How sweet the fore-skin!

Our kitchen of ‘give and take’

The country was mesmerised. There was to be a ballot. Our Prime minister was to be challenged and it was on TV. We put on the kettle, settled on our divan and watched it all unfold. Scurrying politicians were seen running along the corridors of power at our Parliament.  The King rat at front, the V shaped tribe following. It was all at fever pitch, 54 to 44 in favour of the challenger Malcolm Turnbull. Abbott was seen afterwards followed by his tribe. Malcolm graciously praising Abbott about his past leadership but glowing at his own success.

It was as good as Shakespeare. A  human drama of huge proportions.  Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Goal also came to my mind.

” He did not wear his scarlet coat, For blood and wine are red, And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead, The poor dead …”

In front of our town-house we have two cane chairs on which we sit in the late afternoon, usually after all the house-hold chores have been done. We are in the habit of a glass of red and either talk a bit or just look out at the snippet of garden that is facing us at the front. Of course , ‘after all the household chores are done’ seems to suggest waxing of furniture, scrubbing the doorstep, peeling potatoes and polishing the silver. That’s just nonsense. It means hours of pouring over the computer, dragging a mouse across and wishing for the day to pass at greater speed so we can get to the wine-reward a bit quicker.

On the ABC Drum has been a raging debate on Female circumcision, or better known in its abbreviated form of FGM. ( female genital mutilation)  A flurry of responses by men defending or attacking the cutting of the fore-skin in men’s genitalia soon followed. So typical of men hijacking the debate. I was most guilty of it.

Race and religion, the pro and anti fore-skin defenders, it all came to fruition in over  two hundred responses so far. The story was written about the practise of female mutilation in some sections of the community. A court case is ongoing at the moment of two little girls allegedly having undergone this practise. Two doctors have testified that no mutilation could be detected. The defence is arguing  that the operation was  ritualistic and did not  include any cutting.

Hereby my contribution to the debate  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-22/ferrari-fgm-in-australia/6794278

“Circumcision on the male is a cruel practise. The foreskin is meant to give increased pleasure during sexual congress by facilitating the penis to move freely up and down protecting it from a too vigorous thrusting.
To take that away diminishes the intensity felt during sex.

Of course, when men get old and reflect (while nodding in a comfy chair at the ‘Fair Haven’ retirement home)) on all that relentless up and down moving, might well come to the conclusion; is that what it has all been about? Is this what has driven me?

Was it all worth it?”

Fore-skin is raising its ugly head at this hour of 7.30 in the morning. Isn’t there something else you can write about? Well, yes but there has to be something else besides Abbott. We had two years of shade and darkness. People need to have a letting off steam. I can’t wait for the afternoon and getting outside on our cane chairs. Bask a little in spring sun. A glass of Shiraz and partner

. A hoorah on life. What’s wrong with that?

We are not dying like we used to.

We are not dying like in the good old days.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-23/undertakers-blame-mild-winter-for-slow-business/4907608

I have written before on how things are crook in the world of the dedicated undertaker.Now it is worldwide. Embalmers, grave diggers, crematorium sweepers, they are all huddled around street corners hoping for a body, shovels are going rusty and listless undertakers reduced to sipping buttermilk or lukewarm tea.

Some of the largest retorts have been switched off and lying idle, saving gas or electricity. These are hard times.

Unfortunately, the best of the undertakers etc will get out of the industry. Many embalmers already have taken up restoring cars, cane furniture or simply becoming panel beaters. The industry will find it hard to replace those that took pride in their work. Many were answering an almost sacred plea during the peak or heydays of the dying, few were chosen. The very best were artists in their own right and could name their price. It was as much a calling as becoming a bishop or a Venetian gondolier.

Many corpses were left with the signature of the embalmer as recognizable as a vintner could call his ‘vins de Bordeaux.’ The best of them clearly under emphasized their work, were modest and yet worked with much devotion and creativity.

It makes one wonder how the industry will fare in the future. I am pretty sure that, no matter what, the trade from ‘ashes to ashes’ will survive.

Already many of the smaller undertakers were taken over by the larger ones and with mass buying of coffins and introduction of solar heated crematoriums and retorts, costs were cut, prices lowered. Many are now corporate giants and listed on the Dow Jones, The FT100, and the AEX etc. Some of the smaller funeral directors tried double dipping with re-use of coffins, the introduction of flat pack carton coffins with Allen key, plastic re-usable flowers and introducing three for the price of one and other sustainable solutions.

The logistics of less numbers dying now seems a problem that will take innovative action. The larger corporate ones have taken to offering ‘Corpus-futures’ (CF’s) the same as already existing with pork bellies, soya beans etc. One has the option of going ‘short’ or ‘long’ on the dearly departed. Timing is of the essence though.

The experts can blame longevity on the mild weather or the habit of taking vitamins, exercise and tofu milk with cucumber but I wonder if people are cutting corners and doing a swifty and burying Aunt Agnes on the sly under Rufus the dog kennel? Are there economic reasons at play here? How does that stack up though against all those funereal insurance TV ads with so many of the ‘happy’ Rolfing around in the knowledge that for the cost of a mere weekly latte or sugar slushy they will get a nice warm cremation or a burial without having to worry afterwards and lying awake all night.

Anyway, you can get a decent funeral for less than an Mp with 5 Gigabytes; including a box of I love Lucy VD’s thrown in for niks.

The problem seems odd. On the one hand, robust health with longevity and mild weather is to be blamed, yet on the other side obesity and the Big quarter pounder Mac were seen by many as the savior for the industry. What is happening here? Is there some rort going on somewhere?

I am suspicious.

Human rights lessons from Turkey?

Learning human rights lessons from Turkey?

105 Comments

Gerard Oosterman

Turkey promised to keep its borders open for the people fleeing the violence in Syria. Many thousands of Syrians have crossed into Turkey and footage shows men and women, children walking into that country.

Even though Turkey is a country with a large population of over seventy million and already coping with an overflow of many other nationalities, it has not lost its humanity in doing the right thing by extending its hospitality to those so much worse off. They are quickly opening disused buildings and building camps, constructing a temporary hospital.

If Turkey can do it, where is our compassion?

Lack of ‘humaneness’ is what seems to doggedly divide Australia from most of the rest of the world with a deeply engrained hostility towards others. It is especially directed to those hapless victims of endless wars that somehow managed to make it anywhere near our shores.

Our present minister and previous Government ministers have exalted in, ‘we must make conditions here as harsh as possible as a deterrent’. The general gist of the messages from our ‘Leaders’ has been very constant, ‘No-one, we repeat, no-one should come here under the understanding they will be treated with compassion or care if they jump the ‘queue’ or come ‘illegal’ by boat,’  is what they mainly are saying. The political leaders are well aware that those sentiments will be well rewarded with the approval of thousand of voters.

The latest threat of sending at least 800 refugees to Malaysia just about takes the cake in the manoeuvring of our desperate Government keen to further whip up our xenophobia. The fact that this whipping might be translated to a caning in Malaysia was just seen as a mere bagatelle, easily overcome with a few soothing words of a promise that that would most likely not happen. The UNHCR seems less convinced.

While the conversation is continuing and a flurry of visits to New Guinea and Nauru intending to underline our tough stance once again, some might question where this dreadful fear comes from. Is there something in our history that gives us clues?

We couldn’t do much wrong by visiting our most recent history of how we treated children, both in our mother country of the UK and in our own.

Just having seen the film Oranges and Sunshine and previously read David Hill’s, The Forgotten Children, I wonder if  one day we might admit there was something rotten going on in our culture dating back perhaps hundreds of years. I know of no other country that exported and deported over 130,000 children in recent times. I also know of no other country that then allowed the further destruction of those children in the institutions they arrived at.

Is it is the history of bullying children and sending them into the hierarchical system of the English Boarding Schools, the Public (Private) Schools with its whipping masters and the degrading of all those coming into contact with the ‘British system’ of parenting and educating?

This seems to go to the very heart of why Australia has never managed to shake of that bullying that defined us from the very start.

Yet, when it comes to cattle or suicidal whales we all get teary eyed, ban the export of cattle or stand in the sea for days stroking dying whales. Where is the stroking for the flotsam of humans cast on our shores?

Last Monday’s Four Corners: again ‘bullying and degrading’ at the very core of our armed forces. It is totally ‘us’ and not just the isolated few of ‘them’. Howard, Ruddock, Abbott, Gillard, Morrison, Bowen. What chance did they all have growing up and indoctrinated into a system of bullying? No Government except the British conduct parliament so appallingly and again, bullying is at the very heart of it.

In the meantime we should take a leaf out of Turkey’s book. We will not turn them away, is what the Turkish Minister for Immigration is reported as saying. They are human beings in distress.

I can’t even imagine one of our politicians saying that.

Gerard Oosterman blogs here.

Moscow – St Petersburg ( Leningrad) Express

Originally from ABC The Drum:http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/32238.html

It is one thing to see sports players going overseas but worse still would be losing artists to greener pastures.

I am reminded somewhat by the reverence shown to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died recently. Thousands filed past his open casket. Television showed metre long roses placed there by Putin and Gorbachev. I wonder whether we would revere our writers and artists the same.

I can’t remember when I have last seen a PM opening a book show or being photographed at an art gallery, or even commenting on the importance of art. On the contrary, the Bill Henson affair brought out suspicion, disregard and ignorance from those that ought to know better.

Why is it that sport is the Holy Grail above everything else?

Years ago I took the overnight train from Moscow to St Petersburg (Leningrad) in midsummer and shared the sleeper with a couple and an ample-bosomed and beautiful Russian woman by the name of Lilly.

Most of the sleeper cabins behind me had groups of American choir singers, both boys and girls of around 20-30 years of age. They had performed in Moscow and were booked to sing in St Petersburg. Being midsummer, and so far north, the days lasted forever. It had also been very hot with thunderstorms in the late afternoon. The Americans were pleased to meet someone from Australia and, as proof of it, I was asked to give an impromptu impersonation of Crocodile Dundee star Paul Hogan and say “goodiaye and hozygoin” over and over again.

This was nothing compared with what would follow next. The beautiful Lilly in my cabin spoke some German and so did I. The train was air conditioned but it was stifling hot and, as Lilly and I got acquainted, she, now and then, modestly dabbed her bosom with an Eau de Cologne sprinkled silken and embroidered handkerchief. She kindly asked what I did when I was not travelling and I told her I painted pictures. Ach nein, du bist ein Artiest? Wie ist das möglich? (An artist, how is that possible?) The hanky started working overtime.

The secret was out and went like wildfire through the whole train. The next thing, passengers were lining up to meet me, vodka was offered and Lilly unpacked some ‘kuchen’ with cubed sugar soaked in almond essence. (I remember it well.) I was almost carried around on shoulders and tears were flowing. I was feted like an emperor.

Some hours later, when darkness finally announced itself – and consider Russian sleeper trains are not gender separated, and the vodka had settled – the four of us, including the beautiful Lilly, calmly undressed. I hopped in the top bunk and she underneath. I slept on a cloud of Eau the Cologne and almond essence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lNFRLrP014

Next morning, breakfast was served in those ornate silver plated urns and glassware. The Americans behind us, thankfully, had had enough of Aussie imitations.

Getting back to the reverence shown to artists, dead or alive, in countries elsewhere, it seems doubly annoying to hear in all details the latest exploits of an AFL player who went to play in France for more money. Why is that of such enormous importance?

What I am trying to get at is that if I would have gone around the Goulburn-City Rail Link announcing I painted pictures, the best I could hope for would be the question “Do you sell them, and how much?”

How many more years will be wasted in giving so much credit to sport and so little to art?

When will we finally start recognising that art is important because it lasts and also defines us as a nation that always strives above the mundane.

Home Alone.

a Golden Oldie.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/31798.html

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/31798.html#comments

Home alone
286 Comments
Gerard Oosterman

Mention the word ‘table’ (tavola) to an Italian and the implications are clear: family, food, laughter and above all, the excitement of conversation. The word ‘tavola’ could easily bring tears to any red blooded Italian, having been away too long from home.

But, mentioning the word ‘table’ to an Australian and someone might ask: Ikea, or have you inherited a “Parker Table”?

(This of course is not the only difference between Aussies and the European or other nationals. But, as they say in Russia, Viva La Difference!)

A curious form of isolating oneself, at times, from the outside world persists here more than anywhere else that I know of.

Perhaps the words ‘Own Home’ demonstrate this difference. Am I right in thinking that those two little words would conjure up for Australians what the word ‘tavola’ does for the Italian?

The words ‘Own Home’ for us Australians is the need for the world of absolute ‘privacy’. Perhaps, to our Anglo forbearers, their ‘Own Home’ was their castle – up with the drawbridge and just in case of anything or anyone unwanted, they had the back up of a moat to keep out intruders, including any unannounced visitors.

While the drawbridge and moat have gone, we have substituted them with the paling fence, and now the impenetrable colour bond aluminium partition fence, blocking even the remotest chance of seeing a neighbour, or worse, a neighbour seeing us.

Some ‘own homes’ now have total block-out metal electric window shutters. Perhaps in the future they will do away with the need to have any windows at all.

The need for ‘privacy’ seems to overwhelm everything, even when it means blocking the glorious country views and light. Perhaps they are impatiently waiting to jump into bed for a bit of an old fashioned quickie, but so would the red blooded Europeans, would they not?

With the culture of one’s ‘Own Home’ comes another curious phenomenon. You rarely actually see anyone outside in their gardens and I am buggered if I know how Aussies maintain their gardens so spotlessly. The petunia borders are all weed free. The lawn is in absolute submission and not a leaf is allowed a minute’s rest in the guttering.

Back about fifty years ago, we lived in a new Sydney suburb called Revesby, near Bankstown in NSW. A neighbour would, at weekends only, climb on his roof and sweep the shiny ‘Wunderlich’ glazed tiles clean of bird shit, deposited generously by my brother’s pigeons. It was the only time we actually saw him outside, ever.

These days, if you want to see people enjoying their outside garden areas, one has to go to the suburbs of mainly Italian or Greek inhabitants. In Sydney, the Middle Eastern areas are probably the best place to see outdoor activity – people hanging over the fence, kids playing on the streets, the burning of rubber by over-excited youths, and a general feeling of excitement or ‘things happening’.

Now we come to the tricky ‘Unleashed contributors’ bit. Is it also this ‘privacy’ thing that sees so many people writing under nick names, often even changing their names as they go along? Is it safer to write something a bit controversial under the guise of a nick name?

I hope I am not under some kind of danger here. Am I doing something wrong or should I start writing under another name as well? Surely, the comforting umbrella of the ABC’s Unleashed forums will keep us always safe.

What is the answer to all this nonsense?