Basra - 4 years on from British occupation

Extreme Islamists have brutally enforced their vision of proper behaviour, banning activities which used to be normal in what was once a sophisticated city, such as music and dancing. In the past three months, 42 women have been reported killed for wearing make-up, or failing to don the hijab headscarf. Sama, a 24-year-old student, said ,"All my family, my friends, go out now with their heads covered. We know of girls who were killed because they did not listen to warnings. There was one woman who was accused of having an affair, and they took her away. No one has seen her since. Before the war we could all go out without our heads covered. We even went out in mixed groups, but that is no longer possible."

From The Independent

Brilliant poetry

Blizzard by Sean O'Brien

The snow will bring the world indoors, the fall

That saves the Gulf Stream and the Greenland Shelf.

White abolitionist of maps and calendars,

Its Lenten rigour pillowed like a sin, it means

To be the only season, falling always on itself.

To put an end to all analogy, pure cold

That proves what it need never say,

It calls us home again, beneath a drift

In which the figure and the ground collapse -

No more redundancy, no more perhaps.

Look at these attic windowsills, look in the grate -

White after white against the off-white sheets,

The wafers of a pitiless communion

That turns a wood to Mother Russia and the night

To afterlife and then to a snowblind street.

With cataracts and snow-tipped breasts

The mermaids in their brazen lingerie

Wait bravely at the fountain in the square.

Green girls, they think it is their destiny

To offer the ideal to empty air.

Forgive me that I did not understand

That you were actual, not merely art,

That your fidelity was courage, that I failed

To honour you, to recognize your pain,

To grasp that snow once fallen will not fall again.

Now it grows clear: the world is not a place

But an occasion, first of sin and then the wish

That such self-knowledge may be gratified,

While snow continues falling, till we learn

There will be neither punishment nor grace.

By the winner of this year's Forward Prize

My response to Bartle Bull's "Mission Accomplished"

Prospect essayist Bartle Bull wrote a piece on Iraq, which struck me morally bankrupt and politically disingenuous. Fired up in my usual way, I submitted the thoughts below:

One tries, truly one tries to find some redeeming feature in Mr Bull's manifesto. The best one can achieve is this question: even if it all turns out for the best in the best of all possible worlds … in the end ... and not even BB seems to expect that end to come soon (maybe a decade, maybe more) ... at what cost to Iraq, Iraqis, the region and beyond ? What's the fair global price, Bartle, measured in human lives, social disintegration, the loss of moral authority, self-inflicted wounds to liberal democracy and hard cash of the political insanity of the Bush doctrine, to which not even his most fervent acolytes from 2002 - 2003 (and not even his dad for pity’s sake) still subscribe?

You know, it truly doesn’t take a political genius to work out that people can’t sustain forever the ghastly toll of the last four years. But BB managed to take 4,000 words to assert that one day all this will be history and things will be better … maybe. Perceptive stuff BB, perceptive stuff.

Mr Bull would have us believe the answer lies in this type of vacuous analysis: "The assassination in September of Abu Risha—head of the "Anbar Awakening," an organisation of 25 Sunni tribes fighting al Qaeda in Anbar—while unfortunate, will not be material." Forgive me but don’t we need a moral compass any more now that “the dowager capital of Islam, is today a Shia city for the first time since 1534.”

Save us from such sophistry. This article isn't notable because it's the author's most controversial yet. One notes the piece because it's stupidity on a stick.

Blackwater by P W Singer

When we evaluate the facts, the use of private military contractors appears to have harmed, rather than helped, the counterinsurgency efforts of the U.S. mission in Iraq, going against our best doctrine and undermining critical efforts of our troops. Even worse, the government can no longer carry out one of its most basic core missions: to fight and win the nation's wars. Instead, the massive outsourcing of military operations has created a dependency on private firms like Blackwater that has given rise to dangerous vulnerabilities.

Read the full article in Salon

Photo: Chris Curry/The Virginian-Pilot/ZUMA Press
Blackwater USA Academy recruit Gregory Collier screams to team members during an executive protection drill at the Blackwater USA compound in Moyock, N.C., on Aug. 2, 2006.

Steve Bell on Gordon Brown

Support the people of Burma

From today's Guardian

Min Neing, an unemployed 22-year-old economics graduate and member of the National League for Democracy, has taken part in four days of demonstrations in Rangoon.

"The whole place is rife with rumours the government's going to arrest protesters. That's why I moved from place to place. Close friends of mine have been picked up, either on the street at protests or when the authorities make 'guestlist checks'. Everyone who's got someone staying in their home must register them with the local authority. If they're discovered and they're not on the list, they'll get arrested."

More ...



The Burma Campaign

Orphans by Tom Waits

Bought it yesterday. Listened to it today for the first time. Mad. Brilliant.

Once

Lovely movie. Wonderful music.

Clubland

Mawkish, sentimental drivel with a central performance from BB that makes one seek out a pistol so you can blow your own brains out before her hamming it up does that for you. One fine scene with son and dad in the kitchen. Maybe two scenes ... son and dad in the supermarket car park is quite enjoyable too.

As posted to Guardian Unlimited

Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change

Interesting video promoting Naomi Klein's new book "The Shock Doctrine"

The title of today's post is a quote from Milton Friedman used by Klein. The man always was a total shit but even he recanted in part (from his money supply madness).

On Phil Collins

Caroline Sullivan's blog in The Guardian started a hare running with this opening:

I wish I'd never heard of Phil Collins ...
... because that way I'd be able to appreciate In the Air Tonight for the great song it really is.

I don't know why but I added this

Forgive me for interrupting so late in the day but I'm increasingly confused (one is a 70s tragic so all this 1980s debate seems altogether too modern). Here's my problem: I can't stand Tories and, although Against All Odds is clearly excruciatingly embarrassing (as opposed to raw and honest, which, let's say, might describe Mandy by Bazza), Phil Collins self-serving tosh, one can't help but hum along with the tune.

Does that make me culpable? If we are what we eat may we not also become that which we give voice to whilst driving through the night listening to FM Radio (PC is quite big on Australian retro radio).

By the way (and not really to do with anything) but what might the Phil Collins who appeared at the Al Gore Save The World From Itself By Becoming Carbon Neutral Bash think of the Phil Collins who flew helicopters and Concorde between stages when the next big charity thing was Help The Starving Sub-Saharan Black People Who Us Good White Folks Need To Patronise Bash? Or is that unkind?

The Gondoliers

My first-ever Gilbert & Sullivan. Lacking real insight (as I do) I've probably been a bit snooty about the English whimsy of the form. I was wrong of course. Opera Australia gave us a lovely evening. Beutiful music, delightful singing, simple but enjoyablle dance and a good few laughs

My gut still says our Tories will win

Every time I'm asked about the imminent Australian election I tell people I have no real sense that Australia is ready to dump the Liberal / National Coalition led by John Howard. People react as if I'm mad or still not assimilated after 8 years here. Well, I simply think the right wing leadership of this nation is far more resilient than the rather self-deluding Labor Party hopes / believes / wishes (Take your pick). I hope I'm wrong. I fear I'm not.

Here's a short story from this evening's Sydney Morning Herald online:

The Federal Government has clawed back significant ground against Labor in the latest Newspoll but still trails by a margin of 55 to 45 per cent in two-party terms.

The Coalition's vote is up 4 points from the previous Newspoll a fortnight ago, despite the recent Liberal leadership turmoil, while Labor's vote fell four points, according to the ABC.

The narrowing of the gap from a massive 18 points to 10 points still means the Coalition would lose office if an election were held now but the improvement is likely to end speculation about John Howard being replaced as Prime Minister before the election.

It will also provide a boost to the Government as many of its MPs had expected their stocks in the polls to worsen after uncertainty about Mr Howard's leadership dominated last week's headlines and he was forced to announce he would hand over the leadership to Peter Costello at some point during the next term if the Coalition won this year's election.

The Herald Neilsen Poll last Monday ignited the leadership troubles when it showed Labor ahead 57-43 in two-party terms and that the Coalition's primary vote had dropped to 39 per cent compared with Labor on 49 per cent.

Labor is urging Mr Howard to call the election this weekend, although some in government ranks believe he will continue to use the benefits of incumbancy and could wait a few more weeks before formally starting the election campaign.

France 0 - 1 Scotland

Unbelievable but true

God bless The New Yorker

The New Yorker

A good day in Europe

France 0 - 0 Italy

Georgia 0 - 0 Ukraine

Scotland 3 - 1 Lithuania

It couldn't have been better, if you think about it.

Guggenheim in Melbourne

We flew to Melbourne (to escape the tedium of APEC) where today's highlight was our visit to the Guggenheim exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. There were fewer works on display than I imagined there might be but that's churlish. I guess it takes a huge effort and massive insurance bill to get the works into a plane and across the Pacific. There were four rooms of memorable, sometimes confronting, art on display. Well worth the visit.

De Kooning's Who's Name Was Writ In The Water (1975)

"Because no battle is ever won he said ...

... They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” (William Faulkner)

Today's Guardian: The road from Basra: to some a handover, to many a retreat

Today's Times: Iraqi forces pledge to keep the peace in Basra as British military moves out

Take your pick. Either way, Faulkner was right.

If I can't learn from this, I can't learn from anything

So … I started Part 2 of Don Delillo’s Underworld: Elegy For Left Hand Alone. It’s a terrific novel, of course but when I reached page 170 the text simply took off. This is what writing is about.

“You feel sorry for yourself. You think you’re missing something and you don’t know what it is. You’re lonely inside your life. You have a job and a family and a fully executed will, already, at your age, because the whole point is to die prepared, die legal, with all the papers signed. Die liquid, so they can convert to cash. You used to have the same dimensions as the observable universe. Now you’re a lost speck. You look at old cars and recall a purpose, a destination.”

And on page 173 there’s the geo-political analysis of Marvin Lundy”

“Excuse me but if you rotate the map of Latvia ninety degrees so the eastern border goes on top, this is exactly the shape that’s on Gorbachev’s head. In other words when he’s lying in bed at night and his wife comes over to give him a glass of water and an aspirin, that’s Latvia she’s looking at.”

But best of all, there’s the breathtaking description of the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island on pages 184 to 186. Try this for size:

“He imagined he was watching the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza – only this was twenty-five times bigger, with tanker trucks spraying perfumed water on the approach roads. He found the sight inspiring. All this ingenuity and labour, this delicate effort to fit maximum waste into diminishing space. The towers of the World Trade Center were visible in the distance and he sensed a poetic balance between that idea and this one. Bridges, tunnels, scows, tugs, graving docks, container ships, all the great works of transport, trade and linkage were directed in the end to this culminating structure. And the thing was organic, ever growing and shifting, it’s shape computer-plotted by the day and the hour. In a few years this would be the highest mountain on the Atlantic Coast between Boston and Miami. Brian felt a surge of enlightenment. He looked at all that soaring garbage and knew for the first time what his job was all about. Not engineering or transportation or source reduction. He dealt in human behaviour, people’s habits and impulses, their uncontrollable needs and innocent wishes, maybe their passions, certainly their excesses and indulgences but their kindness too, their generosity, and the question was how to keep this mass metabolism from overwhelming us.”

Brilliant.

Four hours before the fight home

picture by Susi

Palm Cove just after dawn

picture by Susi

Sydney artist Ana Pollak has won the Dobell Prize for drawing: Mullet Creek

To contrive a little kingdom, in the midst of the universal muck, then shit on it, ah that was me all over. (Samuel Beckett)

From the BBC

"Fourteen US soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash overnight in northern Iraq, the US military has said. The Black Hawk helicopter, carrying 10 soldiers and four crew members, crashed after experiencing a mechanical malfunction, a US statement said."

and

"At least 15 people were killed and 50 injured when a suicide bomber rammed a fuel tanker into a police station in the northern oil city of Baiji."

Meanwhile, in The New York Times ...

Bush Takes a Step Away From Maliki

"The White House is trying to distance itself from the Iraqi prime minister before President Bush’s troop buildup is re-evaluated."

Do we laugh or cry?

INDIAN Dr Mohamed Haneef has won his bid to have his work visa returned in a stunning victory in the Federal Court in Brisbane.

Dr Haneef was successful in his court appeal which was handed down at 12.20pm.

Federal Court Justice Jeff Spender made orders quashing Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews decision to cancel the former terrorism suspect's work visa on character grounds.

He also made an order in the nature of a prohibiton and/or injunction restraining Mr Andrews from acting upon the cancellation of the visa, and ordered he pay Dr Haneef's costs.

Justice Spender said that contrary to some media commentary which he described as "almost scandalous", the case wasn't a contest between the judiciary and the Howard Government.

He described remarks making claims of tension between judges and the Federal Government as ignorant and grossly misinformed.

Justice Spender said Mr Andrews fell into jurisdictional error by applying the wrong test when determining whether to cancel the visa.

"It follows that Mr Andrews decision must be set aside," he said.

From today's Australian (and it's one of Murdoch's!!)

The beginnings of an idea

We have a Sri Lankan friend, Uma Raj, who returned to work in Tamil Eelam about three years ago. She’s a young woman with a vision impairment that will continue to deteriorate until she becomes totally blind. Uma wants to help other Tamil people with vision impairment. She has written to friends in Australia asking for help with equipment and materials provision, with training and policy development as well as other capacity building tools. A few of us who worked alongside Uma for a few years in New South Wales disability organisations want to see if we can help. We’re not really sure what or how. We realise it might be difficult to provide aid to people living in a war zone. We want to provide support but to do so in a way that fosters some kind of purposeful two way exchange because we’re not interested in perpetuating neo-colonialist dependency relationships. We do want to transfer helpful resources from our rich society to the poorer circumstances of Sri Lanka but to do so in ways that change and benefit us somehow, just as we hope we may help people in Uma’s community to change for the better their own circumstances. And, of course, we want to be ‘right on’ (to use a very old and self-deprecating term): carbon neutral, gender balancing, capacity building, local resource and skill developing, sustainable. Are we bleeding heart liberals and do-gooding busy bodies? Probably. We hope to do good (and there's nothing wrong with that) but we’ll plan to do good well. Let's see what happens.

Aletsch glacier

Naked volunteers pose for US photographer Spencer Tunick on the ice-cold Swiss glacier of Aletsch, the largest in the Alps, for an environmental campaign about global warming on 18 August 2007.

Source: Fabrice Coffrini, AFP

Published: Sunday, August 19, 2007 6:33 AEST

I climbed to the Aletsch glacier when I was a 16 year old Boy Scout. We wore clothes. No one had heard of global warming thirty-four years ago.

Link to Live Earth

More about Cheney, 1994

From Salon

If you've logged on to your e-mail this week, you probably couldn't avoid seeing a link to that 1994 video clip in which Dick Cheney explains why it would have been a bad idea to overthrow Saddam Hussein as part of the Gulf War.

"Once you ... took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place?" Cheney asks on the tape. "The other thing was casualties ... The question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was, 'How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?' And our judgment was, "Not very many," and I think we got that right."

So, 13 years and 3,706 dead Americans later, what does Cheney's office have to say now about what Cheney said back then? Only this: "He was not vice president at the time, it was after he was secretary of defense. I don't have any comment."

Shooter

DVD and a Thai take away. Woeful movie, woeful.

Bananas

Odd factoid of the day: Spike says banana is an herbaceous plant. That’s hard to believe but the world contains much that is considerably more strange.

Checked with Wikipedia: turns out it's true.

My friend moves on

Former first minister Jack McConnell today resigned as leader of the Labour party in Scotland following his party's defeat at the hands of the SNP in May's Holyrood election. More ...

Jack didn't deserve to lose the election but you know, shit happens. History will record that he led Scotland well and made a lasting, positive contribution to Scotland's story. He'll contribute more.

Thomas

I am no longer sure I understand.
Not sure …

uncertain may be a word for it,
the way I feel;

this sense I almost have,
which undermines my self-belief.

And yet
if I, of all the people

one can think of, cannot
be persuaded by this argument,

this case perhaps,
what then … who then am I?

Good things come to those (of us) who wait

Rove resigns. Thank God.

When Karl Rove is in trouble - and he has been in a lot of it lately - George Bush has a simple way of showing his support. When he walks across the lawn out of the White House he has Rove walk with him, so the next day's photographs will show that familiar pink, bespectacled face at the presidential shoulder. More ...

Cheney and Iraq - 1994

Save us from these people:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I

Partick Thistle 3-0 Livingston

The first victory of the new season, as reported by BBC Online:

Livingston are still searching for their first points of the season after two goals from Adam Strachan eased Partick Thistle to victory. A well-timed pass from Ryan McStay found Strachan in the box and the midfielder kept his composure to beat Marius Liberda after 18 minutes. Strachan added the second from an acute angle six minutes later. Liam Buchanan added the third on 55 minutes after the Livingston defence failed to deal with a McStay corner.

Partick: Tuffey, Storey, Harkins, Archibald, Twaddle, Strachan, McStay, Rowson, Murray, Donnelly (Buchanan 7), Roberts (Chaplain 36). Subs Not Used: Boyd, Lennon, Hinchcliffe.

Booked: Rowson, Archibald.

Goals: Strachan 18, 24, Buchanan 55.

Livingston: Liberda, MacKay, McPake, Tinkler, James (Weir 72), Kennedy, A Trialist, Noubissie, McCaffrey, Craig, Snodgrass (Pesir 56). Subs Not Used: Fox, Mitchell, Stewart.

Att: 2,481

Ref: E Smith

Lions, buffalo herd and crocs in the Kruger game park

Some events are almost impossible to believe unless you watch them unfold before your eyes. I stumbled on this astonishing video on You Tube. (by the way, the baby buffalo escapes!)

Nagasaki: the second bomb

According to some estimates, about 70,000 of Nagasaki's 240,000 residents were killed instantly,[45] and up to 60,000 were injured. The radius of total destruction was about 1.6 km (1 mile), followed by fires across the northern portion of the city to 3.2 km (2 miles) south of the bomb.[46] The total number of residents killed may have been as many as 80,000, including the few who died from radiation poisoning in the following months.[47]

I remember my dad gave me two books to read linked to the subject: We Of Nagasaki by T. Nagai (memoirs of survivors) and a novel based on the death railway in Burma, And All The Trumpets by Donald Smith. He believed in peace, forgiveness and complexity. I owe him.

90 years ago today

The Battle of Amiens, which began on 8 August 1918, was the opening phase of the Allied offensive later known as the Hundred Days Offensive that ultimately led to the end of World War I. Allied forces advanced over seven miles on the first day, one of the greatest advances of the war. The battle is also notable for its effects on both sides' morale and the large number of surrendering German forces. This led Erich Ludendorff to famously describe the first day of the battle as "the black day of the German Army." Amiens was one of the first major battles involving armoured warfare and marked the end of trench warfare on the Western Front; fighting becoming mobile once again until the armistice was signed on 11 November 1918.

Amiens today:

Visit

When in doubt ... invoke greatness

The Second Coming

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats

Hiroshima Day

62 years since the day the first atomic bomb was dropped. 45,000 people died on the day of the explosion. The same number perished within the next two months and by the end of 1945 an estimated 140,000 people had died out of a city population totalling 350,000 (source official Hiroshima Peace Site). One bomb.

Read this for more.

Waste of a good day Dougie

David and Maureen fly home

A Streetcar Named Desire

Four of us attended the opening night of Opera Australia’s A Streetcar Named Desire by Andre Previn. Gorgeous music, truly American in sound with bits of jazz, echoes of Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber maybe but also genuinely symphonic in a mid-twentieth Century modernist way. That’s how it seemed to me, although I’m not well-versed in music. I was less enthused by the singing, which might have been technically good but struggled with the near conversational style of the text.

Teddy Tahu Rhodes filled the Marlon Brando role well enough but Yvonne Kenny was less than persuasive as Blanche Dubois. Maybe the problem lies with the character rather than Ms Kenny who sang well (if in a slighty dated style). Blanche is fragile, whistful or bird like. I'm not sure Opera does whistful particularly well, which is a bit of a restriction when your bird like central character is almost never absent from the stage during the near three hour performance. That was a problem but so too were the songs: Opera needs big songs. Streetcar has too few and they’re too short.

Dorothy Napangardi

Dorothy Napangardi is a Warlpiri woman from Mina Mina, a significant women's site in a remote area of the Northern Territory. Her works have featured in exhibitions throughout Australia, the U.S.A. and Europe where she is regarded as one of the leading artists of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement.

Dorothy's paintings are highly sought after by both collectors and curators worldwide. In 1991 she won the Best Painting in European Media, 8th National Aboriginal Art Award; in 1998 the Northern Territory Art Award; and she was "Highly Commended" for the 16th National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award in 1999. In 2001 Dorothy won the 18th National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award ,presented by Telstra, with her spectacular black and white painting titled, "Salt on Mina Mina".

Napangardi's paintings adorn the walls of institutions such as The Australia Council; the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, Germany and the Kelton Foundation in Santa Monica, U.S.A.

Dorothy was first introduced to painting in 1987 by her friend and artist, Eunice Napangardi.She now paints her country, Mina Mina without any traditional iconography from her familial lines, creating her own innovative language to portray her country. Dorothy's paintings are created by an intricate network of lines that collide and implode on top of each other creating a play of tension and expansion, transporting the viewer through a myriad of intersections. Her view is constantly changing: one painting giving an aerial perspective; the next as if she has placed a microscope to the ground. Dorothy now resides in Alice Springs where she paints full time in her own studio at Gallery Gondwana.

Source: Gallery Gondwana

Afghanistan yesterday

July 30, 2007 The feet of an Afghan civilian killed in a suicide attack. There have been more than 70 suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year. Foreign air strikes also cause civilian casualties. (Photo: Massoud Hossaini / AFP)

Door In The Wall

We attended a choral performance by a group of which Lynn Hancock, Barbel Winter’s partner, is a founding member. The group is called ‘Door In The Wall’, which may be named after a story by H G Wells (which I doubt) or another by someone called Marguerite di Angeli (which is more possible but still less than likely). The evening went under the title of “marvellous night for a MOONDANCE: a celebration of winter nights”.

The programme delivered us a mixed bag. ‘Shall We Dream’ by Micahel Atherton opened the show and was for me the highlight. Two hundred of us sat in Paddington Uniting Church, lights dimmed, within a circle created by the 14 singers. They harmonised beautifully around us. Some of the poetry readings were less than wholly successful (I kind of think, guys … just sing). I couldn’t engage with Benjamin Britten’s ‘A Charm Of Lullabies’ sung by Nadio Piave, a featured soprano. It was me rather than the singer. Hers could have been the definitive rendition for all I care. I doubt that I’ll ever get Britten. ‘Blue Moon’ by Rogers and Hart; ‘Dreams’ by Fleetwood Mac and ‘Moondance’ by Van Morrison were all pleasantly enough sung (too sweetly maybe) but struck me as kind of predictable from a bunch of forty-something, predominantly white, middle-class gay and lesbian singers. They performed a version of Pink Floyd’s ‘Damage’ which was enjoyable. I was surprised by the number of the people in the room who seemed to indicate they had no idea at all that it was a Floyd number. I must be getting old.

What the heck, it was an enjoyable evening. For fifteen bucks each and the price of an at least edible pub meal in the bar across the road from the Church we had a pleasant few hours.

The White Bird Passes

I finished reading Jesse Kesson’s The White Bird Passes. It was first published in 1958, one year after I was born. By that time the Scotland of which Jesse Kesson wrote was already passing into history but not entirely. Some of the references to tenement living and growing up in urban Scotland were familiar enough to me but they were fading fast. Today the Scotland of The White Bird Passes has entirely vanished. That’s not a bad thing.

It’s a short tale, retold through the eyes of a girl, Jeanie McVean, growing up in a town that might be Elgin then an orphanage (sketchily drawn) in Aberdeenshire. It’s well written, just staying this side of sentimental. As befits the semi-autobiographical voice of the author it ends with the passing of innocence, a sense of melancholy (it’s mid-century Scotland that’s writing the tale so how could it be other than melancholic?) but also a clear sense that life goes on, maybe even gets better (as it did). It’s worth a read but I wonder how many contemporary readers, even among today’s Scots, would stick with it beyond the first few pages. The past is, indeed, another country.

My first visit to MOMA (with experienced guide)

The much anticipated 50th

Plymouth, early April

Skimming through PoemHunter

Reading Robert Frost On PoemHunter.com

“This,” wrote Risha Ahmed (nine years old)
“is one of the best poems I have come across!”
while Viraj Bhanshaly (V. J.) confessed
“I love the road not taken, i lyk the rhyming …,
can u read my poems pleaz and tell me if theyre good
… thanks.”

Ronnell Warren Alman writes
“I had to recite this poem … in the eighth grade.
I received an A+.
… still remember the first five lines! ! ! !

This truly states you don't have to be like everyone else
and take the same path. Because you take the other path
does not mean you are lost. You are just different.
It shows you are creative and that you are courageous
to see just what that other path holds.”

But Shaun Delgado disagrees

“This,” he wrote, “is not a poem about choosing a road
less traveled. The poem specifically states
that at the time of the decision, both roads had been worn
and appeared nearly identical.
It's only years later, when details have succumbed
to a fading, sentimental memory,
he says the roads differed. This poem has no intent
to try and persuade people to take an original path.
It is, instead, a humorous analysis of the speaker's
sentimentality
and the ways he will change the story in a fit of nostalgia.”

I think of Billy Collins’ students
beating poetry “with a hose
to find out what it really means”
but hope I stand, enthusiastically,
with Viraj Bhanshaly and Risha Ahmed (nine years old)
before divergent roads; exultant and unsure.

That'll do

Scotland 2 - Georgia 1

NSW State Election

The defeat of ANY Tory party in a democratic election is no bad thing, so well done the NSW branch of the Australian Labor Party. Today's election was the first in which we voted (citizens since 16th November 2006). Now, I guess, the challenge is to see if one can influence the course of this (so far) unambitious Labor Government. One has to try.

We call it bed-rest

It's not everyone that's forced to spend a Saturday in bed because a 4 millimetres-long cut in the skin of one's penis runs the risk of worsening because of pressure created by a plastic sheath pressing against one's scrotum when you sit upright. Such is the life of a quad.

Rusalka

Three hours of Dvorak … there were wood nymphs, a water sprite and his daughter Rusalka, a water nymph, an evil witch (naturally), a handsome (if unreliable) prince who was, in keeping with the genre … how can I put this delicately … fat, an even fatter beautiful (if sexually precocious) princess all of which ended in death. Not to mention it was sung in Czech.
Loved it.

Opera Australia








Rusalkas (1877), by Witold Pruszkowski

How good is this man?

Scores the only (winning) goal against Lille in the Champions League then heads back to Helsinborg to honour his contract there.

What if ...

"One of the hardest things to is to realise that your fantasies are just that — fantasies. And before we all get too excited let me clarify that I’m not talking here about imagining Hillary Clinton dressed in Highway Patrol leathers and swinging a night-stick, or any such run-of-the-mill sexual reverie. I’m talking about what we imagine without clear evidence to be true, such as the causes of our illnesses or what might have happened if it hadn’t been for X or Y."

Read all David Aaronovitch's article in The Times

Reading David's piece (some of which I'm persuaded by, some of which I'm not) I was struck by the force of the vitriol directed at David personally. I wrote the brief contribution below. It was posted to the comment response section of the original article. I believe we need to re-discover constructive debate if the nihilists and adventurists are to be resisted successfully.

I have exchanged views with David about the invasion of Iraq for all the years it has been a live issue. We share an anti-Saddam past (going back over 25 years) but we disagree about the war.

I do agree with David, however, about the redundancy of 'what-if' or 'if-only' analyses of histories that never actually took place. I would rather contribute to debate that seeks a progressive and hopeful way forward through the most difficult period of my fifty years on the planet. It seems to me the world is complex enough in its real form.

I'm about as opposed to Dick Cheney's world view as I can imagine but I truly don't want to subscribe to poisonous polemics based on the arithmetic of his death and my life's too short to speculate now on what might have happened four years ago in Iraq if something different had happened six years ago in Florida. That's the politics of luxurious delusion.

Don't those of us with opinions for or against the war need to engage with questions such as those David poses? In the real world, what do we do now and next?

Reading Billy Collins in search of inspiration

The infuriating former Poet Laureate of America

I suppose if I could write like Billy Collins,
Poet Laureate of the United States
of America
and a Professor of English Literature
(all of which need their capital letters)

I suppose I'd worry more than Billy Collins
about the lack of worth of these few lines
of poetry
and maybe mind the way they neither rhyme
nor scan as one might hope or fear.

But none of us can be like Billy Collins
as we try to read or write or speak
of imagery
and of ideas we thought to capture or profess
in such, not wholly vain, attempts as these.

But the truth is simply this; that Billy Collins,
poet laureate, American professor
of English
and a guiding light in my creative darkness,
is one of a kind: as all of us must strive to be.

Hillary and Barak visit Selma

Am I alone in thinking that if you alter your plans at less than a week's notice and bring your husband out of campaigning retirement you must be more worried about the other guy than you claim?

Read the BBC web site story: Clinton and Obama woo black votes