Australian poem: 2008 series: #1 — Marian Spires "War on Language" (2003)

This  year the Friday Australian Poem will continue in a slightly new guise, as I am not committing myself to any given day. However, there will be one every week, perversely tagged “Friday poem” so it continues the set in the WordPress tagging system.

Today’s poem is one of many published by the Poets Union in 2003 I suspect, though the copyright note says 2004. They are part of an international set of Poems about War.

 

Found: 20 postcards from Scotland

My archaeological dig has turned up twenty postcards my Aunt Beth sent my mother thirty years ago when she travelled to the UK, Scotland especially. They cover three trips in 1975, 1978 and 1982. Beth travelled to the UK again around two years ago, I should add, for a wedding, staying in The Tower of London where one of her late husband’s nephews actually lives. My mother’s family were on grandfather’s side of Scottish descent.

That’s Great-grandfather, born 150 years ago this year, on the right, though that picture was taken in Maitland NSW.

I am going to pass them on to Beth’s sons, and in fact just called Robert to tell him: guess what? Turns out he is in London himself right now!

A few snippets.

 

Education Week’s “Quality Counts 2008″ survey

I have for some time subscribed to the free version of the US sites Education Week and Teacher Magazine. The current Education Week offers a fully free set of reports and commentaries on the state of teaching and education in the USA. It is of great interest, not least to Australians as it offers some points of comparison and context for our own education debates, which (in much of the media at least) are often rather like the crusty definition of “projects” offered us by our reactionary old English Method lecturer in Dip Ed 1965: the pooling of the shared ignorance of the class. (The Poet, who sat next to me in those lectures, used to draw wonderful cartoons — instead of taking notes — showing said lecturer as a cat emerging from a garbage can. This was after one lecture in which she informed us: “There are two types of person in this world: cat people and non-cat people, and I am a cat person.” I forget why she said that…)

One item of many: Working Conditions Trump Pay.