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.