather than facilitates dialogue between them. In the end whether he threatened the parliament or not will come down to the eye of the beholder. The privileges committee is likely to find itself unaccountably blind.
In the lead up to the vote on therapeutic cloning legislation in the NSW Parliament, George Pell warned Catholic parliamentarians that a vote for the legislation would have consequences they might not like. This was all but universally interpreted as a threat to deny access to the sacraments – the Eucharist, in particular – or even excommunication. This was not an unreasonable inference. Not everyone would remember the confrontation Pell had with the Rainbow Sash movement, but those who do would be forgiven for thinking that Pel was preparing to fry bigger fish.
The case for the negative
As Pell himself has said, he did not explicitly say anything about denying access to the sacraments, much less excommunication, and therefore did not threaten anyone. Warning that consequences would flow from a vote for the legislation is no more than factually correct. For example, other Catholics who oppose the legislation might not vote in future for someone who supports the legislation in parliament. On the face of it supporters of Pell might claim that any threat is in the eye of the beholder, and that he cannot be held responsible for how other people interpret his words.
What’s it about?
Consider the Rainbow Sash issue. For anyone who doesn’t know, a group of gay Catholics in Sydney wanted it to be known that they were Catholic and gay. They wore rainbow sashes to identify themselves and were refused communion when they attended Mass. George Pell’s position was that standards had to be seen to be maintained. Homosexuality is declared by church doctrine to be a sin. Therefore anyone identifying as gay is not in communion with the faithful, and must be made to understand this by denying access to the sacrament of communion. Those who wore the rainbow sash wanted to draw attention to the fact that communion was available to gays who did not publicly acknowledge their sexuality. In their view this was hypocritical and had more to do with the exercise of power than discipleship. It became an issue after a long period of pastoral dialogue with gays, when some Bishops were not afraid to go on record as saying that being gay is like being left handed, and that the conscience of the gay person was the only judge of whether or not s/he was in communion with the faithful. Then, out of the blue, John Paul II declared that one cannot be gay and Catholic. It was at about this time that Pell made a point of saying that the church has never taught the primacy of conscience. This is the critical issue for the vote on therapeutic cloning as well. Pell went on record again with the same assertion, after his statement about the consequences of voting for the legislation. So what it’s about is conscience vs power.
Blind Freddie’s verdict
It should come as no surprise that some, perhaps many, senior clerics don’t like the idea of the primacy of conscience. But lying about it is another matter. And the simple fact is that Pell is lying when he says that the church has never taught the primacy of conscience. As a schoolboy I learned about the primacy of conscience from no less a source than the catechism. Since then there has been a general council of the church that, while not marginalising the clergy, enfranchised the laity in a way that required the proactive exercise of conscience.What is contestable is what the primacy of conscience means in practice. Some bishops have coped with this development in the relationship between clergy and laity. Others haven’t. Pell’s repudiation of gay = left handedness, and his attempt to assert his authority over the NSW parliament are manifestations of the same thing: his refusal to accept that people who do not agree with his views can have a properly formed conscience. He was always going to get away with taking a baseball bat to the Rainbow Sash movement, but throwing his weight around with other people in power was either very brave or very stupid – either way it was very poor leadership. It sets up the confrontation of contrary positions rather than facilitates dialogue between them. In the end whether he threatened the parliament or not will come down to the eye of the beholder. The privileges committee is likely to find itself unaccountably blind.
Quantum Leap in Politics
[Like much of what gets posted this month, this is a bit late. It's a measure of how busy life can be when you are not working for pay.]
The Uncertainty Principal in action
How slow is Kevin Rudd? He’s confused by the discrepancy between what the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister say about travel warnings for Indonesia. The PM says the situation hasn’t changed, yet the FM says it has.
C’mon Kevin, it’s not as though this is unprecedented. Wasn’t it only a week ago that Brendan Nelson, the Defence Minister, said we’re in Iraq to secure oil supplies? Yet the PM says oil has nothing to do with it.
Clearly politics has taken a Quantum Leap. Like Schrodinger’s cat which is both alive and not alive, policy issues in Australia are now This and Not This simultaneously. For example, there’s something called Work Choices, but there isn’t (well, not by that name, anyway). And it goes back a long way. We’ll never ever have a GST. But we’ve got it. It’s the Uncertainty Principle in action.
So Kevin, get with the strength. Don’t get bogged down in Green politics. The new wave is … well, Wave politics. No need for explicit promises, core or otherwise. Just give us a range of options on any issue – the more the better – and tell us that the Probability Wave will take care of the outcome according to the dynamics of the universe. But be sure to tell us that we can influence the dynamics of the universe. You know what I mean – the Secret – the Law of Attraction! Just tell us to want something – want something – and expect it to manifest.
No. On second thoughts, just stick to what you’re doing, because you’re doing really well, mate. John Howard is going to lose the next election, because he asked once too often: Who do people trust? The Uncertainty Principle is good in its place – which is the sub-atomic realm: not in politics.
The Uncertainty Principal in action
How slow is Kevin Rudd? He’s confused by the discrepancy between what the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister say about travel warnings for Indonesia. The PM says the situation hasn’t changed, yet the FM says it has.
C’mon Kevin, it’s not as though this is unprecedented. Wasn’t it only a week ago that Brendan Nelson, the Defence Minister, said we’re in Iraq to secure oil supplies? Yet the PM says oil has nothing to do with it.
Clearly politics has taken a Quantum Leap. Like Schrodinger’s cat which is both alive and not alive, policy issues in Australia are now This and Not This simultaneously. For example, there’s something called Work Choices, but there isn’t (well, not by that name, anyway). And it goes back a long way. We’ll never ever have a GST. But we’ve got it. It’s the Uncertainty Principle in action.
So Kevin, get with the strength. Don’t get bogged down in Green politics. The new wave is … well, Wave politics. No need for explicit promises, core or otherwise. Just give us a range of options on any issue – the more the better – and tell us that the Probability Wave will take care of the outcome according to the dynamics of the universe. But be sure to tell us that we can influence the dynamics of the universe. You know what I mean – the Secret – the Law of Attraction! Just tell us to want something – want something – and expect it to manifest.
No. On second thoughts, just stick to what you’re doing, because you’re doing really well, mate. John Howard is going to lose the next election, because he asked once too often: Who do people trust? The Uncertainty Principle is good in its place – which is the sub-atomic realm: not in politics.
Friday, 13 July 2007
Embarrassing? Get real!
Not even a senior moment
Today John Howard forgot the name of a Liberal candidate in the upcoming election. This is being described in the media as “embarrassing”. And we are being reminded that Kim Beasley used the name of a public figure in the US when referring to an Australian television personality. Much was made of that too. It was even said to be the beginning of the end of Beasley’s leadership. To this is added the fact that Howard refused to hand over to Costello last year, and that as a result of today’s slip up, some people might be regretting he didn’t go when he was at the top of his game. Really! Why don’t people in the media who beat these things up get a real job – not to mention a life? The last thing I want to do here is to barrack for John Howard. But even I can’t stand back and hear such drivel without expressing my contempt for the drivellers. This really is a case of the eye of the beholder at work. Howard’s brief mental block is exactly the kind of thing that happens to everyone (not just seniors) from time to time. I was embarrassed last time it happened to me. I was introducing someone to a friend of long standing whose name escaped me at the exact moment I needed to introduce him to the newcomer. The embarrassment was only momentary, however, because all three of us recognised it for what it was and we all got on with our business. That’s how it should be with Howard’s lapse of memory today. Making it out to be a real embarrassment is what I call journalism, because, regrettably, that is what journalism has become. Oh sure, there’s some integrity around as well, but this sneering misrepresentation events, especially involving people in public life, is what makes the headlines most of the time. And I refuse to believe that it is we, the people, who “demand” such sleaze from the media. We would not complain if we got real reporting and analysis rather than sniping and simpering.
Today John Howard forgot the name of a Liberal candidate in the upcoming election. This is being described in the media as “embarrassing”. And we are being reminded that Kim Beasley used the name of a public figure in the US when referring to an Australian television personality. Much was made of that too. It was even said to be the beginning of the end of Beasley’s leadership. To this is added the fact that Howard refused to hand over to Costello last year, and that as a result of today’s slip up, some people might be regretting he didn’t go when he was at the top of his game. Really! Why don’t people in the media who beat these things up get a real job – not to mention a life? The last thing I want to do here is to barrack for John Howard. But even I can’t stand back and hear such drivel without expressing my contempt for the drivellers. This really is a case of the eye of the beholder at work. Howard’s brief mental block is exactly the kind of thing that happens to everyone (not just seniors) from time to time. I was embarrassed last time it happened to me. I was introducing someone to a friend of long standing whose name escaped me at the exact moment I needed to introduce him to the newcomer. The embarrassment was only momentary, however, because all three of us recognised it for what it was and we all got on with our business. That’s how it should be with Howard’s lapse of memory today. Making it out to be a real embarrassment is what I call journalism, because, regrettably, that is what journalism has become. Oh sure, there’s some integrity around as well, but this sneering misrepresentation events, especially involving people in public life, is what makes the headlines most of the time. And I refuse to believe that it is we, the people, who “demand” such sleaze from the media. We would not complain if we got real reporting and analysis rather than sniping and simpering.
Monday, 4 June 2007
The Epiphany Celebration Menu
Bloom's Day is upon us (16 June). As that is the day when we celebrate James Joyce, and as he popularised the use of the word epiphany, I thought it was time to roll out another Celebration Menu: The Epiphany Celebration Menu. Our use of the word goes a little further than JJ's. For at least two decades Quantum theory has been understood well enough at the populer level (What the Bleep do we know?)to make the connection between the manifestation of who any one person is, as JJ uses the word, and that person - indeed, every person - being a unique manifestation of the universe. Mmmmmmmmm? OK. A common way of illustrating this point is to refer to a hologram, which is a three dimensional picture of, say, a person. Break that hologram into pieces, and each fragment,no matter how small, has the whole picture within it. Each of us is not just an artifact produced by the universe. Each of us Is the universe. The universe contains galaxies and stars. Hence the rollicking celebration of constellations and physicists. And all of this happened over the Christmas season of 1990. If you're confused, wait until you read what follows the menu itself. I think you'll be amused by the definitions given at the end, but. Eh? Oh, and Bloom's Day? Bring your copy of Ulysses.
Somewhere Nice BYO
Reservations 724765
ALCHEMIST’S GOLD
Puree of pumpkin stirred into traditional Damper ingredients; then rendered to golden baked Pumpkin Damper; served piping hot from the furnace, with wisps of chilled butter.
STARTERS
PRIMORDIAL SOUP
Recreated daily by combining the finest produce grown of earth, fire, water and air; and applying a clever technique of time reversal. Ask for today’s singular flavour.
Reservations 724765
ALCHEMIST’S GOLD
Puree of pumpkin stirred into traditional Damper ingredients; then rendered to golden baked Pumpkin Damper; served piping hot from the furnace, with wisps of chilled butter.
STARTERS
PRIMORDIAL SOUP
Recreated daily by combining the finest produce grown of earth, fire, water and air; and applying a clever technique of time reversal. Ask for today’s singular flavour.
COPERNICUS’ CAROUSEL OF RAVIOLI
Home made ravioli of spinach and Milla Milla Matured Cheese; served in a light herbed sauce.
GALLILEO’S TIDAL PATE
This all time favourite keeps coming back. It is made with chicken livers and brandy and served with freshly made damper.
NEWTON’S MOUSSE OF LEVITY
Mousse of ripened avocado, filled with our own seafood sauce; served with local king prawns
MAXWELL’S WAVED CROQUETTE
Lambs brains and pink peppercorn croquette, crumbed in almonds; then fried
PLANCK’S QUANTUM OF CALAMARI
Pan fried in garlic sauce; topped with cheese; then grilled
EINSTEIN’S VERY FAST QUAIL
Whole breast of quail marinated in red wine, bacon and onion; oven baked, and served with fresh mini salad
MAINS
RACK OF LAMB LIBRA
Rack of lamb baked in a herb crust, and complimented with our Dijon sauce. The sublime balance of earth, fire, water and air.
FILLET OF TURKEY COLUMBA
Turkey fillet pan baked and topped with an avocado fan and hollandaise sauce. An ancient people’s gift of peace.
BREAST OF CHICKEN BERNICE
Chicken breast stuffed with oysters, wrapped in bacon; then pan fried and served with a lemon pepper sauce. Bernice dreamed thus as she combed her hair.
MEDALIONS OF PORK LURA
Pork medallion pan fried in a pink peppercorn and oyster mushroom sauce. Perseus listened and sought his destiny.
SHORT CRUST OF SEAFOOD CASSIOPEIA
Scallops, prawns, bugs, and fish in a white wine and herb sauce; surrounded with a short crust pastry; then baked. Cassiopeia’s gift to Perseus for rescuing Andromeda.
Scallops, prawns, bugs, and fish in a white wine and herb sauce; surrounded with a short crust pastry; then baked. Cassiopeia’s gift to Perseus for rescuing Andromeda.
FILLETS OF WHITING ANDROMEDA
Whiting fillets lightly grilled and topped with our own anchovy butter. Andromeda’s meal of thanksgiving.
Whiting fillets lightly grilled and topped with our own anchovy butter. Andromeda’s meal of thanksgiving.
FILLET OF BEEF DIANA
For those who like traditional steak Dianne; cooked to your liking. Where there is passion for the hunt.
GOLD OF THE PLEIADES
Mini steamed pumpkin filled with a combination of vegetables and nuts; then baked. For the flight from the hunter.
The Epiphany Celebration Menu
No matter how old we become there remains in each of us a Child aching to be noticed; waiting to show others who s/he is becoming. What a fabulous surprise awaits each of us.
We know that when we eat, drink and breathe, we recycle the land, the sea and the sky, and become the Earth’s means of knowing and enjoying its own being and beauty. With just a little bit of effort we can realise that this function extends to the Whole Universe.
Breath taking as that thought maybe is small change compared with what we can now say about ourselves thanks to Quantum Theory. We are not just feeling and thinking fragments of the Universe. We are the Universe.
Each of us exists in a body that does not stop at the outside of our skin. It includes the soil, water and air of the Earth and everything that lives there. It also extends through our Solar System to our galaxy and everything beyond it – further than radio telescopes have yet seen.
Our identity resides in the whole of what exists. It assumes its individual uniqueness inside our skin. Each of us is a unique personal name of the Universe: each of us an Epiphany of the whole.
Fortunately, you don’t have to understand Quantum Theory to experience what it clarifies – any more than it is necessary to understand electricity to enjoy a good movie. All you have to do is allow yourself to gasp at the pleasure of the sight, sound, taste, smell and feel of other things in your surroundings. That is how the Child in you is set free. Then s/he is able, as only children are, to play with the most fabulous toys imaginable – everything from galaxies to quarks. Then s/he is able to penetrate the frontiers of time and space at the speed of thought, exploring who s/he is becoming. Then she is able to share the wonder of it all with someone else.
This sharing is a re-discovery of Santa Claus – except that it is the Child in you who is at the same time the real Santa Claus, enticing others into wonder, inviting them to make the Quantum Leap into mystery.
There is nothing quite like the magic of smell and taste in good food to trigger the smile that sets the Child in you free. Perhaps s/he will go in search of the Santa Claus whose gift enables us to know more about our world and whose name it gives to the starter you select. Perhaps s/he will prompt you to choose the main course named after the constellation that s/he would like to visit. Perhaps s/he will simply smile across the table and welcome a smile in return. To become the Child is to celebrate the self-disclosing Universe: to be its Epiphany.
EPIPHANY: the manifestation of being.
QUANTUM THEORY: the universe is One Indivisible Whole, manifesting itself as an infinite number of particles, each of which is the Whole, functioning in a relationship with all others that generates the unique identity of each.
GALAXIES: the largest objects in the universe, thousands of billions in number, each containing hundreds of millions of stars.
QUARK: the smallest objects in the universe, existing at the frontier between matter and energy, exhibiting the characteristics of both.
QUANTUM LEAP: the action of what is potential substantiating itself in space-time (conversely the act of shedding space-time without dematerialising).
COPERNICUS: built the first merry-go-round for his seven children. One day when no one was looking he went for a ride on it. That’s when it first occurred to him that maybe the Earth orbits the Sun rather than the other way about.
GALLILEO: looked through his telescope one night and saw the Moon dragging the tide in – though he couldn’t work out how. Thereafter he looked at the world whenever he wanted to know what it was like, rather than speculate with learned scholars about it. He thus gave us modern science.
NEWTON: was accused by a colleague of stealing his work. “Do you realise the gravity of this charge?” thundered the Judge. That’s when the penny dropped – or was it the apple? In any case he solved the puzzle of the relationship between the moon and the tide.
MAXWELL: was the father of identical twins, Electra and Magnus. He couldn’t tell them apart until one day when he was leaving for work he noticed that they waved in opposite directions. That’s how he discovered the Electro-Magnetic Wave.
PLANCK: explained his ruined shirt to his mother by saying that he left the iron on the stove longer so that he could finish the job in one go. “Can you pour twenty litres of water into a two litre bucket without making mess with eighteen of them?” she scolded. Planck later told his colleagues that a particle can contain only a discrete quantum of energy. He was happy to find that what was obvious to his mother was as big a surprise to them as it had been to him.
EINSTEIN: came from a very large family. As a child he discovered that at family gatherings he had to move very quickly from one relative to another to see them all. The memories they shared took him back in time. Later he discovered that moving at the speed of light also took him back in time. He called this Special Relativity after his favourite family members.
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
Whose language?
A client nation in their own land. NOT.
There’s no plumbing the depth of this government’s ignorance. Actually that has to be a contradiction in terms. Something with depth enough to plumb would a thing of substance. The point here is that the measure of this government’s prescience is so shallow that it flickers on the surface of the country’s affairs. It is a mirage. The slightest shift in one’s line of sight and it disappears. It’s latest attempt to conjure an image of itself as getting things done (remember “practical reconciliation”?) is to declare that all Aboriginal children must learn English – the language of this country (sic!).
Some people never learn. Remember when Cathy Freeman carried two flags on her victory lap at the Commonwealth games? One was the Aboriginal flag. The other was the Blue Ensign – the flag that most people still to this day mistakenly think of the Australian flag. Mean spirited ignorant people berated her for having the Aboriginal flag with “the” Australian flag, wilfully ignoring the fact that there are at least ten Australian flags, one each for the states, territories and the Commonwealth, and the Aboriginal flag.
How many Australian languages are there? There used to be several hundred. But now the one spoken by the overwhelming majority of people living in Australia is English. That makes it an important language – not the Australian language.
Most of the languages spoken in this country before English arrived no longer exist. But those that do are spoken by people whose cultures have existed on this continent for tens of thousands of years. The cultural heritage value of those languages, if that is not too crass a way of putting it, is incalculable, and their maintenance is nothing less than a sacred trust. Those who are learning them at their mothers’ knees should be groomed in the manner a young Dali Lama. Yet all this government can do is threaten to withhold resources from people if they do not do things the way the government wants them done.
Lets be clear about one thing here: everyone living in this country should have the opportunity to prosper. Learning English would indeed be a good thing, and every effort should be made to provide that opportunity for all who are not proficient at English. But there is a an unbridgeable gulf between that position, and regarding indigenous people as wilfully recalcitrant in preferring their ways to white fella ways, and holding their very existence to ransom. Far from being people who need to be dragged kicking and screaming into white fella ways, Aborigines have an inalienable right to self determination, and Australian governments have an unequivocal obligation to foster that outcome and lead all other Australians in accommodating it and adapting to it rather than coopting ignorant and ill-informed prejudices for electoral advantage.
The way to get Aboriginal children to learn English is to value and support their culture; value them for who they are, and to support them in their most important task – being Aboriginal – and offering English as an additional language that will make them bilingual, and therefore significantly more skilled that the majority of the population who are monolingual; and provide an opportunity to play a vital role in the education of the non indigenous population.
Why wouldn’t the rest of us aspire to be bilingual as well, and learn the truth about the continent we occupy? Why wouldn’t we learn one or more of the most ancient surviving languages on earth and embrace the opportunity to know this country from the inside by learning languages that name its seasons and topography with an authority and subtlety that comes from relationships sustained over scores of millennia, instead of remaining uncomprehending, if sometimes fascinated and very possibly temporary occupiers?
This is not something anyone in this government is capable of thinking about - let alone contemplating. It’s a government that knows only the language of the bottom line – which may be another way for saying the lowest common denominator. Treating Aborigines as a client nation in their own land is as despicable an act as it is possible to imagine – especially in the light of what the world has learned about the importance of and need for human diversity in the era of decolonisation. It’s not too late to decolonise Australia. Non indigenous Australians can learn to become of the land, and we have the very best teachers available – and the language to mediate that outcome.
There’s no plumbing the depth of this government’s ignorance. Actually that has to be a contradiction in terms. Something with depth enough to plumb would a thing of substance. The point here is that the measure of this government’s prescience is so shallow that it flickers on the surface of the country’s affairs. It is a mirage. The slightest shift in one’s line of sight and it disappears. It’s latest attempt to conjure an image of itself as getting things done (remember “practical reconciliation”?) is to declare that all Aboriginal children must learn English – the language of this country (sic!).
Some people never learn. Remember when Cathy Freeman carried two flags on her victory lap at the Commonwealth games? One was the Aboriginal flag. The other was the Blue Ensign – the flag that most people still to this day mistakenly think of the Australian flag. Mean spirited ignorant people berated her for having the Aboriginal flag with “the” Australian flag, wilfully ignoring the fact that there are at least ten Australian flags, one each for the states, territories and the Commonwealth, and the Aboriginal flag.
How many Australian languages are there? There used to be several hundred. But now the one spoken by the overwhelming majority of people living in Australia is English. That makes it an important language – not the Australian language.
Most of the languages spoken in this country before English arrived no longer exist. But those that do are spoken by people whose cultures have existed on this continent for tens of thousands of years. The cultural heritage value of those languages, if that is not too crass a way of putting it, is incalculable, and their maintenance is nothing less than a sacred trust. Those who are learning them at their mothers’ knees should be groomed in the manner a young Dali Lama. Yet all this government can do is threaten to withhold resources from people if they do not do things the way the government wants them done.
Lets be clear about one thing here: everyone living in this country should have the opportunity to prosper. Learning English would indeed be a good thing, and every effort should be made to provide that opportunity for all who are not proficient at English. But there is a an unbridgeable gulf between that position, and regarding indigenous people as wilfully recalcitrant in preferring their ways to white fella ways, and holding their very existence to ransom. Far from being people who need to be dragged kicking and screaming into white fella ways, Aborigines have an inalienable right to self determination, and Australian governments have an unequivocal obligation to foster that outcome and lead all other Australians in accommodating it and adapting to it rather than coopting ignorant and ill-informed prejudices for electoral advantage.
The way to get Aboriginal children to learn English is to value and support their culture; value them for who they are, and to support them in their most important task – being Aboriginal – and offering English as an additional language that will make them bilingual, and therefore significantly more skilled that the majority of the population who are monolingual; and provide an opportunity to play a vital role in the education of the non indigenous population.
Why wouldn’t the rest of us aspire to be bilingual as well, and learn the truth about the continent we occupy? Why wouldn’t we learn one or more of the most ancient surviving languages on earth and embrace the opportunity to know this country from the inside by learning languages that name its seasons and topography with an authority and subtlety that comes from relationships sustained over scores of millennia, instead of remaining uncomprehending, if sometimes fascinated and very possibly temporary occupiers?
This is not something anyone in this government is capable of thinking about - let alone contemplating. It’s a government that knows only the language of the bottom line – which may be another way for saying the lowest common denominator. Treating Aborigines as a client nation in their own land is as despicable an act as it is possible to imagine – especially in the light of what the world has learned about the importance of and need for human diversity in the era of decolonisation. It’s not too late to decolonise Australia. Non indigenous Australians can learn to become of the land, and we have the very best teachers available – and the language to mediate that outcome.
Friday, 25 May 2007
Welcome back (to the real world) Mal
Who can learn from whom?
What does it take for people to see that others do not share their values and priorities? Mal Brough is staggered that the Alice Springs town camp people have rejected $60 million to redevelop their housing because they do not want to lose control over their land. He sees squalor and no possibility of the kind of future he thinks would benefit them. They see the loss of the most fundamental underpinning of indigenous identity, and the kind of future that zealous outsiders promise but never deliver. And zealous outsider certainly describes Mal Brough.
He seems to have learned his policy development and implementation at the Neocon Academy. Remember the lead up to the invasion of Iraq? We’ll go in, throw our weight around, get rid of the dictator, and the people will rush to thank us and take up the democratic ways that we have on offer. Brough leaped into the Aboriginal affairs arena with all the grace of an ignorant ideologue swinging his big stick at Aboriginal communities and the NT government, as though the tortuous relationship between indigenous and white interests in the Territory was some sort of game that both sides were playing and could – would and must – stop at his insistence.
God knows the problems he is addressing are serious and require radical measures. But resuming the nineteenth century White Man’s Burdon approach – which didn’t work then – is never going to work. In fact, what is required is so radical, that no one in the government is capable of grasping it, and no one in the alternative government will have the guts to undertake it.
What’s required here is the same as what’s needed on a global scale to deal with global warming: justice. Not law, but justice – sustainable relationships. Taking what we are not entitled to is the problem. Taking a standard of living (as distinct from having a quality of life) that threatens the viability of the planet is the root cause of global warming. Yet this government is adamant: no measures will be taken to reduce greenhouse emissions that threaten the economy. See what I mean by no one in this government being capable of seeing what needs to be done? What needs to be done involves taking significant risks, including the possibility of a smaller economy, in order to lessen the likelihood of much greater catastrophe. Giving something up is also what is required of White Fella culture in order to bring justice to our relationship with Aboriginal Australians.
Other government ministers as well as than Brough have pontificated on the unsustainability of isolated Aboriginal communities. It’s always the they who have to give something up. Give up your land, we’re here to make it productive. Give up your way of life, we’re here to make you like us. Give up your title, we’re here to dig holes in your land. Give up your dreaming, we’re here to be your nightmare. Give up your hope of ever having justice, we’re here to take what you can’t stop us taking. Oh, and by the way, here’s $60 million. But to have it you’ve got to do things our way. Don’t ever expect us to think that we might have something to learn from you. This is our land now and we’ll do our damndest with it.
Mal Brough had quite a trip - flight of fantasy - for a while, throwing his weight around, like a minister from a government with a Sense Of Destiny, to the point where he came to believe his own propaganda. He'd make an offer no one, in his estimation, would refuse, and be hailed as the great transformer. Well, they did refuse - to his chagrin and utter bewilderment. Clearly these people are beyond his estimation - not like anything he can imagine. They knocked back a inducement to betray their existence as indigenous inhabitants of this land. Icarus crashed. Back in the real world he now has a choice. Treat the people who have surprised the hell out of him as idiots; or sit down with them, admit that he hasn’t got a clue, say he's sorry, and ask them to tell him what they want. It’s that simple.
What does it take for people to see that others do not share their values and priorities? Mal Brough is staggered that the Alice Springs town camp people have rejected $60 million to redevelop their housing because they do not want to lose control over their land. He sees squalor and no possibility of the kind of future he thinks would benefit them. They see the loss of the most fundamental underpinning of indigenous identity, and the kind of future that zealous outsiders promise but never deliver. And zealous outsider certainly describes Mal Brough.
He seems to have learned his policy development and implementation at the Neocon Academy. Remember the lead up to the invasion of Iraq? We’ll go in, throw our weight around, get rid of the dictator, and the people will rush to thank us and take up the democratic ways that we have on offer. Brough leaped into the Aboriginal affairs arena with all the grace of an ignorant ideologue swinging his big stick at Aboriginal communities and the NT government, as though the tortuous relationship between indigenous and white interests in the Territory was some sort of game that both sides were playing and could – would and must – stop at his insistence.
God knows the problems he is addressing are serious and require radical measures. But resuming the nineteenth century White Man’s Burdon approach – which didn’t work then – is never going to work. In fact, what is required is so radical, that no one in the government is capable of grasping it, and no one in the alternative government will have the guts to undertake it.
What’s required here is the same as what’s needed on a global scale to deal with global warming: justice. Not law, but justice – sustainable relationships. Taking what we are not entitled to is the problem. Taking a standard of living (as distinct from having a quality of life) that threatens the viability of the planet is the root cause of global warming. Yet this government is adamant: no measures will be taken to reduce greenhouse emissions that threaten the economy. See what I mean by no one in this government being capable of seeing what needs to be done? What needs to be done involves taking significant risks, including the possibility of a smaller economy, in order to lessen the likelihood of much greater catastrophe. Giving something up is also what is required of White Fella culture in order to bring justice to our relationship with Aboriginal Australians.
Other government ministers as well as than Brough have pontificated on the unsustainability of isolated Aboriginal communities. It’s always the they who have to give something up. Give up your land, we’re here to make it productive. Give up your way of life, we’re here to make you like us. Give up your title, we’re here to dig holes in your land. Give up your dreaming, we’re here to be your nightmare. Give up your hope of ever having justice, we’re here to take what you can’t stop us taking. Oh, and by the way, here’s $60 million. But to have it you’ve got to do things our way. Don’t ever expect us to think that we might have something to learn from you. This is our land now and we’ll do our damndest with it.
Mal Brough had quite a trip - flight of fantasy - for a while, throwing his weight around, like a minister from a government with a Sense Of Destiny, to the point where he came to believe his own propaganda. He'd make an offer no one, in his estimation, would refuse, and be hailed as the great transformer. Well, they did refuse - to his chagrin and utter bewilderment. Clearly these people are beyond his estimation - not like anything he can imagine. They knocked back a inducement to betray their existence as indigenous inhabitants of this land. Icarus crashed. Back in the real world he now has a choice. Treat the people who have surprised the hell out of him as idiots; or sit down with them, admit that he hasn’t got a clue, say he's sorry, and ask them to tell him what they want. It’s that simple.
Copping it sour
People of the Lie
John Howard accused the script writers of Bastard Boys and McLeod’s Daughters of bias. In relation Boys it would be impossible to pick out any particular incident that illustrated his point. The show hadn’t even finished before people inclined to see it as biased were writing to editors all over Australia. It certainly made me feel proud of the role of unions in Australia, so it is not surprising that it made some people feel uncomfortable. But does that make it biased? In Daughters it was specifically the scene when the new owner of the truck stop told his mechanic he was fired, but offered him another job on an Australian Workplace Agreement. The mechanic heroically told him where to stick it, and his girlfriend rightly said, You can’t do that. To which the owner replied, I think you’ll find that I can. He then did the divide and conquer thing by offering the girlfriend the mechanic’s job, which she rejected, at first but then, less heroically, accepted, albeit on a limited basis, illustrating the vulnerability of people in the workplace to management thuggery. I say that this was management thuggery and that the girlfriend was right above because government commentators asserted that what the owner did would have been illegal under Work Choices. I’m happy to take their word for that. But that doesn’t mean that such things do not go on.
If government groupies were watching on Friday night (18/5/07) they would have seen Jean Price aca Penelope Keith make an excoriating remark in No job for a lady about nuclear as anything but a clean option for power, the more insidious because “you can’t see the dirt.” I guess that makes the BBC is biased against the Howard government too.
Ridiculous? Yes. As ridiculous as the government’s position on Boys and Daughters. What are they saying? You can’t make reference in a popular television programme to issues of significance in the community? No? Then, that it is unacceptable to misrepresent those issues? See Management Thuggery below on whether or not Daughters misrepresented what actually goes on in some workplaces in Byron Shire, for example.
Taken at face value, the government is behaving like a bunch of cry-babies. Even if they had a case, copping it sweet would do more to prove their worth than whining. But I don’t believe their snivelling is actually genuine. They’re using an old trick made infamous in the 1930s: Lie through your teeth – the bigger the lie the better – and some people will fall into line, not because they’re stupid but because it suits them. That is to say, the hearers know that what is being said is a lie and don’t actually believe it. But the simple fact that the statement is out there, and can be said to be true, justifies their acting as though it were true.
Now let’s get something straight. On the scale of possible lies – compared with children overboard, for example – this accusation of bias in a couple of TV programs that just happen to occur in the same week is pretty small fry. But it is how it fits into a consistent pattern of behaviour that matters here.
The government knows that the accusation of bias is ridiculous. They’re not that stupid. Deceitful, yes. But stupid? No. They’re making the accusation because they have nothing to offer. They’re on the ropes, and they are fighting foul. Foul because the deliberate use of lies gives people so disposed license to do likewise. It’s one thing to do what ever it takes to stay in power. But what sort of leadership is that? What kind of country are we becoming in order to keep this government in power? What does it benefit a government to gain another term in office but lose the soul of the country?
John Howard claims to be the better economic manager on offer in the upcoming election. Let’s suppose for a moment that he’s right. So what? Being the best economic manager may not be the best qualification for leading the country. Economics is about money. Right? And money, despite recent assertions to the contrary by Richard Dawkins, is the root of all evil. Right? And the biggest evil of all is to lie.
John Howard accused the script writers of Bastard Boys and McLeod’s Daughters of bias. In relation Boys it would be impossible to pick out any particular incident that illustrated his point. The show hadn’t even finished before people inclined to see it as biased were writing to editors all over Australia. It certainly made me feel proud of the role of unions in Australia, so it is not surprising that it made some people feel uncomfortable. But does that make it biased? In Daughters it was specifically the scene when the new owner of the truck stop told his mechanic he was fired, but offered him another job on an Australian Workplace Agreement. The mechanic heroically told him where to stick it, and his girlfriend rightly said, You can’t do that. To which the owner replied, I think you’ll find that I can. He then did the divide and conquer thing by offering the girlfriend the mechanic’s job, which she rejected, at first but then, less heroically, accepted, albeit on a limited basis, illustrating the vulnerability of people in the workplace to management thuggery. I say that this was management thuggery and that the girlfriend was right above because government commentators asserted that what the owner did would have been illegal under Work Choices. I’m happy to take their word for that. But that doesn’t mean that such things do not go on.
If government groupies were watching on Friday night (18/5/07) they would have seen Jean Price aca Penelope Keith make an excoriating remark in No job for a lady about nuclear as anything but a clean option for power, the more insidious because “you can’t see the dirt.” I guess that makes the BBC is biased against the Howard government too.
Ridiculous? Yes. As ridiculous as the government’s position on Boys and Daughters. What are they saying? You can’t make reference in a popular television programme to issues of significance in the community? No? Then, that it is unacceptable to misrepresent those issues? See Management Thuggery below on whether or not Daughters misrepresented what actually goes on in some workplaces in Byron Shire, for example.
Taken at face value, the government is behaving like a bunch of cry-babies. Even if they had a case, copping it sweet would do more to prove their worth than whining. But I don’t believe their snivelling is actually genuine. They’re using an old trick made infamous in the 1930s: Lie through your teeth – the bigger the lie the better – and some people will fall into line, not because they’re stupid but because it suits them. That is to say, the hearers know that what is being said is a lie and don’t actually believe it. But the simple fact that the statement is out there, and can be said to be true, justifies their acting as though it were true.
Now let’s get something straight. On the scale of possible lies – compared with children overboard, for example – this accusation of bias in a couple of TV programs that just happen to occur in the same week is pretty small fry. But it is how it fits into a consistent pattern of behaviour that matters here.
The government knows that the accusation of bias is ridiculous. They’re not that stupid. Deceitful, yes. But stupid? No. They’re making the accusation because they have nothing to offer. They’re on the ropes, and they are fighting foul. Foul because the deliberate use of lies gives people so disposed license to do likewise. It’s one thing to do what ever it takes to stay in power. But what sort of leadership is that? What kind of country are we becoming in order to keep this government in power? What does it benefit a government to gain another term in office but lose the soul of the country?
John Howard claims to be the better economic manager on offer in the upcoming election. Let’s suppose for a moment that he’s right. So what? Being the best economic manager may not be the best qualification for leading the country. Economics is about money. Right? And money, despite recent assertions to the contrary by Richard Dawkins, is the root of all evil. Right? And the biggest evil of all is to lie.
Management Thuggery
If I don't do it for peanuts some other monkey will
In an episode of McLeod’s Daughters the new owner of the truck stop sacks his mechanic and then immediately offers him another job on an Australian Workplace Agreement. The mechanic tells the owner where to stick it and his girlfriend protests: You can’t do that. The owner replies: I think you will find that I can. He then offers her the position. She refuses, at first, but then, in spite of knowing how taking the job undermines her boyfriend’s position, accepts the job, albeit on a limited basis, illustrating the vulnerability of workers to management thuggery.
John Howard objected to this, calling it biased, and another government spokesman said that the incident misrepresented government workplace relations policy (he dared not speak it’s name: Work Choices) saying that what the owner did would be illegal under the said policy. The implication being that, because it would be illegal, it wouldn’t happen, and therefore the incident in the episode was unfair to the government.
What’s with these people? Are they so far up their own fundament that they really do not know what’s going on; or do they think we’re stupid? Let me recount two incidents in Byron Shire, and give an account of a trend among some employers that the government ought to be worried about.
A twenty-something chef told me on day that he’s scored a job in charge of the kitchen at a fairly notable eatery in the shire. He was telling me about it because he know I would be able to tell him how to get an ABN. An ABN? I queried. Are you running the kitchen as your own business? No. He wasn’t running the business, but he was being paid as a contractor. Oh, a contractor, I returned. How much did you negotiate as an hourly rate? No. He didn’t negotiate anything. They offered him $10.00 an hour. $10.00 an hour! I shouted. Are you serious? Yes. He was serious. Maaaaate! I said. When you’re working as a contractor you’re supposed to negotiate a rate. You’ve got to pay yourself superannuation; take out your own work cover; and if you damage any equipment in the course of your work, you’re responsible for it. Oh, and by the way, you also get to pay your own tax out of your princely $10.00 an hour as well. He didn’t want to know. If he didn’t take what was on offer, someone else would.
The second example was a not-yet-twenty young tearaway who triumphantly announced that he’d escaped the dire prospect of learning how to find a job when his mate’s dad offered him work on his building site. You’ve got your green card, then? I queried. Nah! He said. I was told I didn’t need one, but I have to get an ABN. I patiently explained the problem to him. If Work Cover sprung a surprise inspection, his mate’s dad will be in big trouble; and so will he. Working with an ABN means he would be a contractor, not entitled to superannuation, responsible for his own Work Cover and insurance – and tax. I won’t be paying tax, he said. Everyone on the job gets cash. And when you get sprung by the tax department – what then? Shoulders shrugged; eyes glazed over.
I could recount scores of examples, especially if I pumped my very well informed contacts. I won’t claim these cases are typical. But they are not rare. And here’s the worst part. Employers who engage in such criminal practices (by no means all employers – just far too many of them) meet from time to time to discuss the growing number of ways they can rip off vulnerable people. No one keeps minutes of course. You’d have to wonder why, wouldn’t you.
The government would probably claim that no amount of legislation will stop criminals from being criminals, nor protect people who can’t be bothered looking after their own interests – that the examples I gave would happen regardless of what the law was; and that the overwhelming majority of employers would protect their own interests by never stooping to such vile extremes. So why it is necessary to introduce a “fairness test” to the industrial relations package formally known as Work Choices?
In an episode of McLeod’s Daughters the new owner of the truck stop sacks his mechanic and then immediately offers him another job on an Australian Workplace Agreement. The mechanic tells the owner where to stick it and his girlfriend protests: You can’t do that. The owner replies: I think you will find that I can. He then offers her the position. She refuses, at first, but then, in spite of knowing how taking the job undermines her boyfriend’s position, accepts the job, albeit on a limited basis, illustrating the vulnerability of workers to management thuggery.
John Howard objected to this, calling it biased, and another government spokesman said that the incident misrepresented government workplace relations policy (he dared not speak it’s name: Work Choices) saying that what the owner did would be illegal under the said policy. The implication being that, because it would be illegal, it wouldn’t happen, and therefore the incident in the episode was unfair to the government.
What’s with these people? Are they so far up their own fundament that they really do not know what’s going on; or do they think we’re stupid? Let me recount two incidents in Byron Shire, and give an account of a trend among some employers that the government ought to be worried about.
A twenty-something chef told me on day that he’s scored a job in charge of the kitchen at a fairly notable eatery in the shire. He was telling me about it because he know I would be able to tell him how to get an ABN. An ABN? I queried. Are you running the kitchen as your own business? No. He wasn’t running the business, but he was being paid as a contractor. Oh, a contractor, I returned. How much did you negotiate as an hourly rate? No. He didn’t negotiate anything. They offered him $10.00 an hour. $10.00 an hour! I shouted. Are you serious? Yes. He was serious. Maaaaate! I said. When you’re working as a contractor you’re supposed to negotiate a rate. You’ve got to pay yourself superannuation; take out your own work cover; and if you damage any equipment in the course of your work, you’re responsible for it. Oh, and by the way, you also get to pay your own tax out of your princely $10.00 an hour as well. He didn’t want to know. If he didn’t take what was on offer, someone else would.
The second example was a not-yet-twenty young tearaway who triumphantly announced that he’d escaped the dire prospect of learning how to find a job when his mate’s dad offered him work on his building site. You’ve got your green card, then? I queried. Nah! He said. I was told I didn’t need one, but I have to get an ABN. I patiently explained the problem to him. If Work Cover sprung a surprise inspection, his mate’s dad will be in big trouble; and so will he. Working with an ABN means he would be a contractor, not entitled to superannuation, responsible for his own Work Cover and insurance – and tax. I won’t be paying tax, he said. Everyone on the job gets cash. And when you get sprung by the tax department – what then? Shoulders shrugged; eyes glazed over.
I could recount scores of examples, especially if I pumped my very well informed contacts. I won’t claim these cases are typical. But they are not rare. And here’s the worst part. Employers who engage in such criminal practices (by no means all employers – just far too many of them) meet from time to time to discuss the growing number of ways they can rip off vulnerable people. No one keeps minutes of course. You’d have to wonder why, wouldn’t you.
The government would probably claim that no amount of legislation will stop criminals from being criminals, nor protect people who can’t be bothered looking after their own interests – that the examples I gave would happen regardless of what the law was; and that the overwhelming majority of employers would protect their own interests by never stooping to such vile extremes. So why it is necessary to introduce a “fairness test” to the industrial relations package formally known as Work Choices?
Wednesday, 16 May 2007
Your Stars!! As You’ve Never Seen Them Before!!
Light relief in dire times
Recently a couple of friends reminded me about a “newspaper” I wrote some time after 911 in which I pondered what sort of world it is in which such things could happen. They warned me at the time that people of a certain mental bent would come gunning for me if I ever put it out in public. And we have indeed seen how in the last half decade some people have not only refused to consider certain issues but tried to silence those who have wanted to say uncomfortable things out aloud. I am not about to do that here.
Instead I want only to offer for your amusement (hopefully) the Astrology Section of the newspaper (which was called The Daily Mopup. The only edition ever written was dated 12/9/2001).
This, however, is astrology with a difference. I gave the constellations new names, and my challenge to readers is to match the new names with the old.
But first, a word on why a set of new names was used.
One of the legacies of the French Revolution that did not last was the revolutionary new calendar. The world had changed, reasoned the revolutionaries (although some people would question that the revolutionaries reasoned at all on anything) and that break with the past was enshrined in new measures. Hence the metric system which did last and the French Revolutionary Calendar which did not. Well, the world DID change on 911, and for that reason I thought it would be a good idea if we had a new set of names for the constellations of the Zodiac.
What follows is my prognostications for the whole human race during the month beginning 12/11/2001. The other point to be made here is that there are 13 constellations in this new version – for 13 lunar months. Soooo New Age. Oh, one more thing. An election was in the air when this was put together.
1 ELVIS There has been a celestial coup and Elvis is no longer King, so if you don’t know how things are in your castle, you should stay at home this month and give yourself time to consolidate before striking out on any new missions to the culturally challenged.
2 LIBERACE Always standing behind Elvis, Liberace’s fortunes have risen and fallen with the moods of the King. If you feel as though you’re running hot and cold, you should get out of the sauna before you get burned. Feather boas should be discretely closeted until it’s fashionable to wear them again.
3 MARILYN Public exposure of Bobby’s role in her demise has not calmed the wind that buffets this star of incalculable candle power. This is a good month to steer clear of politicians if you’ve got, or look like, a baby – and especially so if you feel like one.
4 MARLY Dreadlocks are in, especially in Byron Bay, but so are sniffer dogs. Beware good looking police officers, or you may find you have a willing nose in your crotch. So what’s the problem I hear you ask. Well, nothing a tasty bone wouldn’t fix.
5 MADONNA Every young man need one of these, especially when she assumes her alter ego. Whether you’re young or not – in fact you don’t even have to be a man – you can rent the video In Bed With Madonna to get through the coming month when the only show on TV is going to be Promises, Promises.
6 ABBA Mamma Mia! What a constellation! The sign of big time come-backs is the brightest it’s ever been this month. If you know any Liberal politicians try to avert their gaze from this sector of the heavens. We don’t want them becoming any more excited than they already are.
7 EMENEM Sugar coated chocolate seems a bit excessive, unless you’re an old smarty. But Hey! This is popular culture. If you’ve a mind to knock off someone else’s idea, don’t let good taste and manners stop you.
8 KYLIE Like background radiation Kylie’s always up there. In fact she’s the pole star. But no, she’s not the Pope. If you think the world revolves around you, enjoy it. Someone’s got to.
9 HOGES For all those who are having a Byron Bay address while they’re not living in Byron Bay, you’re in good company. Hoges is actually a planet rather than a star, but no one’s had the heart to tell him. If you start having illusions of grandeur, yet suspect you might actually be naked, you’ll never know if you don’t look.
10 MOLLY Never fear the ravages of ageing. Proof exists that once king of the kids, always king of the kids – or queen, or knave, or … whatever. If you have a strong urge to lash out and buy an Akubra, just do it. They’re great for bald patches.
11 PAULINE Paradox mesmerises. This black hole at the centre of the Southern Cross keeps flashing into view. This is definitely your time if you have a yearning to be noticed and to be heard. Beware old fields and earth ridges, however. Oh yeah, and don’t pretend to be a party animal if you’re actually a control freak.
12 ABBOTT AND COSTELLA Reincarnation is not always kind. Budd and Lu must have been naughty as well as funny to come back the way they did. If you plan on making promises this month, make sure they’re the kind that make people laugh with you rather than at you.
13 MENINGA Supernovas are spectacular “dead” stars. That doesn’t mean, however, that they’re insignificant. This one burst on its first appearance and became an instant hero – the kind that could even turn around the fortunes of the number thirteen. Meninga is not number thirteen however, but number one. The first star of the new era. If you feel a dummy pass coming on, this is your sign. You’re definitely about to score.
(PS if you're asking Who's (Mal) Meninga, That's why he's a real star.)
Recently a couple of friends reminded me about a “newspaper” I wrote some time after 911 in which I pondered what sort of world it is in which such things could happen. They warned me at the time that people of a certain mental bent would come gunning for me if I ever put it out in public. And we have indeed seen how in the last half decade some people have not only refused to consider certain issues but tried to silence those who have wanted to say uncomfortable things out aloud. I am not about to do that here.
Instead I want only to offer for your amusement (hopefully) the Astrology Section of the newspaper (which was called The Daily Mopup. The only edition ever written was dated 12/9/2001).
This, however, is astrology with a difference. I gave the constellations new names, and my challenge to readers is to match the new names with the old.
But first, a word on why a set of new names was used.
One of the legacies of the French Revolution that did not last was the revolutionary new calendar. The world had changed, reasoned the revolutionaries (although some people would question that the revolutionaries reasoned at all on anything) and that break with the past was enshrined in new measures. Hence the metric system which did last and the French Revolutionary Calendar which did not. Well, the world DID change on 911, and for that reason I thought it would be a good idea if we had a new set of names for the constellations of the Zodiac.
What follows is my prognostications for the whole human race during the month beginning 12/11/2001. The other point to be made here is that there are 13 constellations in this new version – for 13 lunar months. Soooo New Age. Oh, one more thing. An election was in the air when this was put together.
1 ELVIS There has been a celestial coup and Elvis is no longer King, so if you don’t know how things are in your castle, you should stay at home this month and give yourself time to consolidate before striking out on any new missions to the culturally challenged.
2 LIBERACE Always standing behind Elvis, Liberace’s fortunes have risen and fallen with the moods of the King. If you feel as though you’re running hot and cold, you should get out of the sauna before you get burned. Feather boas should be discretely closeted until it’s fashionable to wear them again.
3 MARILYN Public exposure of Bobby’s role in her demise has not calmed the wind that buffets this star of incalculable candle power. This is a good month to steer clear of politicians if you’ve got, or look like, a baby – and especially so if you feel like one.
4 MARLY Dreadlocks are in, especially in Byron Bay, but so are sniffer dogs. Beware good looking police officers, or you may find you have a willing nose in your crotch. So what’s the problem I hear you ask. Well, nothing a tasty bone wouldn’t fix.
5 MADONNA Every young man need one of these, especially when she assumes her alter ego. Whether you’re young or not – in fact you don’t even have to be a man – you can rent the video In Bed With Madonna to get through the coming month when the only show on TV is going to be Promises, Promises.
6 ABBA Mamma Mia! What a constellation! The sign of big time come-backs is the brightest it’s ever been this month. If you know any Liberal politicians try to avert their gaze from this sector of the heavens. We don’t want them becoming any more excited than they already are.
7 EMENEM Sugar coated chocolate seems a bit excessive, unless you’re an old smarty. But Hey! This is popular culture. If you’ve a mind to knock off someone else’s idea, don’t let good taste and manners stop you.
8 KYLIE Like background radiation Kylie’s always up there. In fact she’s the pole star. But no, she’s not the Pope. If you think the world revolves around you, enjoy it. Someone’s got to.
9 HOGES For all those who are having a Byron Bay address while they’re not living in Byron Bay, you’re in good company. Hoges is actually a planet rather than a star, but no one’s had the heart to tell him. If you start having illusions of grandeur, yet suspect you might actually be naked, you’ll never know if you don’t look.
10 MOLLY Never fear the ravages of ageing. Proof exists that once king of the kids, always king of the kids – or queen, or knave, or … whatever. If you have a strong urge to lash out and buy an Akubra, just do it. They’re great for bald patches.
11 PAULINE Paradox mesmerises. This black hole at the centre of the Southern Cross keeps flashing into view. This is definitely your time if you have a yearning to be noticed and to be heard. Beware old fields and earth ridges, however. Oh yeah, and don’t pretend to be a party animal if you’re actually a control freak.
12 ABBOTT AND COSTELLA Reincarnation is not always kind. Budd and Lu must have been naughty as well as funny to come back the way they did. If you plan on making promises this month, make sure they’re the kind that make people laugh with you rather than at you.
13 MENINGA Supernovas are spectacular “dead” stars. That doesn’t mean, however, that they’re insignificant. This one burst on its first appearance and became an instant hero – the kind that could even turn around the fortunes of the number thirteen. Meninga is not number thirteen however, but number one. The first star of the new era. If you feel a dummy pass coming on, this is your sign. You’re definitely about to score.
(PS if you're asking Who's (Mal) Meninga, That's why he's a real star.)
Who’s got the biggest …?
Jason Koutsoukis on John Howard on John Howard as Mr Experience
John Howard recently claimed to be the leader with credible experience to be elected as Prime Minister at the upcoming election.
Jason Koutsoukis took a look and wrote up his findings in The Age. On 6/5/2007.
The link below will take you directly to it.
It’s seriously worth reading – especially if you like John Howard and intend to vote for him later this year.
http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2007/05/05/1177788462755.html
Please note – The Age newspaper has given permission to put this link in this post. The Age is in no way connected with this blog or its author.
John Howard recently claimed to be the leader with credible experience to be elected as Prime Minister at the upcoming election.
Jason Koutsoukis took a look and wrote up his findings in The Age. On 6/5/2007.
The link below will take you directly to it.
It’s seriously worth reading – especially if you like John Howard and intend to vote for him later this year.
http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2007/05/05/1177788462755.html
Please note – The Age newspaper has given permission to put this link in this post. The Age is in no way connected with this blog or its author.
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