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Keywords: Bronwyn Lay

  • RELIGION

    Silence for Norway's dead

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 28 July 2011
    8 Comments

    On a quiet Sunday night 25 years ago Julian Knight committed Australia's first urban massacre on the street outside my home. The next morning, strangers — made mute — stood and met the silence of the dead. It is powerful to watch the Norwegian people meet the silence of their dead.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    France shows Australia how to protest

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 26 October 2010
    6 Comments

    In Australia a mass strike is unimaginable. The bureaucratic hoops required before a strike can be considered a legal 'protected action' are Kafkaesque. Therefore strikes have become small, localised and limited to issues of contractual entitlements.

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  • EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD

    The mingled yarn

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 21 July 2010
    2 Comments

    My granddad was a fourth generation white Australian who worked with sheep. I used to tell the story that he was a small town racist who disliked Blacks, Catholics and Jews. The punch line was that his daughter married a Fijian, his son married a Jew and my dad married a Catholic.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Forgiving genocide

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 14 May 2010
    3 Comments

    During the massacre Rurangwa's grandmother was murdered mid-prayer, various family members called to god for help, while the killers, fellow parishioners of the local church, struck their machetes until faith fell with precious bodies into a pile.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2009: Fatal firestorm's distant witness

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 05 January 2010

    A year ago, on the day of the National Apology, the emotion was palpable over the seas. But it was hard not being there, standing on the same dirt as your fellow countrymen. It is similarly difficult to be away from home during a time of natural disaster. February 2009

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Michelangelo and my kids will haunt me

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 23 November 2009
    14 Comments

      As Copenhagen looms on the horizon like a giant apocalyptic festival, I can’t get Michelangelo and my kids out of my mind. The image of the Pietá, the mother holding her dead son, keeps appearing.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Layman's guide to the climate debate

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 21 September 2009
    16 Comments

    There is no opting out of the scientific debate. It has to be followed and understood by the layman because power seems to be setting up shop at its heart. The possibility of 'all being rooned' cannot be the sole motivation to live ethically on the earth.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Exploding pig flu

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 27 May 2009
    8 Comments

    As Australia deals with its own incursion of H1N1, a strange event on a Geneva-bound train reminds us that this virus is in human hands. Meanwhile the manufacture of a vaccine for the virus raises doubts about medical ethics and equity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fatal firestorm's distant witness

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 16 February 2009
    8 Comments

    A year ago, on the day of the National Apology, the emotion was palpable over the seas. But it was hard not being there, standing on the same dirt as your fellow countrymen. It is similarly difficult to be away from home during a time of natural disaster.

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  • ECONOMICS

    The chuckling economist

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 05 January 2009
    3 Comments

    On the day the markets bled we rushed to hear Stiglitz's diagnosis. The Nobel Laureate used to be Chief Economist of the World Bank, ending his term in fisty cuffs with the IMF and the US over their financial bullying of developing nations. Stiglitz had schadenfreude written all over his face. (October 2008)

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The nun and the burqa

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 02 December 2008
    20 Comments

    When Germaine Greer savaged Michelle Obama's dress, I sighed. The 'beauty' market is a challenge to feminism. In France, two extremes of fashion ideology — burqas and plastic-surgery 'mannequins' — line up to buy bread.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A Gen X view of Obama as fiction

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 06 November 2008
    6 Comments

    If you see some Generation X’s out there in the street, smiling like drunk cats, forgive them their madness - it’s been a long time coming. We are letting our inner lives blend with the polis. We know it might all be fiction but like fiction; it makes us feel less alone inside.

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