Prayer Tree by Leunig
Friday
Wednesday
Saturday
Friday
On Western Adults Reading Fiction...
“The distinction I make is [between our own society and more traditional cultures], such as in Africa. They don’t take a thing apart to understand it. We do. Whether it’s a clock or a philosophy, we compartmentalize. Rather than do that [people in traditional societies] dance with it. They stand in relationship to it. They move with it. That’s what the child is capable of doing. That’s what we knead, or school, out of ourselves. If the adult can keep that, then the story is the same for the adult.
“[Another factor for the adult] is need. The more self sufficient an adult feels him or herself to be the less capable they are of rejoicing in a work of fiction or being blown back and forth by its winds.
“Put it this way. If they’re self sufficient, they would be rifling the story for something they could use. It would be utilitarian. They wouldn’t read fiction much. It would bore them. But yes, on the other hand, when someone is not self sufficient, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they come with a need. It’s that they truly live in a sort of communal atmosphere.
“This is why literature and storytelling were so good in cultures past. And the [reason why the] storytelling we hunger for doesn’t exist in this particular culture is that we live [for the] individual. Western Society says that the wholeness of the human is the individual human. Previous societies have always said the wholeness is the family. The wholeness is the tribe. The wholeness is the community.
Taken from http://www.etext.org/Zines/Critique/writing/wangerin.html
“[Another factor for the adult] is need. The more self sufficient an adult feels him or herself to be the less capable they are of rejoicing in a work of fiction or being blown back and forth by its winds.
“Put it this way. If they’re self sufficient, they would be rifling the story for something they could use. It would be utilitarian. They wouldn’t read fiction much. It would bore them. But yes, on the other hand, when someone is not self sufficient, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they come with a need. It’s that they truly live in a sort of communal atmosphere.
“This is why literature and storytelling were so good in cultures past. And the [reason why the] storytelling we hunger for doesn’t exist in this particular culture is that we live [for the] individual. Western Society says that the wholeness of the human is the individual human. Previous societies have always said the wholeness is the family. The wholeness is the tribe. The wholeness is the community.
Taken from http://www.etext.org/Zines/Critique/writing/wangerin.html
Thursday
From Milan Kundera's "Identity"
However much he may tell her he loves her and thinks her beautiful, his loving gaze could never console her. Because the gaze of love is the gaze that isolates. Jean-Marc thought about the loving solitude of two old persons become invisible to other people: a sad solitude that prefigures death. No, what she needs is not a loving gaze but a flood of alien, crude, lustful looks settling on her with no good will, no discrimination, no tenderness or politeness - settling on her fatefully, inescapably. Those are the looks that sustain her within human society. The gaze of love rips her out of it.
Conversations Touching On These Books...
Joanne Lees as yet untitled and unpublished book.
Why bother? How can you write up such a short traumatic episode into the length of a book?
Outback Heart by Joanne Van Os
Why keep up the dialogue of her connection with her ex-husband? And make the end of his life story, her story?
Aftermath by Peter Robinson
crime novel
Mystery Train by Griel Marcus
A rock n roll writer for Rolling Stone
Her Man to Remember by Suzanne McMinn
Mills and Boon
Box Garden by Carol Sheilds
The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
Peter Carey's 2nd Booker prize winner.
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Belsey is a white art history professor in the throes of midlife crisis. His marriage to vibrant African American wife Kiki is collapsing, due to his unfaithfulness. And he's devoting too much psychic energy to an ideological pissing war with Monty Kipps, an Anglo-Caribbean provocateur who arrives at Belsey's elite Massachusetts university disparaging affirmative action and generally aggravating the liberal Belseys with his ultraconservative rhetoric.
The Girl in Times Square by Paullina Simons
Soldier Sahibs: The Men Who Made the North-West Frontier by Charles Allen
What could be a great story but very dryly and acheingly boringly written.
The Book of God by Walter Wangerin
The Bible as a novel
Identity by Milan Kundera
Why bother? How can you write up such a short traumatic episode into the length of a book?
Outback Heart by Joanne Van Os
Why keep up the dialogue of her connection with her ex-husband? And make the end of his life story, her story?
Aftermath by Peter Robinson
crime novel
Mystery Train by Griel Marcus
A rock n roll writer for Rolling Stone
Her Man to Remember by Suzanne McMinn
Mills and Boon
Box Garden by Carol Sheilds
The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
Peter Carey's 2nd Booker prize winner.
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Belsey is a white art history professor in the throes of midlife crisis. His marriage to vibrant African American wife Kiki is collapsing, due to his unfaithfulness. And he's devoting too much psychic energy to an ideological pissing war with Monty Kipps, an Anglo-Caribbean provocateur who arrives at Belsey's elite Massachusetts university disparaging affirmative action and generally aggravating the liberal Belseys with his ultraconservative rhetoric.
The Girl in Times Square by Paullina Simons
Soldier Sahibs: The Men Who Made the North-West Frontier by Charles Allen
What could be a great story but very dryly and acheingly boringly written.
The Book of God by Walter Wangerin
The Bible as a novel
Identity by Milan Kundera
Wednesday
Australian Demographics
A University of Melbourne study of 20 000 Australians found that
60 per cent of people said they rarely spoke to their neighbours.
60 per cent of people said they rarely spoke to their neighbours.
Saturday
Patron Saint is Reading...
Patron Saint of the Alice Book Group has since moved on to Brisbane but sends us these titles, that she is currently reading. Our meditative one is still with us, just in a different form.
Click on the titles for more information.
The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
The Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Women who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
How to Have a Beautiful Mind by Edward De Bono
Seperate Reality by Carlos Casteneda
Click on the titles for more information.
The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
The Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Women who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
How to Have a Beautiful Mind by Edward De Bono
Seperate Reality by Carlos Casteneda
Thursday
Tuesday
New Link
Just decided to put a link in for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists because judging by the way the media is not so concerned about reporting on Australia's new deal with selling uranium to China, I thought it was appropriate to do so.
Monday
Australia on the Same Footing as Kazakhstan...
February 24, 2006
Authorities in Kazakhstan are eager to advance a plan to develop the country's nuclear energy industry and build a nuclear power plant. They argue that Kazakhstan needs to develop alternative energy sources. However, many Kazakhs oppose the idea, citing the serious health and environmental consequences suffered by hundreds of thousands of people living close to a former nuclear test site in Semipalatinsk.
The rest of this article is here.
If anyone wants to learn more about the health and safety concerns of people in that region, just for starters, there are places where 98% of the population have respiratory diseases and where 10% of pregnant women are healthy. Can this happen in Australia? Most would say we would not be so stupid to allow such events to get out of control, that we have all the correct procedures in place but these are indeed words of caution for us. And these people have lived through such times. We need to be less arrogant and listen to others experiences in the world.
Authorities in Kazakhstan are eager to advance a plan to develop the country's nuclear energy industry and build a nuclear power plant. They argue that Kazakhstan needs to develop alternative energy sources. However, many Kazakhs oppose the idea, citing the serious health and environmental consequences suffered by hundreds of thousands of people living close to a former nuclear test site in Semipalatinsk.
The rest of this article is here.
If anyone wants to learn more about the health and safety concerns of people in that region, just for starters, there are places where 98% of the population have respiratory diseases and where 10% of pregnant women are healthy. Can this happen in Australia? Most would say we would not be so stupid to allow such events to get out of control, that we have all the correct procedures in place but these are indeed words of caution for us. And these people have lived through such times. We need to be less arrogant and listen to others experiences in the world.
Nothing to do with Books and Everything to do with Environmental Concerns....
Oh woe is Australia!!
So, today they are going to sign away our environmental livelihood. Good on you Howard. We know you have our concerns at the top of your agenda.
China and nuclear energy, two wonderful exciting new ventures for us.
The media keeps concerning itself with 'China and their human rights record' but what concerns me more is China and their safety standards in our backyard. They used to use Xinjiang Province and the Uyghur population there for their nuclear needs, now we are inviting them into our own backyard to destroy our environment too. The world has gone completely mad. Australia well & truly sells out by agreeing to sell it's uranium to China.
This link takes you to the Chinese view on the nuclear energy angle in China. Oh sorry, what debate was that? And this link takes you to the Australian Conservation Foundation's view.
So, today they are going to sign away our environmental livelihood. Good on you Howard. We know you have our concerns at the top of your agenda.
China and nuclear energy, two wonderful exciting new ventures for us.
The media keeps concerning itself with 'China and their human rights record' but what concerns me more is China and their safety standards in our backyard. They used to use Xinjiang Province and the Uyghur population there for their nuclear needs, now we are inviting them into our own backyard to destroy our environment too. The world has gone completely mad. Australia well & truly sells out by agreeing to sell it's uranium to China.
This link takes you to the Chinese view on the nuclear energy angle in China. Oh sorry, what debate was that? And this link takes you to the Australian Conservation Foundation's view.
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