Category Archives: Review

The Australian World Orchestra

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We ventured out to the Opera House last night. The programme:

Australian World Orchestra (http://www.australianworldorchestra.com.au/?page_id=75)
William Barton, didjeridu
Simone Young, conductor
Peter Sculthorpe Earth Cry
Wagner Tannhäuser: Overture and Venusberg Music
Tchaikovsky Symphony No 6 in B minor, Op 74 (Pathétique)

The Wagner was dreary – his music has never appealed to my ear. Contrast this with the Sculthorpe; sensational. Barton began playing from the audience and slowly walked up on to the stage then sat. The orchestra began to accompany him and the gradually moved into one of those remarkable Sculthorpian driving yet subtle themes, with sections of orchestra building on to it then relinquishing to another. Barton played in and out until a great finale. Much applause and then Sculthorpe congratulated Young and Barton from the first row. The audience went bananas to see the three of them.

And then the Pathetique. I had forgotten what a classic it is. The crowd applauded at the end of each movement and again, went bananas at the end of that very brassy third. I had dismissed the fourth movement but hearing it live and a little raw, I liked it. A great night, a great hall, great musicians and great music. Home to a slice of toast and a cup of tea.

The predominantly grey audience were unruly — guzzling Chandon NV before and during interval, feet stamping, shouting out ‘Bravo’ at a quiet moment, applauding when they shouldn’t — Grey Power at the Opera House is refreshing!

And I couldn’t resist an iPhone video. I had been tempted to take the Canon G9 and shoot some quality but having this little iPhone wonder in my pocket cancelled the temptation.

Tuning for Tchaikovsky

Saturday

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Our Canberra geese.

Our Canberra geese.

Our backyard in Canberra and our wonderful geese. They were constantly testing the fences surrounding the vegetables and if a weak spot found would be in and eaten the lot in several minutes.

Review

Louis Nowra is a significant Australian. I always read his articles and reviews in the press and they always stimulate further thinking. His review of Bob Ellis’, “And So It Went: Night Thoughts In A Year Of Change”, ALR, (can’t find the date or url) was excellently witty prose. As one comment on a blog put it, “Bob is a buffoon and playing his part … a figure from another time”, as a critique of Nowra. But it made good reading, for Ellis and Nowra are of my people; of the 70s when we were hopelessly Left-Wing, wondering what to do with the education that Gough had granted us, hanging out in fringe cinemas watching Leonard Cohen poetry movies – all rather pretentious as I look back – but character forming.

And then there was his 2007 Bad Dreaming: Aboriginal men’s violence against women and children, (Pluto Press) which opened the discussion on violence as part of our indigenous culture. Parts of this are on http://books.google.com.au/books?id=O61GMXICPu0C&dq=bad+dreaming&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=LV0-S6j8KsuHkQWWnon1Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

So it was with delight that I read his article today: Louis Nowra, “To appreciate our identity, we need the write stuff”, SMH, 2 January, 2010, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/to-appreciate-our-identity-we-need-the-write-stuff-20100101-llps.html

I will not quote selectively (my usual practice).

Today’s Podcast

“Christmas in Cuba”, 360, 19 December, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/360/stories/2009/2753175.htm

Come and join us in a long food queue, followed by a conga line of dancers for Christmas in Cuba, where there’s plenty of roast pork at fiestas but most of the good bits are missing. We’ll spend time with locals including Yoani Sánchez, an eloquent blogger without legal access to the internet. Last year Time Magazine called her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

And the blog is referenced below.

Today’s Blog

Generation Y, http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/

Generation Y is a Blog inspired by people like me, with names that start with or contain a “Y”. Born in Cuba in the ’70s and ’80s, marked by schools in the countryside, Russian cartoons, illegal emigration and frustration. So I invite, especially, Yanisleidi, Yoandri, Yusimí, Yuniesky and others who carry their “Y’s” to read me and to write to me.

New Year’s Day 2010

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Mount Connor (Atila) is a 700 million year old sand and rock mesa west of Uluru.

From the Kitchen Window

Currawong — Marr Playground

Climate Change

This article is a useful indicator of why the USA will not adopt Climate Change protocols in the near future. As usual, selectively quoted.

Tom Switzer, “Don’t expect too much down Mexico way”, The Australian, 1 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/dont-expect-too-much-down-mexico-way/story-e6frg6zo-1225815087091

There are many reasons for the changing climate in Washington. Here are four of them:

First, both Congress and the White House remain pre-occupied with other policy priorities from overhauling the healthcare and immigration systems and increasing 30,000 troops to Afghanistan to implementing new Wall Street regulations and tackling double-digit unemployment and skyrocketing debt and deficit.

Second, polls and surveys Pew, Gallup, Zogby, Rasmussen show Americans are quickly losing faith in the science of man-made climate change. A Harris Poll found that those who believe that carbon dioxide leads to global warming have dropped from 71 per cent two years ago to only 51 per cent today. And this poll was conducted before Climategate erupted.

It may be the case that the thousands of leaked emails and documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit do not disprove the science of man-made global warming. But it is also true that the uproar over allegations that some IPCC scientists manipulated data, hid inconvenient evidence and tried to silence dissenting views has led to calls for government inquiries and congressional hearings into the scandal. After all, US tax dollars fund many climate scientists.

Third, world leaders are recognising that reaching a global consensus on climate change is even more difficult than reaching a global consensus on multilateral trade. China and India insist they won’t be part of what they see as an economic suicide pact. In Canada, a Kyoto signatory that has increased its emissions much faster than the US, the ETS bill is stalled in legislative limbo. In Australia, the conservative opposition parties just defeated Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In the EU, cap and trade has not only been the victim of fraudulent traders; emissions from the 27 member states have increased by nearly 2 per cent since the ETS was implemented in 2005.

Fourth, this year is an American election year. A huge new energy tax that threatens to cut wages and jobs unnerves politicians facing a mid-term vote. And not just Senate Republicans either. “Blue Dog” Democrats from the South as well as “Brown Dog” Democrats from the Midwest and Great Plains, whose states are dependent on coal and manufacturing, are uneasy about the administration’s energy policies.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the US will help raise $US100 billion ($111bn) a year to defray the cost of climate-change mitigation in the developing world. But although the idea that rich nations should pay for poor nations to adapt to non-carbon technology may be accepted wisdom at Harvard University and The New York Times, it is hardly a vote winner in middle America during a recession. Imagine a Democrat senator from a Rust Belt state telling his coal mining constituents that they should pay higher taxes to help China become more energy efficient and more economically competitive.

Review

Geraldine Brooks  (2005), March, Harper Collins

This is a story of cruelty that I found difficult to finish. Brooks writes of floggings, murder, shocking medical procedures, post traumatic stress syndrome, pillage, slavery, incest and the US peoples’ treatment of African Americans during a year in the Civil War that swamps her ‘Little Women’ backdrop. Four of the six reviews below range from negative to somewhat supportive of the story of the missing Father from Little Women (which I have not read) and barely touch on the shock of Brooks’ narrative. I was left thinking that the hidden agenda in some of these reviews was that this Australian doesn’t know enough about the USA to write such a novel.

  • Christian Science Monitor review by Ron Charles
  • Washington Post review by Karen Joy Fowler
  • St. Petersburg Times review by Mindi Dickstein
  • January Magazine review by Sue Bursztynski (an exception – March is an entertaining tale with some interesting original characters as well as some reinterpreted Alcott characters, but there are a few gruesome scenes — my emphasis).
  • New York Times review by Thomas Mallon.
  • http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/march/ to read the above reciews.
  • Peter Pierce, The Age, 2 April 2005, http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/March/2005/04/01/1112302217831.html. This is a distinguished book, a masterly reworking of what fiction and history have afforded Brooks’ vibrant and questing imagination.

It is a ‘distinguished book’ which, due to the superb writing, was disturbing. Well worth the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2006.

Today’s Podcast

This is an excellent warning about stereotyping our fellows.

“Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the Sydney Writers Festival”, TheBookShow, 24 December 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2009/2588360.htm

Tuesday

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Mount Sondar, Central Australia

Mt Sondar, Central Australia.

Living under the flight path

Emirates A380

Notes from Xanadu

Cook-book

Posting to the weblog has been intermittent over the Christmas period. First came the excellent Colleen McCullough and yesterday, I worked on the cook-book. More recipes added and then sorted into menu types –- Starters, Soups and Frittatas, Lamb, Vegetables are some examples –- and bought a large new folder for better storage.

It has now got to the stage where I need to back-up and store off-site as I begin the test cooking. And the text requires much editing to conform to the style I have established. Received the ‘thumbs down’ on over-use of fish sauce in one vegetable dish so have added a cautionary note.

The garden

Several days of steady, light rain have done wonders to the garden. The basil and tomatoes have put on a great spurt. And we need to clear out one of the fish ponds which has been overgrown with papyrus and wisteria. Later today? Striped marsh frogs tok tokking away and also heard one in a neighbouring street this morning when walking the pooches – – perhaps one of ours migrating?

Climate Change

Another article by Michael Asten continues to strengthen the search for wider causes of global warming and climate change than the focus on CO2. As usual, quoted selectively.

Michael Asten, “More evidence CO2 not culprit”, The Australian, 29 December, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/more-evidence-co2-not-culprit/story-e6frg6zo-1225814230258

THE Copenhagen climate change summit closed two weeks ago in confusion, disagreement and, for some, disillusionment. When the political process shows such a lack of unanimity, it is pertinent to ask whether the science behind the politics is as settled as some participants maintain. Earlier this month (The Australian, December 9) I commented on recently published results showing huge swings in atmospheric carbon dioxide, both up and down, at a time of global cooling 33.6 million years ago.

Paul Pearson and co-authors in a letter (The Weekend Australian, December 11) took exception to my use of their data and claimed I misrepresented their research, a claim I reject since I quoted their data (the veracity of which they do not contest) but offered an alternative hypothesis, namely that the present global warming theory (which was not the subject of their study) is inconsistent with the CO2-temperature variations of a past age.

Some senior scientists, who are adherents of orthodox global warming theory, do not like authors publishing data that can be used to argue against orthodoxy, a point made by unrelated authors with startling clarity in the Climategate leaked emails from the University of East Anglia. In the scientific method, however, re-examination of data and formulation of alternative hypotheses is the essence of scientific debate. In any case, the debate on the link between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature will continue since it is not dependent on a single result.

… we have two geological examples and two satellite data studies pointing towards a lesser role of CO2 in global warming. This argument does not discount the reality of global warming during the past century or the potential consequences should it continue at the same rate, but it does suggest we need a broader framework in considering our response. The Copenhagen summit exposed intense political differences in proposals to manage global warming. Scientists are also not unanimous in claiming to understand the complex processes driving climate change and, more important, scientific studies do not unambiguously point to a single solution. Copenhagen will indeed prove to be a historic meeting if it ushers in more open-minded debate.

Review

This review fostered further thinking about the USA. Finally, some sort of health care legislation has been passed by both chambers but what a shambles it is. From the country that promotes itself endlessly, a review of the legislation leaves me wondering, ‘what can they be thinking’? How can it be that it costs $US35,000 to have a baby. Perhaps the answer lies in something I read from Peter Singer –- the legislature is corrupted by lobbyist funding and to get the finance for their re-election Congress and Senate members have to toe the lobbyists’ line. I sense that we are witnessing the decline of the USA and selective quotes from this review give my feeling substance.

Jonathan Raban, “Sarah and Her Tribe”, New York Review of Books, 14 Januaty, 2010, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23532

  • Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin, Harper, 413 pp., $28.99
  • Sarah from Alaska: The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar, by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe, PublicAffairs, 301 pp., $26.95

There’s a moment of near rapture in the video of Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention in St. Paul on September 3, 2008. It begins in the eleventh minute, after her Westbrook Pegler quote (“We grow good people in our small towns…”) and before her “lipstick” quip about hockey moms and pit bulls. Following a nervous start, she is now entirely at ease in front of the biggest crowd of her speaking life, and riding high on the chants of “Sarah!” “USA!” and “Drill, baby, drill!” Her smile looks ecstatic, as she allows herself a snuffling chuckle at the acerbity of her own wit, then shows off her repertoire of little nods of self-approbation, complicit left-eye winks from behind her glasses, and lips smugly pursed to signal that an unanswerable point has just been made. When the camera cuts to the crowd, face after face is a joyful mirror image of Palin’s own, as if transfigured by a shared triumph.

Her nasal voice, pitched in the upper register, with the upsy-downsy, singsong delivery of a kindergarten teacher, became, rather improbably, a great electoral asset. Her diction and accent were shaped more by class than region, and spiced with faux-genteel cuss words like “dang,” “heck,” “darn,” “geez,” “bullcrap,” and “bass-ackwards.” It was a voice unspoiled by overmuch formal education and boldly unafraid of truisms and clichés; a perfect foil for Obama’s polished law-school eloquence.

Going Rogue is stuffed with dubious quotations from Famous Authors, among them one often attributed, but never reliably sourced, to Pascal: “the God-shaped vacuum in every human heart.” Unfortunately, there does seem to be a Palin-shaped vacuum in the heart of the American electorate, and it’s not hard to see why. After the ritual brandishing of the flag and her shout-outs to her fellow Christian fundamentalists, Palin’s core message is, as it always has been, about fiscal policy.

Palin’s general economic theory, so snugly adapted to Twitter’s 140- character limit, carries great weight. At a time when everyone should be clipping coupons, tightening belts, and buying generic peanut butter, Obama (Columbia and Harvard), Larry Summers (MIT and Harvard), Tim Geithner (Dartmouth and Johns Hopkins), and Peter Orszag (Princeton and London School of Economics) are out on a spending spree that is “baffling,” “nonsensical,” and “obscene.” But then what did we expect of the East Coast elites?

Against their transparent profligacy should be set the record of Sarah Palin (University of Idaho, School of Journalism and Mass Media). She made Wasilla hum, while putting an end to personal property taxes. … She not only makes economics perfectly comprehensible at the level of the kitchen table, she makes it work brilliantly in practice.

She’s much more deeply in touch with her followers than Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, or any other recent candidate who’s tried to court the same constituency. (Admittedly, they also lacked her flirty sex appeal.) She has the knack of turning public debate sulfurous with a phrase, as she did last summer with her remark that Democrats want “death panels” in their health plan. She is a catalyst around whom the Tea Party movement is growing alarmingly in size and strength,

Having hoisted her banner of Commonsense Conservatism, and campaigned across the country by Lear jet and tour bus to promote Going Rogue, she’s unlikely to assuage her compulsion to be a winner merely by selling more books than anyone else during 2009′s holiday season.

A search on Google for ‘Tea Party’ brought up http://teapartypatriots.org/Default.aspx where ‘Taxed to Death’ is the theme and http://taxdayteaparty.com/ which is going to storm the Senate.

Today’s Podcast

A highly witty discussion on heaven.

“Stairway to Heaven”, The Spirit of Things, 27 December, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/spiritofthings/stories/2009/2777507.htm

Stairways, ladders, tunnels or rainbows: the way to heaven has been imagined since the beginning of time, and for some who’ve nearly died it’s been experienced. But for others, heaven isn’t a place so much as a state of mind or a state of soul. St John’s Anglican Church in East Malvern, Melbourne, is the venue for a discussion on heaven with guests, the Rev Dr Roger Ferlo of Virginia Theological Seminary, Indigenous writer Lillian Holt, and Senior Rabbi of Melbourne’s Temple Beth Israel, Fred Morgan