Chickens and eggs

I wonder whether Orwell, for all his preoccupation with how many eggs his chickens were laying, had anything like John Cleese's gentle affection for his hens (watch the video clip)?

Of course, as I've heard from various backyard chook-keepers, how many eggs your chooks are laying per day is a big thing. It probably means the difference between a poached egg on toast and a quiche. And the difference between happy, contented hens and stressed or ill ones.

The tip-off for the video came via Cleese's Twitter feed (Camilla the hen is a bit of a star in Cleese's online efforts) and, of course, Orwell's diary has long progressed since I first blogged about it. The image, 'Sunrise Haiga 2000', is a creative Commons licensed Haiku digital art-work by monkeysox.

Read more!

John Updike dies at 76

US novelist John Updike died on Tuesday, aged 76. He lost his battle with lung cancer.

The two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author was highly prolific, and wrote novels, short stories, non-fiction and verse. Updike was famous for his keenly observed, sharply rendered and insightful narratives of middle America’s domesticity and family life.

As he put it once, “When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.”

Updike also pursued a realism that placed sex and sexuality squarely in the middle of his characters’ lives and thoughts, just as they are in the centre of all our lives. Some thought he took the sex too far, though for different reasons. The prudish British dubbed Updike the ‘laureate of lewd’, while other critics nominated him – repeatedly – for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

However, it’s worth remembering that in the 50s and 60s, Updike was pushing the boundaries of moral prudery and taboo over sexuality in a country and time where many saw Rock ‘n Roll as the work of the devil.

He made no apologies for putting sexuality in the middle of his stories:

“I think taste is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.”

I think that some of Updike’s finest work is in his short stories where he explores small town life and burgeoning adolescent sexuality and angst with more restraint and nuance, yet great honesty.

His two Pulitzer Prizes for fiction were for his famous Rabbit series of novels (beginning with Rabbit, Run in 1961) featuring the middle-aged, middle class, middle America suburban antics of high school football hero turned car salesman Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. Some of his other famous works were The Centaur (1963), The Witches of Eastwick (1984), and The Widows of Eastwick (2008).

“Writers take words seriously-perhaps the last professional class that does— and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors and careless typesetters and obtuse and malevolent reviewers into the lap of the ideal reader*.”

— John Updike, Writers on Themselves (1986); Wikiquote

* Whoever that is...

Obituaries elsewhere
‘A Relentless Updike Mapped America's Mysteries’, The New York Times, 27 January 2009

'Rabbit is gone: Updike's wit, frankness remembered', ABC News Opinion, 28 January 2009

[The image is a Magnum one... shhh...]

Read more!

Shoulder to the plough

Now that I'm back from Brisbane and back at work, I'm more in the frame of mind to post this quick update and catch up on what's happening.

About the only things positive I can say about yesterday's Australia Day is that I'm glad – proud even – that Mick Dodson is Australian of the Year, and that we went to a lovely, small barbecue at our friends' place in Melbourne's west and met their new (well, not so new after six months...) baby, Alex, who is gorgeous!

Monday also saw the start of the Chinese New year of the Ox, hence the lovely photo of oxen pulling a plough in the mist in India that I found on flickr. Happy Chinese New Year to all my readers! I hope this new year brings good things for you, especially peace, safety, health, good cheer and love. Just as importantly, I also wish the coming year brings you the forbearance and fortitude of the Ox to withstand the vicissitudes of the economic crisis and the emerging social hardships accompanying it.

For all the talk of the economic crisis in the media, I have been somewhat cushioned from the full extent and possible horror of it, seeing that I work in the community sector (but not in welfare/service delivery) and thus am sheltered from the financial shock of profit meltdowns and job-losses in the commercial sector. And I don't take taxis much, so don't hear the stories of taxi drivers going bust as the rest of us tighten our belts.

However, it realy does hit home – as it did me this afternoon – when the retail worker serving you asks where you're working and comments that your job must be safe, and mentions that her boyfriend has just that afternoon lost his job in the car finance sector. Ouch. At least, she comments, he hated his job and hoped he could get another that he liked, and that his real passion was music but you can't make a living as a muso...

I wondered what would happen to her job if the rest of us keep tightening our belts and stopped buying things – or at least cut down – however well made and useful they are.

What I hate so much about how the media, corporations and government are approaching the economic downturn' is that it involves throwing more money at a system that I'm sure is broken in the first place – to encourage us to spend, spend, spend our way out of recession when I think it was our over-consumption-fueled debt crisis that contributed in no small way to the current economic troubles, and certainly does contribute to our current environmental predicament of consumption-propelled fossil-fuel burning global warming.

We are being offered a poisoned choice – to consume our way out of recession to save each others' livelihoods, and to forget how we are consuming our planet's resources at a rate of knots and warming the globe in the process.

I feel like we are people drowning at sea being thrown life-rafts with holes in them. Or worse, with fires lit in them.

[Image: 'Oxen in the mist' by Roshnii under CC license]

Read more!

Pain on a push-bike

I am amazed at the resilience of someone like Cadel Evans. Not only has the amazing strength and endurance to race the Tour de France, but he has the amazing capacity to bounce back from a bad accident and win the yellow jersey in the latest leg of the Tour.

I can remember what a wuss I was the couple of times I had a significant bingle while riding my bike. On one occasion, I was blown sideways by one of Melbourne's infamous massive wind tunnel crosswinds, pushed into parked cars and hence over my handlebars.

Besides some bruises and sore hands, the worst I had was a graze on my chest near my collarbone, which I luckily didn't break. I was shaken, but picked myself up in daze, thankful that there was no car behind me to crash into me. I limped, almost shell-shocked, into work later that morning. But like I said, I was a it of a wuss about it. Though shaken up, I was pretty right to ride home later that evening – very cautiously and slowly. I am not being conceited in comparing my petty little bingle in my little bike-commuting history. I just couldn't imagine doing a grueling mountain bike race in that condition.

But Cadel Evans is a different beast. He suffered bad grazes and bruises in the bad accident he had a couple of days ago, and was quite fearful that he would not be able to finish the race if the injuries were worse that was known at the time. I was quite shocked when I read the news of the accident yesterday morning, as I have been really hoping that Cadel will win this year's race. But, not only did he pick himself up, but he kept on racing, and kept himself in a good position in the race.

All that was reported yesterday morning is that he was racing again, and had received medical attention from the Tour doctor – leaning out of a moving convertible. It turns out the injuries were not 'serious' – whatever his team representatives mean by that – and though still in pain and bruised, he started again the next (yesterday) morning, and ran an excellent race to win the latest leg. He is now leading the race. The ABC has video footage of Cadel getting the yellow jersey online.

Good on you, Cadel. You're amazing, and I wish you all the best for the rest of the race.

Read more!

"We've come home, now"

Today was Sorry Day – the tenth anniversary of the first Sorry Day, in fact. Part of Melbourne Aboriginal community's commemorations this day was observing this anniversary and reminder of what they have been through.

It also served as a reminder to the non-Indigenous community that despite the federal government's national apology to the Stolen Generations, there is much that needs to be done to address Indigenous disadvantage in this country – not the least of which is financial compensation for members of the Stolen Generations, as part of the full reparations to them recommended by the Bringing Them Home report.

Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter, with their band, performed at Federation Square in the late afternoon as part of the commemorations, and as usual their performance was powerful.

When Archie started to sing 'Took the children away', all those present went up to the foot of the stage to place a white flower on the wreath that was placed there to commemorate all those who had suffered the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families – those stolen passed and present, and their families who suffered unbearable loss. It was powerful moment. And not one I wanted to spoil by taking photos of.

Archie also spoke about how important being a father and being part of a family is to him now, particularly in light of his experience of being a member of the Stolen Generation. I'm uncertain if the lyrics were in the original version of his song, but Archie now finishes the song by singing "We've come home, now", from which the title of this post is taken. The roar of approval and applause from the crowd sent a chill down my spine.

Read more!

Hand me the crowbar

Charlton Heston is dead. He was 84. Now his gun can be prised from his cold dead hands. I wonder if Michael Moore will take up his offer.

Read more!

After the storm

We were lucky. The almighty storm that ripped through Melbourne last Wednesday spared us the damage and inconvenience that so many have experienced in its wake. The gale-force winds ripped off roofs, tore limbs from trees, cut off electricity to thousands across the city – some for many days – and blew down brick walls and construction scaffolding. In the last two instances, two people were killed.

In the aftermath, an electricty company linesman was killed while trying to make repairs to the line down in the Mornington Peninsular. Now, some papers are attributing the death of an elderly woman in a house fire to the prolonged electricity outage caused by the storm – the house is thought to have caught fire from a candle used for lighting.

Compared to that, the troubles at our house were minimal. We lost electricity for most of the afternoon of the storm and had debris strewn around our backyard. I was at work while my partner had the kids at home. She returned from an early afternoon trip to the shop to find the picnic sun canopy we'd erected to shade the kids in the backyard was nearly blowing away, but she was able to disassemble it single-handedly!

Besides witnessing the eerie orange glow in the sky in the early afternoon, which turned out to be a massive dust storm, and watching tree branches tear across the street below my office window (1 floor up), and hearing ominous sounds from our building's roof, the worse I got while at work was getting dust in my eyes at lunch time and getting wet in the rain dashing for my tram home. I managed to squeeze myself on a very crowded tram. It must have been quite delayed through a very congested city – the sodden state of some passengers was a testament to their long wait for the tram.

In this context, it's strange to re-read my comment on about the escalating and increasingly dangerous changes of global warming in my previous post about weather forecasting.

I took the photo above of a mural that appeared on the back fence of a house backing on to a park in North Fitzroy. I'm sure it was a kids' project for the school holidays. When I first saw this mural from the tram heading home from work, I was struck by the cheery scene on that wet evening – a couple of days before the storm. There was also a real rainbow in the sky, and for just a moment the real and painted rainbows were visible together. I hope it cheers up those who have suffered damage in the storm, or damage and in inconvenience from the power outage.

And let's spare a thought for the men and women – many of them volunteers – who worked very hard to clean up the damage and help those injured or endangered by the storm, and the power company workers who are working long hours in dangerous conditions to get the power back on. I hope there are rainbows where you are to cheer you up.

You can find a lot of photos of the storm and its aftermath on flickr here.

Read more!

Wordless Wednesday No.4 – Moomba

Moomba

I grabbed this shot of a parade participant on her way back down Swanston Street after the Moomba Parade had finished and the crowds were going home. She said she'd had a good parade, but it was very hot! I could only imagine how hot under all those feathers, and with 37 degrees C heat!

I had gone to the Moomba Parade on Monday morning to take photos – with a 35 mm SLR Minolta. I haven't gotten those developed yet, but this was the last of the three photos I managed to take on my Canon digital before the batteries died on me. I have to remember to recharge the batteries before I go out to take photos!

By the way, I think I'm failing at the 'wordless' part of the Wordless Wednesdays...

Read more!

In the picture

I discovered this amazing news through Genevieve at Reeling and Writing and Lucy Tartan Sorrow at Sills Bend: the Library of Congress has recently added a significant chunk of its collection of images and photographs to flickr – free, and without restriction, as they've selected "only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist" to share online.

That's 3,115 (to date) copyright-free images to use! I'm salivating just thinking of all those images to use in blogs, agit prop, histories and research.

I'm also excited because, as I've mentioned before, I'm going to take a serious effort to learn photography this year, and this is going to make a great learning resource and an introduction to the history of American photography. What I'm also amazed is that someone (or more than one someone) actually sat through all of them uploading, adding titles and descriptions that include photographer, subject, date, and technical notes - and tags! Now that's discipline. And commitment to librarianship and the commons. You'll find them at the Library of Congress flickr page.

The photo above is by Jack Delano, of "Mrs. Marcella Hart, mother of three children, employed as a wiper at the roundhouse, Clinton, Iowa," taken in April 1943. I found it under the tag 'railways'.

Read more!

“We’re all going to die.” *

Barista has posted a wonderful obituary on Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and Italian born filmaker Michelango Antonioni, who died earlier this week – on the same day:

As an artist, [Bergman] put the actor and character at the centre of the frame and the process. He was unafraid of stillness, content to watch, absorbed in the great mysteries and depth of a human being struggling with life itself.
…
In the sacred space of shared artistic process, Bergman was unflinching and profound, full of joy and pity, laconic and dark, playful and despairing.
…

[Antonioni] was able to embrace a world in which certainty and continuity are no more than a carapace. He was fascinated by discontinuity, disappointment, the world between objects, the unintelligible gesture and the unanswered question.
… he was the first truly valorised modernist of the cinema, who took the medium forwards into wider artistic possibilities.

Personally, my knowledge of their work is limited, and my recollection of what I have seen of theirs is constrained. If anything, what I knew of them is nicely summed up by Barista's comment that they were "the enduring icons of the art movie, and clichés in popular culture".

However, his post brought their work and legacy alive for me. I think we may be having a retrospective at home this weekend – if we can get hold of any DVDs, as I suspect lots of others have the same idea.

* to get this reference, please do read Barista's post.

[Image: 'Wild strawberries' by deaddamien (cc)]

Read more!

A reflection on bravery and heroes

Melbourne is still reeling from the news of Monday morning's events where a man was shot dead when he went to help a woman being attacked by another man. A number of city buildings were 'locked down' as police made an intensive search of surrounding city blocks for the attacker. The news has been full of the details of the incident, as well as the background of most of the people involved, but I thought it worth while to repeat the reported details of what happened to set the context for this post and for the benefit of non-Melbourne readers.

Brendan Keilar, a 43-year-old city solicitor, was shot dead when he and another man (a 25-year-old Dutch backpacker) tried to intervene when they saw the woman being being dragged by her hair by a young man at the busy city intersection of William Street and Flinders Lane. It was about 8.20 am, pretty much peak hour traffic in the city.

According to reports, when the two men approached the man allegedly attacking the woman, he pulled out a gun and shot all three of them – point-blank. Brendan Keilar died at the scene – though paramedics tried to save his life, (as this eyewitness blog account attests). The 24-year-old woman, who was shot in the abdomen, is in hospital in a 'serious but stable condition', while the young man had been shot in the upper body and has apparently regained consciousness after being in a 'critical' condition.

Police now allege that the man who attacked the woman and shot all three, and had seriously attacked another woman some minutes earlier, is a 29-year-old member of the Hells Angel bikie gang. Both women were known to the man. Police hunted for him until he reportedly surrendered himself to police yesterday afternoon. He has been remanded in custody.

Much media attention has gone to the person who allegedly did the shootings. Some attention has gone to what kind of man Brendan Keilar was, that he should have gone to the help of someone and put his life at risk. It is the later that has really got me thinking the last three days.

The media pretty immediately hailed Keilar as a hero, with Melbourne's daily tabloid now inviting its readers to send their 'messages of support' to the heroes – and presumably Keilar's family.

I have no desire to be disrespectful to Brendan Keilar or his family, who are going through a deep, deep grief. Three children have lost their father and a woman her husband. I am wondering though – and this is pure speculation on my part – that for however much it may be comforting to think that their father/husband lost his life as a hero, that they may, deep inside, wish that he hadn't been one, that he hadn't gone to help that woman, that he had just dialled '000' from a safe distance, for he is now lost to them forever.

Why? Why did Brendan Keilar risk so much, risk ever seeing his children again, to go to the aid of a total stranger? Of course, one comment that kept emerging when the news broke – especially from bystanders – was that when people woke up that Monday morning and went to work, they certainly didn't expect to face this situation. There was that overwhelming, harrowing sense of pure chance – who would have expected such a thing to happen in Melbourne, of all places, and for it to end that way?

If this were New York, Los Angeles, Baghdad, Cape Town or Rio de Janeiro, I believe people's responses to such an incident would be markedly different – locals of those cities would probably immediately assume that an attacker would have a gun in the first place. Not so Melbourne.

Many, many people do brave things – some of them stupid things. Many take calculated risks in their responses to situations that call on them to act altruistically. They assess situations well beforehand, understand the risks involved, train to deal with them or avoid them, and go into situations with a clear sense of purpose. Foremost in my mind are the volunteer firefighters (CFA) who bravely fought Victoria's raging bush fires last summer – for no remuneration. Others include metro firefighters, paramedics, rescue workers, emergency and relief workers, the police and military.

In my mind, the CFA volunteers are truly heroic because while they understand the risks, they also know what's at stake if they don't act. Many of them probably wouldn't agree they're 'heroes', and think they're just doing the right thing.

I wonder if Keilar thought very much about what he was getting himself into before he stepped forward to intervene. Perhaps, if his background were criminal law, he thought he had enough understanding of and experience dealing with violent people to be able to defuse the situation until help arrived – an approach many others may share. Perhaps he was spurred by a strong sense of injustice to see a young woman being attacked – after all, for the last two generations men have been asked to not look away from other men's violence against women. Refusing to be silent is now expected of any commonly decent person.

Maybe Keilar did exactly what he would want any other man to do if they saw his own daughters, son, or wife being hurt. That can be a very strong driver for action.

Sometimes, doing the decent thing may not have been the best thing to do at the time. I'm not even sure that it is the right thing to do. But it is a compelling motivation for many people.

Some people don't think about it too much when they act bravely. Perhaps it seemed the natural thing to do. I've heard a man who rushed into a burning house to save children trapped in it tell reporters, on his being awarded a bravery medal, that he didn't think about it. He just did it because he was there. And that he would do it again if necessary. Perhaps not knowing everything that could go wrong helps that.

On the radio this morning I heard that a media outlet's poll of its readers, asking whether they would go to the aid of strangers after what happened on Monday, showed that over 70% of the few hundred or so respondents said they would. Many people want to do the decent thing, and hope that other people will act decently.

But I think many of us really wonder, when we hear of such incidents as Monday's, whether we would act the same way: step up to the plate and do what's necessary. It is something that we really want to believe about ourselves, but when we start thinking about it too much we wonder if we would. Or could.

I think that's why people like Brendan Keilar are our heroes. Because they could. And did.

So, with respect, I think Tina Turner is wrong after all.

Read more!

Food for people

The label on the plastic container holding the two kilograms of peaches I bought at the Farmer's Market reads, "Tree ripened yellow peach. Food for people."

I wondered about the 'Food for people' tag line. Who else would it be for? We normally give domestic animals 'feed'. Unless they are our pets, where, as our anthropocentric perception of companion animals insists, we feed our pets food.

Who else would food be for? The implicit message in such a banal statement is that food could be for some other purpose – or rather grown, processed, packaged and sold for someone else's purposes. Not non-humans (such as aliens and what not). Corporations. Which may as well be aliens, in the Matrix 'feeding on humans in a feeding factory' scenario.


The preference for 'food for people' is based on the conviction that so much of our food is grown by industrial agriculture in means that value higher crop yields over the impact farming practices have on our communities and environment. It is concerned with how fruit and vegetables are grown to suit the commercial interests of retailers that the 'produce' should survive long journeys to the supermarkets without bruising, last longer on the supermarket shelves without going brown, spotty or squelchy, and thus reduce commercial losses that are attributed to their customers' aversion for food that doesn't look perfect. These practices are less concerned with how that fruit or vegetable may taste, feel in the mouth, or be used in our cooking and meals.

The supermarket chains insist that they are only providing what their customers – us – want. Admittedly, it is odd that we are obsessed with fresh food that 'looks (and feels) perfect', rather than tastes great. Or so the supermarkets' picture of us, their customers, paints us to be. Are we really like this?

Yes, we all want to buy fruit and vegetables that are not bruised, not mouldy, not wilted or browning, maybe only just a bit spotty – our food will last longer when we get it home. We certainly don't want it rotten. Yes, we should all have access to fresh fruit and vegetables.

Does that mean that we shouldn't care that the tomatoes taste bland, or worse, and feel wooly in the mouth? Should we ignore the fact that the taste-poor apples are oversized and glossy with wax?

It's just not good enough. I think that is why more and more people are going to be concerned about 'Food for People'. And rightly so.

[The image is one of mine (cc) from a family trip to the Farmers' Market at Collingwood Children's Farm, on which I've posted before.]

Read more!

Life in a bag

When I wondered aloud whether the Feds' tardiness (and sloppiness, it turns out) in evacuating Lebanese-Australians from the war zone in Lebanon was motivated by a distrust of their being Arabic, their being non-Anglo, I certainly did not imagine anyone would openly suggest that these Australians stuck in Lebanon did not deserve Australian help in evacuation because they were not true Australians.

Apparently, right-wing culture-assassin Piers Ackerman dares do just that. He drags out that old "dual-citizenship holders aren't loyal - if you are really Australian, why live in Lebanon" crap.

Barista takes on that pretty scarry stuff very well. He also links to this amazing blogger in Lebanon, Mazen (Kerblog), who posts observations, lovely drawings and more as the siege continues. He has also posted 'Starry night', an mp3 of his trumpet improvisation to the sound of shelling in Beirut. It's excellent – and hair-raising. [Mp3 link]

In a post called 'My life in a bag', Mazen says:

each time i leave my flat, i take with me:
my passport and evan's one
a mini-disc recorder + microphone
2 t-shirts
2 underwear
2 pairs of socks
a notebook and pens
my trumpet
binoculars
a book
tobacco
a small camera
a lighter
a usb key
a toothbrush
4 batteries

I imagine that means if he were to return to a bombed out flat, or need to flee for safety while on the street, he will be prepared. My mind boggles. I can't imagine having to be so prepared each time I leave my home, not knowing what may happen when I walk out the door.

His son, evan, is 5 years old – the same as my eldest boy. It nearly breaks my heart to read this post:

evan is 5 years old and didn't live any war.
"we play karate?"

I know what he means, but I hope that I never have to know what he means.

[Update: I've fixed the main link to Mazen's blog, Kerblog. He also reports that he has helped set up a blog for another Lebanese artist/poet, Laure Ghorayeb, who lived and created art through previous wars, and who is also his mum! Her work is amazing. Check out Witnessing (again). Updated 5 pm, Sunday 23 July.]

Read more!

It's still magic

It was Carlos Santana's birthday yesterday. He turns 59. Cool. I think he is one of the most distinctive and magical guitarists ever. Ciao, Carlos! Happy birthday!

Read more!