A literary delight

This week I had the pleasure of attending  the Annual Lecture of the Hamilton Literary Society, the oldest continuing literary society in Australia. In accordance with tradition the current president is the wife of the Governor of Tasmania, Mrs Frances Underwood.  Mrs Underwood  invited members and guests to Government House to celebrate the 122nd anniversary of the society by holding the Annual Lecture there.  Ms Heather Rose, a respected, award-winning Tasmanian author, gave a stimulating and engaging lecture on Anna Karenina.  Heather wove together insights into the themes and characterisation of Tolstoy's novel with perceptive comments on the pleasures and transforming power of the act of reading.

It was an interlude of civil discourse in another of Tasmania's gems (Government House) and a sad contrast with the current state of shrill, partisan, opinionising that too often passes for public debate in today's Australia. 

Robert Shrimsley has painted a light-hearted picture of the News Corp debacle in


The Financial Times :


With somewhat overheated rhetoric, a number of commentators are talking of the “British spring” – the moment when the political class followed the example of the Arab revolts and threw off the old order; turning against the aged dictator Rupert “Hosni” Muburdoch. The FT was there to witness the scenes from freedom’s latest front line.


They came after elevenses and vowed to stay all day. For years they had been warned to stay silent but suddenly it seemed they were no longer afraid. Out of the House of Commons they streamed and made for Parliament Square, now renamed “Freedom Square”, sticking tulips in the rolled-up papers of the Muburdoch press. Others moved to occupy the main TV positions on the green opposite the House of Lords. Inside the Commons, we heard remarkable reports of politician after politician daring to denounce the ageing and feared media dictator.


They knew the risks. Muburdoch’s secret police were known to hack phones and private records; they bribed police officers and ran smear campaigns to destroy anyone identified as an enemy. The MPs’ courage outshone even the Arab revolts. In Syria dissenters faced only tanks and bullets, but in Britain they knew that Muburdoch’s feared redtops might run a picture of them in their underpants or dig up dirt on their love life.


Read more

Botanico

               Deep in this green world visitors wander

                          listening to ancient lays,

                          that the birds have been singing here

                          for hundreds of years.  

                          Lilting notes that float gently down
                          from the tracery of trees and drift
                          through the stillness till they finally fade.
                         A silence of memories prevails.

                         Centuries of history rest in this soil

                         memories of passion and dreams

                         from the first sod turned, the first seeds sown,

                         when more than a garden was made.

                         Plantings were trialled here and theories tested,

                         collections preserved and described in new ways,

                         shared with the world and their lineages argued.

                         A science of plants was begun.

                        When the birds fall silent, their eulogy finished,   

                        the visitors leave, but the garden lives on,

                        its green world has fashioned a union still flourishing

                        where nature and culture are one.

                       500 years later the garden's enticing

                       for botanists to savour and scholars to probe,

                       but the greatest delight of this special place

                       ---its survival for us to embrace.

Carbon tax

Rod Burgess believes we have three positions on tackling climate change :

     Labor's hybrid 50/50 capitalist-socialist scheme, 

     the rationalist-socialist policy offered by the Coalition, 

     and the romantic-socialist position of the Greens. 

Read more... 

Back to Unreality

The News of the World hacking scandal exposes the worst of contemporary journalism.  But Britain still has first class newspapers to give some sort of balance.  It was, after all, the dogged journalism of the Guardian that finally brought to light the extent of the problems of the Murdoch tabloid.  Returning to Australia I have been once again reminded of how our lack of media diversity and a public appetite for national discussion of issues as if they were  football matches have combined to drag journalism down to less scandalous, but just as disappointing, depths.  And the fact that the owner of News of the World controls 70 per cent of the metropolitan newspaper market in Australia, while its only major competitor Fairfax is struggling to survive, is no source of comfort.  To put this British affair into an Australian context readers will find this site illuminating The Failed Estate


Update: There is a very interesting article in Crikey today by Margaret Simons

Same old London

For any Australian visiting London there is a familiarity about this vast metropolis that is both welcoming and challenging.  The splendours of London are still there to delight in---the British Library, the British Museum, the Tate, the National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery, the parks, the palaces, the traditions, the art, music, films, drama and the buzz.  But there is also the size, complexity and the density of population to challenge you every day.  The capacity of public transport to move a billion people across an underground system (begun in 1863 and still far from modern), or to bus masses of travellers through a maze of old, narrow streets and traffic-clogged roads or other sagging infra-structure is amazing, but not always reliable. So it is a brave antipodean grandparent, who sets off alone from one side of London to the other to visit family.


This undertaking  involves first a bus journey, then an underground train, a change to another underground train, a final bus trip and a walk, so you can be sure that there will  be something to challenge you in this endeavour.  It might be that you negotiate the first stages fairly easily and then arrive in the tourist-packed area of London to catch the bus that leaves from Westminster Bridge, only to find that the bus-stop has been

o

 temporarily moved and there doesn't appear to be a replacement stop in sight.  This will probably entail walking across Westminster Bridge (and further) to try to catch the bus at the next stop 

Memories of Europe

My trip to Europe seems like a dream now, but images still swirl up of the gilded spires and domes of the Altstadt in Dresden, its reconstructed harmony of landscape and buildings, churches and museums all nestling round the river and its terraced green hills.  Dresden is an appealing, beautiful city and the sculpted saint who looked down onto the destruction of the Frauen Kirche (and everything else) and wept during the war must be overjoyed today to watch over the city's restored wonders.

Dresden is unforgettable and Padua is too.  So many amazing old churches, museums, galleries and houses to wonder at, as they appear around every corner. Most spell-binding of all though was the overwhelming experience inside the Scrovengi chapel, where Giotto created in 1305 a landscape of frescoes covering all the walls and all the ceilings.  Such beautiful images from so long ago and inspiring as much awe today as they must have done then. An amazing set of images telling a story for the illiterate populace of the times still casting a spell on visitors from another age just beginning to be dominated by image and icon again.