Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter on Talking Heads tonight

Turn off Channels 7, 9 and 10 at 6.30 and watch something truly relevant and inspirational.

Last night I watched Channel Ten!

Oh yes. I did give that funny Indian game the flick, but somewhere between the wall-to-wall commercials, which is the REAL program I suspect, I did see the snippets of shouting cheerers counting down the first Big Brother Eviction for 2008. A UFO enthusiast with tatts and attitude got the chop, but I have to say there actually was a nice back story there about this young man being a little bit wiser about Asians and effeminate men as a result of his incarceration. That effect can’t be all bad.

Then of course there is Corey Worthington. I couldn’t help warming to him just a bit; after all last summer he did give Tabloid TV exactly what it deserved, though he has himself been sucked into the trough. Mind you, I think he will go far, that lad; he is certainly not backward at taking what he can from the odd celebrity he finds himself enjoying, given that he really is quite ordinary in most respects.

The blog from which I took that (linked to pic) is a bit unfair calling him a “dumb maggot”; he isn’t entirely stupid and he is seventeen. That he is even there, of course, says a lot about the commercial media, rather more than about him; on the other hand he had hoped, or so he says, that being on BB would give people a chance to judge him as he is, rather than as the media have created him. Some truth in that.

I have found some of the blogs on the subject more interesting than the show itself. Two examples: Archetypes in the BB08 House and Eye on Big Brother. It is possible to watch Big Brother and keep your brain intact, it seems; I suppose it is a kind of laboratory of the human condition, if you want to see it that way. I still find it an ethical dilemma myself, and not exactly a sign of a healthy culture.

Mind you, people would be far better off watching Big Brother than reading some blogs: for example…

Is nothing sacred?

According to Whisky Magazine the world’s best Single Malt is Yoichi 20 Years Old! From the pristine springs of the McJapanese Highlands…

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South Sydney Uniting Church 4 May 2008

I wasn’t there last Sunday, as it happens, which is why Andrew sent me the day’s order of service; I thought some others may like to see it. South Sydney Uniting Church Waterloo: 7 Easter 2008 PDF.

Music my mother liked…

…seeing it is Mothers Day.

Though she preferred the Annie Frind version.

1911-1996

Burma 3

What on earth are we to make of those drongos in uniform that run Burma? Yes, do note that I am deliberately continuing to use the name Burma, with good reason; for that and much else about this troubled country see the rather good Wikipedia entry.

Our own Opposition has homed in on the Rudd government’s promised $3 million of aid as “pathetic” in contrast to the Howard government’s response to the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, with Alexander Downer leading the charge: PM’s aid to Burma ‘pathetic’. On the face of it, that seems fair comment, but I suspect we should also look at the differences between the two cases. In 2004 we were dealing with co-operative governments who swiftly opened up to assistance, despite the potential problems. Aceh, after all, had been the focus of a separatist movement and virtual civil war, and Sri Lanka too has had more than its share of problems. Nonetheless, in neither case were there the roadblocks and sheer bloody-mindedness that the generals in Burma have presented. Are they still having that stupid referendum today?

It may be that our government’s response is related to the pressure being brought to bear on those generals to act more responsibly; it may be that our government does not want to see aid in the control of a Burmese government that is determinedly but subtly — and not so subtly — engaged in genocide in those parts of the country it does not want foreigners to see.

It is at least some consolation, I suppose, that fanatical religion is not one of the drivers of the Burmese regime; it is a change to see secular tinpot dictators rather then theocrats, I suppose.

Meanwhile for so many Burmese it will all be just too late.

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Australian poem 2008 series #13 — Roland Robinson (1912-1992)

There is the following brief but fascinating account of this poet in an unexpected place — well, unexpected by me because I had not realised the connection:

Born in County Clare, Ireland, writer and poet Roland Robinson came to Australia in 1921. His formal education was brief and he worked in various jobs, mainly in the bush as a rouseabout, boundary-rider, railway fettler, fencer, dam-builder and gardener.

In the 1940s he took classes with Helene Kirsova and appeared in a number of productions by the Kirsova Ballet. He wrote about his dance experiences in the first part of his autobiography, The drift of things: an autobiography, 1914-1952, published in 1973. During the 1950s and 1960s Robinson was dance critic for The Sydney Morning Herald.

Robinson’s first published poetry appeared in Beyond the Grass-Tree Spears published in 1944. His love of the Australian landscape and everyday scenes were inspiration for his poetry and he was committed to the Jindyworobak Movement. He also wrote extensively about Aboriginal myths and legends.

– on the Australia Dancing site.

I first encountered Robinson’s poems in the 1960s through anthologies; Beyond the Grass-Tree Spears was one of the first “slim volumes” of Australian verse that I ever bought, attracted because there were some rather good poems in there about places I knew in the Royal National Park south of Sutherland. He did not figure in the small pantheon studied at Sydney University in the nascent Australian Literature course taught by Gerry Wilkes, but I liked his work nonetheless. The Jindyworobaks too were looked on as eccentrics at best, and there was something a bit too fervent about them at times, not to mention that most of them were fairly minor poets. Mind you, they had something worth saying; I suspect they will be seen as forward-looking in our current climate on Indigenous Australia.

This example of Robinson’s work is the only one I could currently find on the net; later I may add another.

The Drovers

Over the plains of the whitening grass
and the stunted mulga the drovers pass,
and in the red dust cloud, each side
of the cattle, the native stockmen ride.

And day after day lays bare the same
endless plains as the way they came,
and ever the cloven ranges lie
at the end of the land and the opal sky.

With creak of pack and saddle leather,
and chink of chain and bit together,
with moan of the herd with hobble and bell
they come to the tanks at the tea-tree well.

And through corroding blood-red hills
by sanded rivers the Gulf-rain fills,
far, where the morning star has shone
and paled above, their tracks are gone.

On the Jindies, see the Wikipedia article linked in the biographical note above. The last few paragraphs raise some of the issues people have had with them:

Ivor Indyk has suggested that the Jindyworobaks were looking for a kind of pastoral poetry, harking back to an Arcadian idyll which was removed from the early pioneer period, back to the pre-colonisation era. He claims that “they overlooked the fact that Australian novelists have been there before them”, but that unlike the Greek original this Australian “Arcadia” is not full of dryads. fauns and happy shepherds but is “haunted and usually overwhelmed by the spectres of death and dispossession”, i.e the atrocities, betrayal and misunderstandings of white contact with the natives. He also says of Judith Wright that she is “oppressed by feelings of ‘arrogant guilt’. Guilt, as a burden of white history, is felt again in the division between the settlers and the land itself, despoiled by greed and incomprehension”, in spite of her trying to inaugurate a “white dreaming“, while the landscapes of Ingamells are:

“aflame with energy, but they are also uninhabited, save for the ghostly remnants of Aboriginal tribes, and more frequently, the cockatoos and parakeets whose bright colours and raucous cries express both the power and the alien character of the land. There is little that is really social or cultural about this use of an Aboriginal perspective, and no real sense of history.”

It is thus arguable in certain cases whether the poetry is aiming at an indigenous consciousness in whites or possession of the land, which the indigenous Australians are seen as being in close contact with.

The great native influence on the Jindyworobaks was literature which had been taken down by white folklorists and anthropologists. Written, as opposed to transcribed, indigenous literature did not appear in print until the 1920s when David Unaipon, a Christian from Point McLeay mission, South Australia, published a large body of work. Unaipon was publishing into the 1950s, by which time the Jindyworobaks were in decline. Unaipon was the sole published indigenous Australian writer during their heyday, and indeed it was not until the 1960s that a second was published - Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker). This is because until the 50s and 60s, classroom education was mostly vocational, or directed towards Christian missionary work. Unaipon, despite coming from South Australia, is not mentioned in the works of the Jindyworobaks, so it is hard to say how much of an influence, Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines was.

The Jindyworobaks have been accused of appropriating native culture, but such a criticism comes with an uncomfortable response – i.e.that if indigenous Australian write/paint in European-derived forms, such as the novel or Impressionism are they themselves appropriating? This criticism is based on the notion that people should only indulge in cultural forms developed by their own ethnic group, and that anything else, including cross-fertilisation, is appropriation. However, by exchanging one culture, for another, as A.D. Hope pointed out “the poet who tries to write like a second hand abo [sic] is no more likely to produce sincere work than the poet who writes like a second-hand Englishman” (Note, Hope uses the term “Abo”, which is usually pejorative.) *

Other criticisms of the Jindyworobaks have been on a different racist basis, i.e. of the supposed inferiority of indigenous culture, and thereby the Jindys. Such a mindset is less acceptable in the modern day, but was commonplace in mid-20th century Australia.

* I doubt that A D Hope was in any serious sense racist; but he certainly was dismissive of the naive nationalism he would have seen in the Jindies, and was a European-oriented anti-modernist classicist himself — and a very fine poet. He also famously dismissed the work of Patrick White, of course, as “verbal sludge.” The word “Abo” is of course no longer desirable, but until the current generation was very widely used. There is no doubt Hope is using the word dismissively in what he said, but weigh that against “second-hand Englishman”, also dismissive. He was saying, in the language of the mid 20th century, that the Jindies could not aspire to authentic Aboriginality, and that is an issue.

Weird and wonderful — two unrelated items

Sorry if the thumbnail on the left is a bit unclear, but you need to see the layout of today’s Daily Telegraph front page. I am sure you can make out the banner headline. The box just above it on the left proclaims IT’S A BIG FAT LIE. Unfortunate juxtaposition, don’t you think? Oh well, these things happen.

The story that fascinates me — and it is on the Tele site, but I have taken my version from ABC — is All mixed up: Platypus genome decoded.

Now we all know the platypus — and I am lucky enough to have seen them in the wild — is one very strange creature, along with its egg-laying anteater relative the Echidna, but just how weird and wonderful we now know for sure.

Scientists have for the first time unveiled the unusual genetic make-up of the Australian platypus.

According to the study released this morning in the journal Nature, the semi-aquatic animal is a genetic potpourri - part bird, part reptile and part lactating mammal.

The task of laying bare the platypus genome of 2.2 billion base pairs spread across 18,500 genes has taken several years, but will do far more than satisfy the curiosity of just biologists, say the researchers.

“The platypus genome is extremely important, because it is the missing link in our understanding of how we and other mammals first evolved,” explained Oxford University’s Chris Ponting, one of the study’s architects.

“This is our ticket back in time to when all mammals laid eggs while suckling their young on milk.”

Native to eastern mainland Australia and Tasmania, the semi-aquatic platypus is thought to have split off from a common ancestor shared with humans approximately 170 million years ago.

Apparently they missed their passage on Noah’s Ark… But no matter: they can swim.

More on Salam Cafe

When I found earlier episodes existed, I wondered how I had missed them: answer, they were on Melbourne’s Channel 31. Now of course with the new series being on SBS we can all see, and you can too if you go to my earlier entry Salam Cafe on SBS Wednesdays at 10 pm and click the screen shot there.

I have promoted one bit of the earlier series from the VodPod to here:

Sacha Molitorisz, an ex-student of mine from way back in 1985, a class-mate of the one Marcel alludes to here, had this to say in the Sydney Morning Herald:

The format is hardly ground-breaking. As a blend of The Chaser and The Panel, Salam Cafe aims to deliver laughs via sketches, vox pops and a discussion of the day’s issues. The twist is that the panellists and interviewers are Muslim, giving Salam Cafe an endearingly subversive edge…

One clip shows a series of vox pops conducted in suburban Frankston - an area the unkind might describe as Melbourne’s answer to Cronulla.

“What do you know about Muslims?” one interviewer asks a passer-by. “Not a lot,” the young man says. “But I know their beliefs are pretty dangerous.”

“What do you think of Muslims?” another man is asked. “I hate ‘em.”

“What’s Ramadan?” the interviewer asks a woman. “Is that like a papadum?” she replies.

The segment is funny but also poignant, giving an insight into the sort of prejudices and misconceptions faced by Muslim Aussies such as regular panellist Susan Carland.

“Most of the misconceptions are about Muslim women,” Carland says. “A lot of them are about the headscarf. I’m often asked if I have cancer. And I have a badge that says, ‘No, I don’t wear it in the shower.’ People really think we’re aliens. A friend of mine said, ‘But how did you give birth?’ It’s just a piece of material, like a T-shirt. It doesn’t have magic powers. For me, it’s very important that this show is about Muslims, not about Islam. It’s just showing that Muslims are normal people. We’re not from Planet Islam. It’s showing the human face of the Muslim community, same as Acropolis Now did [for the Greek community] in the ’80s. People will see that we won’t eat their babies.”…

The regulars chosen for the 10 initial episodes - to be filmed with live audiences in Sydney and Melbourne - are an impressive bunch. There’s Waleed Aly, the young lawyer who stole the show at last month’s inaugural Intelligence Squared debate in Sydney. As the closing speaker for the negative, Aly argued against the proposition that “Islam is incompatible with democracy”. It was his entertaining, eloquent argument that won his team the debate.

There’s the show’s host, Imam, a journalist, counter-terrorism expert and father of four who sees Salam Cafe as a tool to bring Islam into the consciousness of mainstream Australia. Then there’s Carland, who is sharp, opinionated and has a stud in her tongue. “She has a touch of the punk about her,” says co-producer Pamela Swain. “She’s like a punk mum. She’s got a bit of the rebel about her and is also a feminist. But she’s amazingly down to earth and so Aussie.

“I can’t speak highly enough of them. The thing that makes me really excited is they’re really young. These are mostly twentysomethings and that’s a generation we don’t often see on television. This show is a big ask of them but I think it’s got great potential.”

Also on the team are comedians Nazeem Hussain and Aamer Rahman, whose show Fear Of A Brown Planet won the best newcomer award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and was described by The Age as “beautifully distilled fury”. Appearing beside them are Ahmed Hassan, Dakhylina Madkhul and Toltu Tufa.

With the help of Robinson and Swain, whose credits include Good News Week, The Glass House and The Sideshow (the show uses the old Glass House desk), SBS’s Salam Cafe will be much more polished than the version that premiered on Channel 31 in April 2005…

I enjoyed it.

Burma 2

Look at the multimedia report in the Sydney Morning Herald.

NASA images: linked to source.