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The events of 4 June 1989 in Beijing were horrific, but then prime minister Hawke's leadership and the skills, passion and sacrifice of the generation of Chinese that stayed in Australia in Tiananmen Square's aftermath have consequently made Australia a more vibrant society.
For modern readers of Huizinga's The Autumn of the Middle Ages, there is a curious kind of double vision. While 21st century life has incomparably eclipsed medieval counterparts, there are aspects of the comparison that remain at least intriguing and, in some cases, enlightening.
The Australian bishops' statement on the federal election is significant as much for the fact it was made as for its argument. Given the polarisation of public debate, they might well have thought it wiser to remain silent. For them the greatest success of the statement may be that, when they spoke of public issues, the sky did not fall in.
A wooden doll lies in a pretty white box, the spirit of the child, dead inside dreaming, residing and displayed on a mantelpiece.
This year both the public and the Christian Easter are overshadowed by the forthcoming election. In the public world election means that assured people choose their rulers. In the Christian story election means that desperate people are chosen. Each kind of election has its place.
Most recently, my younger daughter declared herself a vegan. She wanted to reduce her impact on the environment, to withdraw her implicit support for a brutal farming industry that had long disturbed her, and for a society that fritters fossil fuels and fills our oceans with plastic. And so our kitchen has undergone yet another revolution.
I've recently been reading about people who disconnect in radical ways, or else manage a balancing act between connection with society and disconnection. The recently deceased Sister Wendy Beckett was one such. So too is Brother Harold Palmer who, like Sister Wendy, began his seclusion in a caravan.
Any tourist to this spot presumably stands in awe under the character, having crossed the full delineation of Chinese territory, and then gazes out over the Heilongjiang to Russia on the other side. North: them. Here: us. Cue national pride.
It's all very well to remove excess furniture, but furniture is not books. How many chairs does one need? Chairs are not books. To reduce a library as a household expedience is to objectify the books. Their contents are emptied of value, their history relegated to out-of-date. They have no more meaning than books in an Ikea display room.
As the week progressed and the temperature headed beyond 40 degrees, my vigour flagged like that molten candlestick. I longed to return to the chill of Ulan-Ude, where our eyelashes froze to white feathers and the snowflakes fell in limpid perfection and the cold shook us so viscerally, so expansively, from our spiritual slumber.
One of Australia's foundational myths is of white settlers weathering nature's worst. It's actually in our national character — the story we tell about the nation — to dismiss climatic extremes like heatwaves. Maybe one missing part of taking climate change more seriously in Australia is a shift in culture to respect the heat.
Half past ten, I'm off to bed. One more whizz around the sun. Ho hum ... What's the point? If it were the solstice, maybe. All that nonsense on TV. And fireworks, celebrating what? The triumph of chronology? This year maybe I will die ...
49-60 out of 200 results.
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