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The despair induced by daily infection and death tallies would be, in normal times, ameliorated to some extent by one’s workaday routine. And the crisis would be borne in togetherness — an impossible response, since the pandemic calls on us to withdraw into ourselves rather than draw together.
I was at university when I first heard of the so-called death of the novel, and was frightened by the thought. But I’ve since heard the phrase many times during the ensuing decades, and am cheered by the fact that so far the novel has clung to life, albeit precariously, while novelists persist in writing, despite the many drawbacks attendant upon the practice.
On the day of the millionth case and half million deaths I drink coffee in a warm, morning living room, walk a small dog at our national Arboretum, eat lunch of seafood and avocado at a local outdoor café, buy two likely looking books on Amazon, tune into a Zoom poetry reading and listen to podcasts from America. I realise it’s the end of the world, as we know it.
Australian jurisdictions are presently considering laws and policies relating to euthanasia, physician assisted dying and medically assisted suicide. The law can and should provide bright-line solutions or at least firm parameters within which the dying, their loved ones and their care providers can negotiate dying and death.
There are a number of current issues within our present Australian political system, issues we need to remedy brought to light with strong media attention. But in contrast, how much media attention is being paid to this ongoing scandal of First Nations peoples who, while representing just 3.3 per cent of the population, now represent an extraordinary 30 per cent of the nation’s prison population?
Twenty-five years from his death we gather to remember, swapping anecdotes like bank notes weathered in our wallets. The one on how as deputy he’d learn, while pausing in a doorway, the names of all three hundred new Year Sevens in a week. And how when actors failed to show for one of his rehearsals, he’d stride the stage himself.
This week is the fortieth anniversary of the death of Ita Ford and Maura Clarke in El Salvador. An event distant in place and time, but worth remembering and honouring in its distance. And also worth reflecting on for its significance for our own time.
Approaching the walled and caged building where the sentence was carried out, our young fellows have always been struck by something of a paradox proclaimed in two signs at the door: ‘Bureau of Corrections’ alongside ‘Lethal Injection Chamber’. They were quick to seize upon it. ‘How can you correct and rehabilitate a person after you have killed him?’ they would ask.
In measures now sadly familiar in 2020, theatres were closed once the number of weekly deaths exceeded 30, later 40, but because actors and the theatre world itself were so economically vulnerable, actors, understandably intent on earning a living, soon legally or otherwise cut themselves some slack by taking liberties with the rules governing performances and quarantine — again, a phenomenon that is now, against all previous odds, familiar to people of 2020.
Recent weeks have seen the deaths of former NSW Liberal Premier and federal Finance minister, John Fahey, and former Labor federal minister, Senator Susan Ryan. They were both exemplary public figures who not only made a major contribution to Australian public life but did so in a way that drew praise from all sides of politics.
49-60 out of 200 results.