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Keywords: Grandparents

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Little Adonis and the fruit box

    • Helena Kadmos
    • 11 July 2012
    21 Comments

    When my father was born his parents named him Adonis, but for the first few years he was called Adonaki, Little Adonis. I picture him standing in the classroom on a fruit box, with his dark curly hair. His hair is still curly if it gets long enough, but it is very soft and silvery. He listens as I read this story to him and he wants to set some things straight.

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  • RELIGION

    Greater transparency will evolve the Church

    • Frank Brennan
    • 24 May 2012
    44 Comments

    Bishop Morris wrote at considerable length to Archbishop Chaput, in a highly respectful and fraternal tone. To be fair to Chaput, I will quote his breathtaking response in full. It illustrates what still passes for due process and pastoral care in the Roman Church. We have to insist on something better. And with greater transparency, we will get something better.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Getting personal with Anzac Day

    • Philip Harvey
    • 25 April 2012
    16 Comments

    Should I even be saying all this to people I have never met? What do I say? How far do I go? My paternal grandfather, Edgar, was not only an Anzac but among those who landed nearly 100 years ago at the Turkish cove. Even among my family his experiences are still largely passed over in silence.

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  • RELIGION

    John XXIII's half century challenge

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 March 2012
    3 Comments

    Full text from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's address 'Bringing the modern world into contact with the vivifying and perennial energies of the gospel (John XXIII's half century challenge)' at the Catalyst for Renewal Dinner, Hunters Hill, 23 March 2012.

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  • RELIGION

    St Patrick's Day talk

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 March 2012

    Text is from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's St Patrick's Day Celebration talk at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, 17 March 2012.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The hell of hoarding

    • Ellena Savage
    • 20 January 2012
    3 Comments

    Inside an old case of art supplies I'd lugged in and out of three houses but rarely opened, I found a plastic bag with something like a dead rat in it. It was not an animal however but a full head of my own hair from the time I shaved my head. There is internal logic to hoarding, but it has its perils.

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  • RELIGION

    Faith and famine: The new Irish who call Australia home

    • Frank Brennan
    • 30 August 2011
    3 Comments

    The faith of the Irish in politics, economics and religion is at a low ebb, and for the most understandable of reasons.  It is not a famine, but it is mighty grim. There are tens of thousands coming here under the  457 visa and the Irish Working Holiday Visa.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Anzac revelations

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 20 April 2011
    9 Comments

    My father was just 23 when he saw action. He is now nearly 90, and his recent description of the Borneo beach landing, which he had never mentioned to his offspring before, made my brother's blood run cold.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Bilingual parenting

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 16 February 2011
    4 Comments

    When I first moved to Greece, my language skills were reduced to those of a three-year-old. The pain of this was exacerbated when six months after our arrival, my six and eight-year-old sons started speaking to each other in Greek.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The search for meaning begins at home

    • Ashleigh Green
    • 22 December 2010
    2 Comments

    When we search in distant places for fulfillment and purpose, we can miss the value of the local experience. I recently spent time in Nganmarriyanga, a remote Indigenous community, where I was greeted by a child. 'This is the country of my mother,' she told me.

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  • MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD

    Forgetting the culture of cake

    • Scott Steensma
    • 03 November 2010
    4 Comments

    The back label of my taboo-smashing pre-10am cake was covered in an unintelligible language, which I could only presume was Dutch. What I had thought a tasty sounding Breakfast Cake was apparently also known less appetisingly as an 'Ontbijtkoek'. I can neither read nor speak Dutch despite my Dutch migrant heritage.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The inevitability of tears

    • Alison Sampson
    • 02 November 2010
    10 Comments

    When my grandparents died earlier this year, I barely cried at their funerals. While reading aloud at my grandmother's, I glanced out at the congregation and saw my grandfather's face shiny with tears, looking up at me ... My voice cracked, but I'm a good girl so I held it together.

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