Vicola’s Neighborhood

          It looks so odd.

          Last night was the first time my wife and I had been out since the time change … and since my dad went off to live in the frozen north.  It looks so odd to see that house sitting there completely dark.

          My parents bought that house in 1979, just before I graduated from high school.  Never was there a time that there wasn’t some sort of light emanating from the place.  Never.

          When my mother was alive, she always kept a lamp on in the living room so that she wouldn’t have to stumble her way to the bathroom in the middle of the night or to the kitchen for a cigarette.  Even when they went somewhere, she always felt the need to leave a light on for her cats … her cats, apparently, being the only ones in the world to not be able to see in the dark.  Of course … no one likes to come home to a dark house anyway …

          Just before Mom died and after my dad had his leg amputated, the norm was for the bathroom light to be burning all the time.  Even with blinds closed there was illumination and not stark, utter, darkness like there is now.

          It just looks odd.

I am partaking of a small, well middish, glass of a cheeky little le grand coq cabernet sauvignon 2004. It's promotional claim is that it is produced from very well hung grapes. I have no idea where or when we obtained it, I suspect it was either a gift, or purchased in one of the moments of holiday hilarity when one thinks everything is humorous and a must have. It has been cellared very carefully in a cardboard cartoon that once contained reams of printing paper, in the corner of our living room, for heavens knows how long. Maybe since 2004.  It did have the requisite covering of dust though.

I drink it as I write my way through my first draft of my last assignment in my postgraduate degree. Perhaps too soon to celebrate...but damn I am being creative. Luckily I don't have to hand the assignment in until Monday so I have time to sober up and edit!

 

It tastes very nice....

When the time eventually comes for me to leave this little farm which has been my home for a quarter of a century I will feel great sadness.

I have an affinity with, and attachment to this small part of Australia which has provided my livelihood, and been a safe haven for family life.
There is also a sense of history knowing that we are the first human family ever to have used it as a permanent place of abode.
Previously only the Noongyanbudda Ngadjon Aborigines sporadically wandered over this land during hunting and collecting expeditions.

I could quite easily be tempted to romanticise and suggest that for me this Earth was, as it is for many native peoples, my Mother, but I would be fooling myself because I am descended from generations of conquerors, travellers, invaders and transients who knew not how to send down deep roots.

It is therefore beyond my ability to completely understand the attachment to sky, land, flora and fauna which anchors the true indigenous societies on earth.

Some Australian Aboriginal tribes have a connection to place going back perhaps one thousand generations. Traditions and events archived through art, and kept alive by oral history.
I can only begin to imagine the pain of disconnection from Mother Earth that they feel in light of the last 220 years of our history.  
Firstly removed from their land at the point of a gun, then more recently suffering from Government policy which forcibly removed aboriginal children from their parents.

The Hmong people from the mountain areas of Laos, with their own ancient culture, were loyal supporters of our allies during the Vietnam conflict.  In appreciation, and for their own safety, many were assisted to migrate to the USA after the end of the war.

Many eventually settled in Minnesota, and they must have been severely traumatised by such an extreme cultural, climatic and topographical relocation.
The story is now told that many of the Hmong men died in their sleep soon after the relocation.  Others were awoken when they were on the doorstep of death, and revealed that they were in the middle of a dream where they were flying back over the oceans to the land of their birth.
Each man was having an apparently similar dream.

The men who had died had done so from broken hearts and spirits, and from the pain of severance from "place".

Some traditional patrilineal communities in New Guinea have a parable which the elders tell for the benefit of girls who are leaving it, by tradition, to marry into distant villages.

Boys are symbolically represented by the fruit stalk of the breadfruit tree.  When ripe, it falls directly back to the earth below.

Girls, are the leaves, which, upon maturity, fall from the branch to be gently dispersed on the breeze.

Humanity forfeits some of its accumulated wisdom, knowledge and appreciation of "place" every time any ancient culture or language is lost in our relentless pursuit of "progress". 

          A little late, but I was otherwise occupied …

          Last Tuesday, my wife decided that we NEEDED candy to give to the little beggars who were going to be coming around on Halloween.
          “I thought we still had some from last year …” I mentioned.
          (Yes, we are THOSE people.  The people who keep the candy from last year, freeze it, and give it out again this year … and next year … and in 2016 if it’s still around.)
          “No, I looked and didn’t see any.”  She assured me, so I relented and agreed to buy a couple of bags of the most inappropriately named “fun sized” candy bars.
          Approximately 2.1568785641 seconds after we got home, my wife found the leftover stash from last year.

          On Wednesday, my wife went to church.  I stayed home and killed people.  Actually fake people in a computer game, but I’ve been in a foul mood lately and slaughtering anything makes me feel all warm and tingly … even if they’re made of pixels and not bone and sinew.
          When my wife arrived home, she informed me that she’d been invited to attend a state-wide ladies meeting.  Before I could begin the “we can’t afford this, we’re going to have to fix up this house” type of thing, she informed me it was free.

          “When is it?”  I asked.
          “This Friday and Saturday … the 30th and 31st”  she said.  "I guess you’ll get to pass out the candy.”
          “Guess again.” I muttered.

          No, I did not pass out treats.  Hell, I didn’t even turn on the lights in the front part of our house!  I look at it as a public service … I’m concerned about the little “darlings” and their health.  After all, they’re going to have to work long hours in order to support me in my old age!
          
          Another plus?  No candy buying for the next 10 years!

 

Jemma.....

• 14:03 has a dress rehearsal tonight for Hobson's (bit.ly/4kQmP6) and is a bit nervous.... #
• 14:22 is grateful she has a lovely son who stops her feeling so stressed by making her dance to Paolo Nutini! #

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The current unhappiness with uninvited guests refusing to leave an Australian vessel in an Indonesian port has stirred up the old race hate fans like Wilson Tuckey and Barnaby Joyce with a view to scoring some cheap political points.

Notionally it is better news for the Opposition and has given them a breather from the damaging infighting but it’s not all beer and skittles for them just yet. The problem stems from firstly not having a policy to follow and secondly a lack of logical thinking on the part of their Leader.

In the first instance. chaps like Iron bar Tuckey have no set rules to follow (assuming he actually would) and he gets a bit excited. In Iron bar’s case it led to the bizarre demand that Aussie soldiers should throw the asylum seekers off the vessel.

Now either Tuckey doesn’t have much of a grip of geography or he is running a bit shy of how diplomacy works but sending troops into another country to throw their weight around is not likely to go down especially well with very many people and in all likelyhood is illegal in the International court. (Policy fail)

Secondly, if you do want to score political points as Turnbull wishes to do, it’s a good idea to try making the statement out loud in front of your advisers but in private. This way you can check your statement for logic without it going on record. Clearly young Malcolm didn’t think it through this time when he claimed the current boat load of asylum seekers having originated from Indonesia “completely destroyed Kevin Rudd’s argument about political pressure in Sri Lanka.” That's right up there with the struggling logic displayed by his Deputy Julie Bishop.

News reports from Sri Lanka make it perfectly clear there is a very unsympathetic Government dealing with the surviving Tamil Tigers and for that matter ordinary Sri Lankans who disagree with them. Conciliation is not on the agenda. One boat load can hardly be claimed to be representative of the whole problem.

This really points to Turnbull’s ongoing problem in front of the media. He seems to get over excited and forget to leave himself some wriggle room. Yes, he could make some mileage out of the current problem but he has to be a bit more thoughtful. Blowing his credibility at the opening of an attack gets the focus on him instead of the point he wants to make. It’s not the first time he has made a dill of himself and I think it stems from his attitude that he is always right. Some Press Conferences seem to show him thinking on his feet rather than being prepared.

Can he fix it? Well yes, but does he know he has a problem? I think his attitude suggests he thinks he is without blame in the current despair gripping the party room and unless he takes a “good hard look at himself” he will probably leave the job feeling he was never given a fair go.

He has been given fairly good support but when he drops the easy ball like this you can’t blame the Libs looking for a better player.

Our weekend walk was a little damp as we wandered along Rock Creek Church Road: 

to President Lincoln's Cottage at the Old Soldiers' Home.
The site is 3 miles north of the White House and Lincoln used this as his summer retreat from June-November in 1862-64. I have to say that living fairly close to this cottage I have not noticed a noticeable difference in temperature between downtown and home but still Lincoln enjoyed the "cool breezes" on the hill.  He "commuted" from the cottage to the White House daily and enjoyed the relative peace of the cottage during the Civil War.    Lincoln's route took him right past our street: 
On July 7, 2000, President Clinton declared the Lincoln Cottage, and 2.3 acres of surrounding land, the President Lincoln and Soldiers' Home National Monument.  This was in honor of the site's notable role in the presidency of Abraham Lincoln.

The recently restored Lincoln's Cottage with the beautiful Old Soldiers' Home in the background: 

There is a tour of the interior of the cottage -  we intend to go back and do that -  but this time we went through the small but interesting museum.  

Next I need to sort my Old Soldiers' Home photos and its history......

Jemma.....

• 11:26 has now hit show week and will be pretty hard to get hold of until Sunday! #

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