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A beautiful poem of love for Australia by Dorthea Mackeller
The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze…
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
F"&€$£in' Flies!!!!!!!
Australia is a beautiful country. (Remind me to post a link to one of the most heatfelt poems describing that author's love of this sunburnt land that I've ever read.) But it's not perfect.
The number of frickin' flies around right now...well, if you could extract the total protien content of all the flies hovering anound me RIGHT NOW, there'd be no starving kids in the world. Because this place is so dry the flies are attracted to ANY Form of moisture...like your eyes, mouth, nose. Very bloody annoying.
The number of frickin' flies around right now...well, if you could extract the total protien content of all the flies hovering anound me RIGHT NOW, there'd be no starving kids in the world. Because this place is so dry the flies are attracted to ANY Form of moisture...like your eyes, mouth, nose. Very bloody annoying.
Friday, November 14, 2008
O'Bama, part 2
I won't pretend to be able to write as well as Garrison Keillor. He rarely puts bad turn of phrase to paper. Pratice, I guess.
He wrote a wonderful piece in the International Herald Trib (probably, actually, for the NYTimes, but whatever):
Be happy, dear hearts, and allow yourselves a few more weeks of quiet exultation.
It isn't gloating, it's satisfaction at a job well done. He was a superb candidate, serious, professorial but with a flashing grin and a buoyancy that comes from working out in the gym every morning.
He spoke in a genuine voice, not senatorial at all. He relished campaigning. He accepted adulation gracefully. He brandished his sword against his opponents without mocking or belittling them. He was elegant, unaffected, utterly American, and now (Wow) suddenly America is cool. Chicago is cool.
Chicago!!!
We threw the dice and we won the jackpot and elected a black guy with a Harvard degree, the middle name Hussein and a sense of humor - he said, "I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher."
The French junior minister for human rights said, "On this morning, we all want to be American so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding before our eyes." When was the last time you heard someone from France say they wanted to be American and take a bite of something of ours? Ponder that for a moment.
The world expects us to elect pompous yahoos and instead we have us a 47-year-old prince from the prairie who cheerfully ran the race, and when his opponents threw sand at him, he just smiled back.
He'll be the first president in history to look really good making a jump shot. He loves his classy wife and his sweet little daughters. He looks good in the kitchen. He can cook Indian or Chinese but for his girls he will do mac and cheese. At the same time, he knows pop music, American lit and constitutional law.
I just can't imagine anybody cooler. Look at a photo of the latest pooh-bah conference - the hausfrau Merkel, the big glum Scotsman, that goofball Berlusconi, Putin with his B-movie bad-boy scowl, and Sarkozy, who looks like a district manager for Avis - you put Barack in that bunch and he will shine.
It feels good to be cool and all of us can share in that, even sour old right-wingers and embittered blottoheads. Next time you fly to Heathrow and hand your passport to the man with the badge, he's going to see "United States of America" and look up and grin.
Even if you worship in the church of Fox, everyone you meet overseas is going to ask you about Obama and you may as well say you voted for him because, my friends, he is your line of credit over there. No need anymore to try to look Canadian.
And the coolest thing about him is the fact that back in the early Nineties, given a book contract after the hoo-ha about his becoming the First Black Editor of The Harvard Law Review, instead of writing the basic exploitation book he could've written, he put his head down and worked hard for a few years and wrote a good book, an honest one, which, since his rise in politics, has earned the Obamas enough to buy a very nice house and put money in the bank. A successful American entrepreneur.
The last American president to write a book all by his lonesome self, I believe, was Theodore Roosevelt, who, on graduation from Harvard, wrote "The Naval War of 1812," and in my humble opinion, Obama's is the better book for the general reader, but you be the judge.
Our hero who galloped to victory has inherited a gigantic mess. The country is sunk in debt. The Treasury announced it must borrow $550 billion to get the government through the fourth quarter, more than the entire deficit for 2008, so he will have to raise taxes and not only on bankers and lumber barons.
His promise never to raise the retirement age is not a good idea. Whatever he promised the Iowa farmers about subsidizing ethanol is best forgotten at this point. We may not be getting our National Health Service cards anytime soon. And so on and so on.
So enjoy the afterglow of the election awhile longer. We all walk taller this fall. People in Copenhagen and Stockholm are sending congratulatory e-mails - imagine! We are being admired by Danes and Swedes! And Chicago becomes The First City. Step aside, San Francisco. Shut up, New York. The Midwest is cool now. The mind reels. Have a good day.
He wrote a wonderful piece in the International Herald Trib (probably, actually, for the NYTimes, but whatever):
Be happy, dear hearts, and allow yourselves a few more weeks of quiet exultation.
It isn't gloating, it's satisfaction at a job well done. He was a superb candidate, serious, professorial but with a flashing grin and a buoyancy that comes from working out in the gym every morning.
He spoke in a genuine voice, not senatorial at all. He relished campaigning. He accepted adulation gracefully. He brandished his sword against his opponents without mocking or belittling them. He was elegant, unaffected, utterly American, and now (Wow) suddenly America is cool. Chicago is cool.
Chicago!!!
We threw the dice and we won the jackpot and elected a black guy with a Harvard degree, the middle name Hussein and a sense of humor - he said, "I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher."
The French junior minister for human rights said, "On this morning, we all want to be American so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding before our eyes." When was the last time you heard someone from France say they wanted to be American and take a bite of something of ours? Ponder that for a moment.
The world expects us to elect pompous yahoos and instead we have us a 47-year-old prince from the prairie who cheerfully ran the race, and when his opponents threw sand at him, he just smiled back.
He'll be the first president in history to look really good making a jump shot. He loves his classy wife and his sweet little daughters. He looks good in the kitchen. He can cook Indian or Chinese but for his girls he will do mac and cheese. At the same time, he knows pop music, American lit and constitutional law.
I just can't imagine anybody cooler. Look at a photo of the latest pooh-bah conference - the hausfrau Merkel, the big glum Scotsman, that goofball Berlusconi, Putin with his B-movie bad-boy scowl, and Sarkozy, who looks like a district manager for Avis - you put Barack in that bunch and he will shine.
It feels good to be cool and all of us can share in that, even sour old right-wingers and embittered blottoheads. Next time you fly to Heathrow and hand your passport to the man with the badge, he's going to see "United States of America" and look up and grin.
Even if you worship in the church of Fox, everyone you meet overseas is going to ask you about Obama and you may as well say you voted for him because, my friends, he is your line of credit over there. No need anymore to try to look Canadian.
And the coolest thing about him is the fact that back in the early Nineties, given a book contract after the hoo-ha about his becoming the First Black Editor of The Harvard Law Review, instead of writing the basic exploitation book he could've written, he put his head down and worked hard for a few years and wrote a good book, an honest one, which, since his rise in politics, has earned the Obamas enough to buy a very nice house and put money in the bank. A successful American entrepreneur.
The last American president to write a book all by his lonesome self, I believe, was Theodore Roosevelt, who, on graduation from Harvard, wrote "The Naval War of 1812," and in my humble opinion, Obama's is the better book for the general reader, but you be the judge.
Our hero who galloped to victory has inherited a gigantic mess. The country is sunk in debt. The Treasury announced it must borrow $550 billion to get the government through the fourth quarter, more than the entire deficit for 2008, so he will have to raise taxes and not only on bankers and lumber barons.
His promise never to raise the retirement age is not a good idea. Whatever he promised the Iowa farmers about subsidizing ethanol is best forgotten at this point. We may not be getting our National Health Service cards anytime soon. And so on and so on.
So enjoy the afterglow of the election awhile longer. We all walk taller this fall. People in Copenhagen and Stockholm are sending congratulatory e-mails - imagine! We are being admired by Danes and Swedes! And Chicago becomes The First City. Step aside, San Francisco. Shut up, New York. The Midwest is cool now. The mind reels. Have a good day.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
O'Bama
I'm so friggin' excited! Finally, an Irishman in the White House.
What? He's not Irish?
Kenya??
Oh-h-h-h-h-h. Gotcha.
Still, amazingly cool, from Rosa Parks to the White House in less than 60 years...
Barack Obama, Preseident-elect, is a hell of an orator. Supremely confident, appears to have an IQ at least double of Bush and is an inspirational leader.
Too bad I have no truck with his political views.
I"m not talking about the associations dredged (or should I say Drudged) up during the election. Ayers and that pastor were wingnuts, to be sure (a bit of Irish in there!), but I really don't think they influenced him much.
It's that he's really left of center when it comes to taxes, welfare, and the general state of business.
Historical moment, yes. I can only hope that he's smart enough to do what his advisors tell him to do, instead of what he wants to do...especially when it comes to sorting out the economy.
What? He's not Irish?
Kenya??
Oh-h-h-h-h-h. Gotcha.
Still, amazingly cool, from Rosa Parks to the White House in less than 60 years...
Barack Obama, Preseident-elect, is a hell of an orator. Supremely confident, appears to have an IQ at least double of Bush and is an inspirational leader.
Too bad I have no truck with his political views.
I"m not talking about the associations dredged (or should I say Drudged) up during the election. Ayers and that pastor were wingnuts, to be sure (a bit of Irish in there!), but I really don't think they influenced him much.
It's that he's really left of center when it comes to taxes, welfare, and the general state of business.
Historical moment, yes. I can only hope that he's smart enough to do what his advisors tell him to do, instead of what he wants to do...especially when it comes to sorting out the economy.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Football
Sitting here at Epping Boys High School grounds on a Sunday morning watching 16 under 14/15 boys go through some pretty intense training. My son has come a long way in the 2 1/2 years since he started playing here. The coaching levels for youth development have improved markedly, and it shows in the skill levels on the pitch.
Rep trials start tomorrow evening...here's hoping he has a good day.
Rep trials start tomorrow evening...here's hoping he has a good day.
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