Between Bourke 'n' Elizabeth

... elders ...

Not often that I watch television nowadays: but I did last night.

It was the first in a group of episodes of "Enough Rope" that have been grouped together as "Elders". As the producers see it,  "We live in a society that worships youth. But in some cultures, it is the elders who are valued for their wisdom. In this series we talk to six prominent elders of our tribe, to see what life has taught them." Some of the tribal elders still to come include Elisabeth Murdoch, Bob Hawke and Isabel Allende. The first episode, however, was an interview with David Attenborough.

It used some of the footage that I saw in that wonderful documentary that celebrated his 50 years of wildlife programs with the BBC. It used his personal declamation on global warming which signalled his final "to air". He appears to be in robust good health for an 82 year old, although he indicated that his legs will no longer do as much as he wants them to. He has lived in the same house for 53 years - that may compensate for all the travelling around the world during that period. His wife, Jane, passed away in 1997 and his grandchildren live in Canberra where their father is an academic at ANU - in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Andrew Denton has a fairly laid-back interviewing style, but I would prefer his questions to be more off-the-cuff. There are not many times that he asks follow-up questions and this makes the experience a bif jerky. Last night there was a quizzical camera placement which had the two people involved at the extremity of the image with no particularly obvious reason why. It is not as though there was a stunning bookshelf or view of the garden in the centre of the image.

There is a list of the 10 most popular video clips which was topped by the song of the lyre bird. However, my favourite is the gorillas.

... enriched by passionate concern ...

Belvoir Street Theatre is currently in a short run of the play "My name is Rachel Corrie". I remembered her death in the news at the time. I went at the behest of my daughter who wanted to see the play before it closed. I came out shattered: not knowing what to think.

When pressed, I thought she wasted her life. I was accused of being judgemental. What would you have her do: live to 60 and have a house and a car and two kids. Maybe "waste" was the wrong word: maybe I should have said that she traded her life too cheaply. But look what she achieved. She had these ideas; they were brave and noble ideas; ideas and aims that you would normally applaud. But she is dead: she was not even 24 and she was dead. She was 4 months older than you. And she was dead: and she had not actually achieved anything.

The people who wrote this probably did not want you to come out thinking this way: that her death was in vain. That her life was not of value. But her life was of value but not enough to die at such a young age. Maybe there are still young activists living the sort of dream that Corrie lived. Maybe she lives on in that way.

There are two types of activism: one where white, middle-class, western people go and help people from Third World countries dig wells, show them how to construct houses, how to grow crops; and a second type of activism where white, middle-class, western people go and try to change the political forces operating in other countries. One has some chance of success. The other has no chance of success. The word dilletante comes to mind.

She is still dead at the age of 24: she never had a chance because she did not value her own life enough. She had a dream that poor people should be helped; that people should live in peace; that all people are equal; that the future holds a light. That light went out and she was not even 24.

This is a very powerful drama penned by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner from Corrie's letters and emails. There was just one actor, Belinda Bromilow. She was so close that I felt she was staring into my head.

... djembe drumming ...

See the concentration on some of these faces: this is what we - Irene, Margaret, Christine and I - do for an hour and a half every Tuesday evening. Tonight was lesson 3 of 8. I guess there are about a dozen of us, led by the "facilitator" Beau and a "facilitator-in-learning", Kimberley who run the Bondi Junction circle for In Rhythm. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline and self control to maintain a rhythm when there are three or four competing rhythms going at the same time. Beau will also stop the pattern and then count it in again. Sometimes, we have to swap over the pattern on the count of four. It is very exhausting and I for one, get immensely hot. Sometimes my head just gives out after three minutes of the same pattern and I cannot remember it, so I have to concentrate on the pattern Beau is beating out and come back in again.

At the end of the eight weeks, all the drum circles around Sydney who have been learning the same pattern, come together for a Drum-Fest. Such a good way to spend an evening. My motto at the moment: Not going gentle into any good night.

... seeing red ...

Where to begin to explain the impact that my Red Centre trip had on me. It was emotional in ways I would never had thought. It was physical in ways that I had dreaded. There were two especially emotional moments: arriving at the very centre of my country; and, seeing Uluru for the first time. My chest was constricted and I had to keep reminding myself that this was real - it was not on television; it was there in front of me. There were two difficult physical times: when I realised that I would be sleeping in a swag on the ground every night; and, the pain in my chest as I trudged around Kata Juta.

As I predicted, I was by far the oldest person on the trip. It was a full house; 10 paying passengers plus the driver. There were 6 females and 4 males. There were 3 French nationals, one Swiss, one Nederlander, 2 German nationals, one Canadian and one American living in London, England. The only Australians were me and the driver. Not many Australians make this trip. Which is very sad.  I am nearly 60, then followed 37, 32, 3X28, 25, 2x24, 23 and 21. Every person on the trip was a university graduate including the driver. Two people had Masters and two had doctorates. One of the German girls had a doctorate in Geology which was immensely useful.

I have over 700 images to sift through. There are 10 days of experiences that I wish to record - mainly for my own benefit.The trip itself cost about $1700 including entry fees. Getting to and from cost another $600. And I guess I spent another $1200 on "stuff". So, all up about $3,500 for just over 10 days. Not cheap. But worth every penny.

... the new yorker: second orality ...

Proust described reading as "that fruitful miracle of a communication in the middle of solitude".  According to Maryanne Wolf "The efficient reading brain quite literally has more time to think". 

A reader learns about the world and imagines it differently from the way a viewer does. If, over time, many people choose television over books, then a nation's conversation with itself changes.

The concept of the "second orality" is attributed to Walter Ong in the early 1980s who speculated that television was taking us into an era of "second orality" akin to the primary orality that existed before the emergence of text. Whereas literates can rotate concepts in their minds abstractly, orals embed their thoughts in stories. According to Ong, the best way to preserve ideas in the absence of writing is to "think memorable thoughts" whose zing ensures their transmission.

As a child progresses from decoding to fluent reading, the route of signals through the brain shifts and reading starts to move along a faster and more efficient route. With the gain in time and the freed up brain power, a fluent reader is able to integrate more of her own thoughts and feelings into her experience. When reading goes well it is effortless; it makes you smarter because it leaves more of your brain alone. Proust contends that to read is "to receive a communication with another way of thinking, all the while remaining alone and continuing to enjoy the intellectual power that one has in solitude and that conversation dissipates immediately". 

... white flight ...

Expressions take on a life of their own - they are imbued with a raft of meanings and mean different things to different people. Last year we suffered endlessly while politicians promised to end the "blame game". When Stan Zemanek died last year and The Chaser unceremoniously dumped on him, a spew of "shock jock" bounced off the wall. I wonder if Demi Moore realises there is just a smidge of a difference between "toy boy" and "boy toy". If an expression can be made to rhyme, it has a chance of lasting longer than the proverbial "blink of an eye". What did we learn from the late, unlamented Idi Amin - gotta give the population something to humm.  "White flight" is the word of the moment all through the Sydney media.