Author: Catherine (Page 53 of 54)

Book review: Dante’s Purgatorio, in translation by Dorothy Sayers

December 15, 2006 / Catherine / 0 Comments

So. Purgatory, then. I hope this will be coherent – but I’m worried that if I wait too long to write it, I’ll be distracted by Paradise (what a lovely sentence to take out of context), and won’t be able to do it justice.

I started this book with oddly mixed feelings. My own expectation, from having read the Inferno and Dorothy Sayers’ commentaries, was that I’d really enjoy it – in fact, I’d been impatient to get through the last half dozen or so Cantos (Canti?) of Inferno, so I could find out what the next bit was like – and yet numerous people had told me that Purgatory was less interesting, and even Sayers said that many people didn’t get past Inferno (and, I might add, she had no high opinion of such people!), so I wasn’t sure how I’d like it.

But, in fact, I think I liked it more than its predecessor. Inferno was interesting, certainly, but it lacked the theological fascination of Purgatory, at least for me. Perhaps this was a product of not having been brought up Catholic – Purgatory was not a concept I knew well, so it had an extra interest for me. Also, of course, circumstances combined to make the experience of reading it strangely topical and profound – while I may joke about Australia being Purgatory, I cannot deny that something visceral and indescribable was added to my reading when I noted the smoke in the air as I read about the smoky circle of Wrath, or read about the fire in the circle of Lust near the top of the mountain straight after reading of the bushfires in the Victorian Alps, or walked out of the office into a cool change just as Dante walked through the fire into the cool of the Earthly Paradise. And while Sayers tells me, and I believe her, that Dante could not have known about the Southern Cross when he described the constellations, I couldn’t help seeing them whenever the four stars in the sky were mentioned. I can’t tell you how all this affected my understanding of the book; I can tell you, though, that I believe it is more deeply lodged in my memory as a result – experiential learning, as one might say.

Book review: Dante’s Inferno, in translation by Dorothy Sayers

December 9, 2006 / Catherine / 1 Comment

Here’s what I learned from reading The Divine Comedy: Hell, as translated by Dorothy Sayers: Purgatory is Australia! No, really, it is: in Dante’s literal (but not allegorical, as Miss Sayers would quickly point out) scheme of the universe, Hell is entered through a Dark Wood in the Northern Hemisphere, from which one descends deeper and deeper inside the earth to the bottom of the pit – the frozen 9th circle of Hell, where a morose Satan gloomily gnaws on the most perfidious traitors of all.

Book review: When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harold Kushner

December 4, 2006 / Catherine / 0 Comments

I’ve just finished reading Harold Kushner’s book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. This is a best-seller and something of a self-help book, two elements that would normally imbue me with distrust (self-help books, in particular, generally have the unfortunate effect of making me feel completely overwhelmed by all my flaws and incapable of changing them), but having read another of Kushner’s books and liked his take on Jewish theology very much, I thought it was worth a try.

And, actually, it’s really very good.

Basically, Kushner looks at the problem of evil: how, if God is both good and omnipotent, can evil happen? And his solution is quite simply that God is not omnipotent. Yes, he created the world (through evolution, incidentally), but he created it with rules – laws of physics, chemistry and biology – that cannot be broken. Disease, natural disasters, and human evil are all parts of this world, and God can’t change that. What God can do is help us have the strength to live and make meaning of our lives despite all of this.

This argument is both appealing and slightly disappointing. Immature as it may be to say this, I can’t help feeling that God really should be omnipotent. Isn’t that the whole point of being God? Intellectually I accept and appreciate the argument, emotionally, it doesn’t seem quite fair.

On the other hand, I really do like Kushner’s repeated emphasis on the idea that the awful things that happen to us are not intrinsically meaningful – they are not sent by God to punish or test or strengthen us. They just happen, and frankly, they are pretty awful. But we are able, as humans, to make meaning from them.

Kushner wrote this book out of the death of his 14-year-old son from a genetic condition, so he knows whereof he speaks. One of the more justly famous lines in the book occurs in the last chapter:

“I am a more sensitive person, a more effective pastor, a more sympathetic counsellor because of Aaron’s life and death than I would ever have been without it. And I would give up all of those gains in a second if I could have my son back.”

He does not ask us to accept the horrible things that happen as part of some cosmic pattern, or to be glad of them for the ways in which they have enriched us – we make meaning in spite of suffering, not because of it. It’s a strangely comforting view.

Kushner also commentates interestingly on the book of Job, and even more interestingly on the creation story – I particularly like his discussion of the result of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He explains that the consequences of this are not about punishment for disobedience, but are in fact a metaphor for becoming human. Without this knowledge, humans are no different from animals, acting on instinct. Once we learn about good and evil, however, we are forced to make ethical choices – bearing and raising children IS more difficult, human relationships ARE complex, finding food is no longer simply about instinct, but about learning to farm, or learning a career that will provide the means to afford food, and while animals and humans both die, humans alone are aware of this throughout their lives.

I also enjoy some of his fables, particularly the one about the grieving woman who asks a holy man for a magical working that will bring her son back to life. He tells her to bring him a mustard seed from a house that has never known sorrow – naturally, no such house exists, and at each house where she asks, she hears all their tales of tragedy and misfortune, and stays to minister to them out of her grief. In the end, she forgets her quest, without realising that the search has taken the sorrow out of her life by filling it with purpose and connecting her to others who grieve.

Anyway. I can thoroughly recommend this, especially to anyone who is interested in counselling, or on theology. It is engagingly and sympathetically written, and is really a very lovely book. If its title has become a cliché, it has certainly deserved it’s notoriety, and I find myself once again wanting to read more of Kushner’s work. His approach to life is one of the most positive that I have read of.

Politics: Election Day!

November 25, 2006 / Catherine / 0 Comments

Yesterday was the election. Andrew and I handed out How To Vote Cards at our local Primary School from 10am to 1pm (the hazard of being married to me is that you get volunteered for everything. It’s even worse than being a friend of mine – although you do get fed more often, so I suppose it isn’t all bad). Our friend Patricia was there before us, so we got to catch up with her at handover, and another friend, Loki, turned up to vote and stayed to be social.

I had a lot of fun (since I was sleepy-hyper) doing the big smiley friendly thing and seeing how many people who refused cards from everyone including Andrew, would take cards from me, and stay to chat, or indicate that they would vote Green. It turned out to be quite a few, which is both amusing and disturbing. It shouldn’t be that easy – I know a significant percentage of people actually don’t decide who they are voting for until they are in the polling booth, but I find that quite unfathomable

Handing out how to votes was quite different from last time. Firstly, Coburg turned out to be a two-electorate booth, which made handing out cards something of a headache (because we were supposed to ascertain which electorate people were voting in and give them the right card – and of course, most of them didn’t know). Secondly, I had a lot of people stop and ask me questions about where the Greens had sent their preferences in this seat and elsewhere, and whether voting Green would weaken the Labor party or make Liberal win. So I was very glad to have done my research, which allowed me to explain accurately, honestly and, I hope, persuasively.

And thirdly, I somehow managed to attract the woman handing out cards for Family First, of all parties, who decided at a glance that I looked like someone to be friends with, and acted accordingly. We chatted on and off through quite a lot of the shift, and by the time Andrew and I left, she was hanging out happily with all the lefties inside the gates, while the Liberal man languished outside on the path. After all, we agreed that we were all there for the same reason – we want Victoria to be a better place, we just disagree about which party will give that result. I felt rather sorry for her, actually – she had driven down from Bairnsdale to work at another booth from 7am, and then stayed at ours from 12 until 6 – and very, very few people wanted her cards (or, indeed, voted that way, as I soon discovered). Which is a good thing, really, but what a way to spend your day…

At the end of the day, I went back to do scrutineering. This turned out also to be very different from last time, and not in a good way. We watched them open the boxes, pour out the votes, sort and count them, which is always interesting – but we’d also been asked to tally where everyone’s preferences were going in both the lower house and the upper house, which was an utter nightmare. To make life more fun, one of the officers seemed to object to me – the Labor man could make objections, but whenever I opened my mouth (which wasn’t all that often) she told me I wasn’t supposed to be talking… to do him justice, the Labor man eventually got fed up with this and mildly pointed out that I was also allowed to offer opinions, but it was rather uncomfortable, and made me start wondering whether I had misunderstood my role. Fortunately she left after the lower house was counted.

The upper house count, while taxing, was also fascinating. To my intense amusement, while Liberal and Family First voters vote overwhelmingly above the line, Green voters are basically loose cannons, about one in 5 of whom vote below the line. My fellow Green scrutineer and I agreed that this was something to be proud of. The ALP mostly vote above the line, but had a significant minority below the line. There was definitely a clear trend that the further left-wing the party, the more inclined its voters were to choose their own preferences, thank you. Makes me wonder what the Socialists are like, actually.

And then when we were all done, they discovered that they were missing a significant number of votes. As in, closer to 100 than to 50. So they recounted everything in batches, and that didn’t help. I left at the point when they decided to recount everything again, from scratch, while hunting for any boxes that might not have been emptied – since it was all too probable that they would be there all night.

And then home to watch it all on TV. And to discover that after all this work – it seems that the Greens are doing precisely as well as they did last election – not a percent more or less…

Politics: The Australian Greens and Preferences

November 22, 2006 / Catherine / 0 Comments

ou know, it’s always fun when two people whose integrity I’m inclined to trust say opposite things about a yes/no issue such as ‘Are the Greens preferencing the Liberal party in some seats’.

Hmm.

The answer, as far as I can see, is a resounding ‘well, sort of’. I’ve downloaded from the Greens website a document called ‘How to Vote Greens’, which shows all the How to Vote Cards for the Lower House seats.

There are (if I have counted correctly) 98 Lower House seats in Victoria. In 71 of them, the Greens have preferenced Labor ahead of Liberal. In 4, they are asking people to put Greens first, and to number the rest in any order they like.

And in 23 (mostly in country Victoria, but also, to my surprise, in the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne), they have issued a ‘split ticket’ – where one side favours Labor over Liberal, the other Liberal over Labor (actually, there is one other split ticket, in Footscray, where one side favours an independent ahead of Labor, and the other doesn’t, but both are preferenced ahead of Liberal, so this isn’t part of the issue). Which is, as cjander potentially damaging to Labor – depending on which side of the card faces up.

(I also note with interest that in Lyndhurst alone of all electorates, they’ve preferenced Family First ahead of the Liberal party – although since the Liberal candidate is Gary Anderton, this is perhaps not so surprising. The Greens have also done pretty well out of the donkey vote, being listed first on the voting card in at least 25 seats)

What does all this mean (aside from the fact that both people I mentioned above are technically correct)? Well, to me it means that yes, in some areas, around half of all people following Green How To Vote Cards will be preferencing Liberal ahead of Labor. And I’m not very happy about that. If the Greens truly don’t care which way the preferences go in those seats, they should do what they did in the 4 seats where they encourage voters to put Greens first and then vote whatever they like (although that does carry the risk of people voting informal, so perhaps this is an unfair expectation).

But for me, while I don’t like this particular piece of politics at all, it isn’t actually a deal-breaker. Why? Well, first, I’m handing out how to vote cards in an electorate where the Greens do, unequivocally, preference Labor. In fact, I note that in both Brunswick and Melbourne, the seats near me that were strongly contested by the Greens in 2002, they also unequivocally preference Labor (I admit, I really do not understand what logic underlies their choice of areas for split tickets – I would have thought Kew, of all places, would be a safe Liberal seat – why encourage them, then? Or are the Doctors’ Wives at work here? In which case, again – why encourage the Liberals??).

Primarily, though, I still like the Greens’ policies the best of all that I have read. Oddly enough, this isn’t about me being a great environmentalist (I’m a pretty poor one, actually). But their policies in the areas of health, disability, public transport, social justice, and many other things appeal to me very strongly. Do I think they are ready to form a government? By no means. And I can’t imagine that they will in the near future. But I’d really like to see what they can do in collaboration with a Labor Government. I am quite partial to the Bracks government, and I like their policies and promises as well. I want to see them get back in – but I’d really like to see the Greens have a voice in the Lower House as well as the Upper House. Politics needs a few idealists in it, and I think the Greens need to learn how to work and play well with the larger parties if they want to become a more major party themselves.

And this, incidentally, is why I’m not actually a member of the Greens. I’m a swing voter – I’ve been swinging pretty strongly towards the Greens for several years now, but I’ve voted in other directions in the past, and may well do so again. I don’t think I’m cut out to join any party, to be honest – I’m not single-minded enough, perhaps; my favourite moments in politics are the ones where people from different parties work together to achieve goals. And it seems unethical to join a party knowing that I might not be there for the long haul – I’d rather throw my energy behind whoever currently best represents my vision for Australia, on a case-by-case basis. And write lots of letters to politicians in between elections…

Hmm… this has gotten very unfocused, sorry. I meant simply to get to the bottom of all this business with preferences, but got sidetracked.

Politics: Vote Early and Often!

November 20, 2006 / Catherine / 0 Comments

I always vote below the line in elections. There’s something very satisfying about figuring out which political party is the most vile of all, and putting them dead last. Also, of course, if you vote above the line, your preferences are distributed according to the preferences of the party you select… which can mean they sometimes go places that you really wish they wouldn’t.

With this in mind – and particularly after the shenanigans at the Federal Election which resulted in Family First getting up much against the wishes of most constituents – I encourage everyone to vote below the line if possible. If you can’t do so, for whatever reason, I suggest you have a look at the 2006 Group Voting Tickets for the Victorian State Election before election day, and figure out which party is distributing preferences most according to your wishes.

I don’t claim to be unbiased (I think you all know that I am, once again, handing out how to vote cards and scrutineering for the Greens) – but my primary agenda in this and any election is that people vote knowledgeably. Vote for whoever you choose – but please make sure you DO choose, and that you know who and what you are voting for. I could, I hope, be satisfied even with the scary religious parties in power, provided I thought that was what the Australian Public actually wanted (though, admittedly, I would probably choose to be satisfied with this from New Zealand, as clearly a country which truly thought this way would not be my country any more). But I have more faith in the Australian Public than that.

In order to further my ambitious political agenda of Knowledgeable Voting, I have created what I believe is a complete list of parties participating in the current election (yes, even the ones I utterly loathe), with links to their policy pages. Have a look behind the cut if you want to know more. We may only have one vote each, but it is our responsibility to use it as well as we can.

Australian Democrats: http://vic.democrats.org.au/cs/commitments.html

Australian Labor Party: http://www.vic.alp.org.au/dl/2006_vic_platform.pdf (this link is to a PDF)

Christian Democratic Party: http://www.christiandemocratic.org.au/vic/index.htm

Citizens’ Electoral Council: http://www.cecaust.com.au/main.asp?sub=info&id=cec.htm

Country Alliance: http://www.countryalliance.org.au/policies.htm

Democratic Labor Party: http://www.dlp.org.au/policies.htm

Family First: http://www.familyfirst.org.au/state.php?gid=2&inid=10

Liberal Party: http://www.vic.liberal.org.au/default.cfm?action=policies_2006

National Party: http://www.vicnats.com/policies/default.asp

People Power: http://www.peoplepower.org.au/VIC06/Policies%203.htm

Socialist Alliance: http://www.socialist-alliance.org/page.php?page=190

The Australian Greens: http://www.vic.greens.org.au/about-the-greens/policy/policy-documents/

I haven’t found all the Independents yet – I’ll see how I go for time.

Sonnet: To Melbourne

November 2, 2006 / Catherine / 0 Comments

City of many seasons, many moods
Of winter heatwaves and of summer floods
Who would change dull, fixed, seasonality
For your infinite, sweet, inconstancy?
No human art can ever guess your will
Nor nights nor dawns predict the day ahead
It tells us nothing if your skies are red
You are too whimsical for all our skill.
So, lovingly, your livery I don:
Sunscreen, umbrella, T-shirt, gumboots, coat –
And smile at forecasts, taking little note
As gaily you send hail… or wind… or sun.
Let others sigh for Climate’s ordered laws:
I’ll live my life under no skies but yours.

Politics: Healthcare, Education and Carers – A brief and irreverent review

October 24, 2006 / Catherine / 0 Comments

In the course of my job at a non-profit that provides support and advice to individuals and families with genetic conditions, I’ve been asked to do an ‘election special’ for our newsletter, involving reading and reporting on party policies in the areas of healthcare, education, carers, and other areas of interest to our members.

This is, of course, a fine idea.

Except that I really have to keep it apolitical, and I am, of course, as biased as hell.

What I’m doing is putting the name of each party, saying ‘these are the areas in which the party has policy documents, and here is where you can find the policy documents’, and then picking the area or areas in which I think our members will be most interested, and putting a little box with their statement on that subject.

Note: this post is a compilation of several, shorter, posts, written as I was reading through the various pages

Politics: Indigenous Land in the Northern Territory

August 6, 2006 / Catherine / 0 Comments

Getup just notified me that the Government is trying to pass a Bill to pressure Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory into giving up their land for the next century, in exchange for securing basic services (such as housing and schools). I gather the current land rights act expires this year, and the government does not want to renew it. They are trying to rush this through on Tuesday, and have done a fine job of avoiding consulting anyone, particularly, of course, indigenous populations.

I admit that I know virtually nothing about the issues involved with this, and do not have time this week to research them, so I am not going to try to write anything especially eloquent here. But if you are Australian, I’d appreciate it if you would go here and read more: http://www.getup.org.au/campaign.asp?campaign_id=36

And if you are more knowledgeable than me, please call your senator, or write in your blog and let others know about this. I can’t imagine any way in which this would benefit the Aboriginal community in Australia, which has quite enough problems without losing one of the few assets it has.

Politics: Racism and Moreland

March 22, 2006 / Catherine / 0 Comments

Just thought I’d re-post this email that was just sent to me:

Moreland Community – Rally and March
Stand Up for Multicultural Communities
Racism will not divide us: Muslims are welcome

12pm SAT April 1st
Cnr Glenlyon and Sydney Rd (Outside Brunswick Town Hall)

supported by Moreland Council, Socialist Alliance, Carlo Carli MLA, Moreland Peace Group, Moreland Greens, Stop the War, Civil Rights Defense

After ten years of playing the race card, Howard and Costello have made recent comments singling out Muslims as antagonistic to
“Australian culture”. Tony Abbott, recently inteviewed on Lateline said that,” the purpose of multiculturalism is not to say that all cultures are equal”. These comments represents new heights in promoting community division.

This new wave of divisive politics deserves a community response. The Moreland area typifies multicultural Australia. Let set an example and send a message that Muslims and migrants are welcome in our community.

Just to add my two cents – I overheard a conversation on a tram yesterday about how the area is ‘no longer a good place to raise children’ and ‘not nice, like it was 15 years ago’ apparently in response to some local (admittedly annoying, but no more so than usual) teens of arabic descent making a lot of noise on the tram. I was fairly horrified, but as an eavesdropper, didn’t feel that I could respond. I’m wishing I had now. I am disturbed at the way racism seems to be becoming endemic in our culture…