Almost finished

You will see from the photos that the childcare centre is getting close to being finished. There are little things to finish and these will take a couple of weeks no doubt, but we are getting there. The first check through will be next week, and then the handover is expected in mid October. The Centre looks as though it will open a couple of weeks after that. So it will be busy, busy.
And (much to the bride's delight) we will look relatively decent for the wedding. But more of that later.

Never ceasing wonderment

Unbelievably today the latest letter from Centrelink arrived.
This bumbling department which can't actually work out a system to treat people with a degree of equanimity and usually sends letters saying (effectively) "You owe us money because you were naughty and didn't predict your income properly"
Well I opened today's letter and just saw the figure $1295 and .....well I won't commit what to paper what I thought......but on reading the letter to my good lady wife (so mote it always be)...I realised that for once they owed us!!!
Never once did they suggest that they were naughty for overpredicting my income.
So today a good feeling about Centrelink!

Exemption

Should churches be allowed (as they are presently in certain arenas) to be exempt from various legal requirements? Churches, for example, may get certain tax breaks; they are also exempt from certain aspects of discrimination legislation.
By and large, denominations such as the one I belong to keep fairly quiet about this, and tend to play it down.
We do not, for example allow ministers to claim they receive no salary or stipend and then to channel money through Fringe Benefit exempt accounts (as it is rumoured some other religious groups do). We have sometimes chosen in the immediate past to act above and beyond the requirements that the law may strictly require, for example in this Diocese although clergy were not legally required to be Mandatory Notifiers of child abuse we now have a policy that requires us to act as if we are. [This will become irrelevant in the very near future when clergy and other leaders will be required legally to act as such]
All this begs the question as to whether such community obligations should be avoided.
The tax exemptions, for example, are effectively a way of the state subsidising the church's policy of poorly remunerating its ministers. By careful application of these policies the paucity of stipends can be supplemented by fringe benefits which are tax exempt. The rationale for this is that churches do offer the community at large services (and here I would highlight family counselling, grief care, marriage preparation etc) which are of significant benefit to the society . But they are exposed in the abuse that some churches make of them (as above).
Do I as a Christian actually want to avoid my social obligations? Should the churches be actually trying to help society to embrace these rather than avoid them?
I have rather mixed feelings about all this as I oscillate between self-interest (often painfully aware of how a policy of low pay has impacted on my family's life) and a competing desire to be a social exemplar (most of us just ignore this). What do you think?

Government intervention

Is it too cynical to believe that the current fracas over the Government's intervention to appoint a Telstra Board member (here) has more to it than meets the eye.
Is it beyond "the small one" to demonstrate to us all why the Government should not have a 51% ownership of the telco? After all, if they did not have majority of shares their will would not prevail.
No, I think this is not beyond our small leader. And so by complaining the Laborites are playing into his hands.
Meanwhile the tame backbenchers cry out against Trujillo and call for his resignation. Perhaps this, too, could be part of the hidden agenda. And maybe not a bad thing. His leadership seems pretty non-directed to me. Comign from a totally free-market in the US, I think there is both a credibility gap and a failure to understand countries where government ownership of utilities has actually been quite common.
Oh well, I suppose it doesn't really matter.

The value of language

I appreciate deeply the opportunity to have learnt languages other than English. My competency in them is not very good but with dictionaries I can cope a little.
I have been deeply envious of those who live in environments where the need and opportunity to speak a second language has been convenient. . And on more than one occasion I have had to encourage a fellow Australian to make sure their kids take the opportunity to learn the language of their ancestors be it Greek, German, Chinese or Latvian.
So I have rather mixed feelings about the "everyone must speak English" value that is promoted in the current irrational debate about Australian values. Anglo Celtic Australia, it seems to me is remarkably poor at learnign languages. (I wonder, for example, what Howard or Beazley's proficiency in another language is like?)
This is a downside of living on an island. We are rather entire unto ourselves, and terribly insular. Remarkably few non-indigenous Australians even understand the basic morphology(here) of a local Aboriginal language. And we tend to sneer, as is happening presently, at those who have been fortunate enough to be able to learn to speak Greek as well as English, at those whose lingua franca remains Khmer, or Mandarin; and we say...You must all speak English.
Don't get me wrong English is the language of this country and we should take responsibility to school each other in at least basic language. But let's not do this at the expense of the other language gifts that migrants bring to this country.
It at least raises the question of whether we should be preparinbg ourselves to be Australian citizens or world citizens. Both are true and are not mutually exclusive. N'est-ce pas? Oder nicht wahr?

Values for money

Now that the immediate heat has gone out of the Australian values debate, I feel that I can say that it is an important debate to have .
As long as, that is, we do have a debate about values and not about jingoistic, shallow sentiments which are designed to appeal to the basest instincts and to pander to lowest-common-denominator easy votes.
I have long said that I want political leaders who lead not just reactive puppets who do and say what ever they believe, or polls tell them, will attract the most attention and keep them in the public eye. This is Pauline Hansonism, she discovered that simplistic solutions which appealed to people's basest fears did indeed command public support. Did that make her values right? Quite the reverse.

It made her values simplistic. And being simplistic it made them inadequate. The simplistic value wants to lock all criminals away for as long as possible. It is not interested in any subtlety like how much this might cost- in dollars. Or how much this might cost-in individual well being. It is not interested in what the promotion of harsh values might do to society as a whole. It is not interested in any pressure a person may have been under to commit crime, or how their choices might have been genuinely diminished by the poor choices of other people.

For all the rhetoric, the problem is that most of us have no idea what "values" really are. Most of us don't embrace sociological study well. So the difficult theory of values by such people as Znaniecki and Weber remain unread!
I can't imagine that you, dear reader, will struggle with the values theory that either of those (different) sociologists espouse. The language is almost impenetrable.
One thing I do know though, even though the language is difficult, it is important to speak accurately and carefully when speaking of values, because the language of values is powerful and effective. This is one reason why the writings of these and other sociologists is so dense, they are being careful. The dictatorships of the 20th century show us how the language of values can move nations and cost thousands their lives. This is important stuff!!

It is easy to not want to deal with the subtlety, the nuance or the power. It is simplistic to say we will just deal with the crude stuff, and that we will stick labels without carefully understanding their meaning or import.

This is self-evident when we use an expression like Australian values. The immediate response is what on earth does this mean? Whose Australia? Whose Australian values?
We should have this dscussion, but let's do it seriously and properly.

Death be not proud

Quite rightly yesterday it was Steve Irwin's daughter who dominated news reports of the Memorial Service for this very curious man who has captured the imagination of hjundreds of thousands of people.(see here).
I didn't see much of the coverage, but I did see moments of Russell Crowe, who was obviously moved. It was difficult to repel the thought, however, that he is a consumate actor. Not that he is not genuinely mourning Irwin, but it was a bit over the top.
As is so often the case children teach us how to mourn and the young Bindi Irwin rightly captured a sense of pride and tragedy. This was a girl who loved her dad in a way that we all want to love our fathers, and we are left feeling the great sadness of her loss. But there is nevertheless a sense of the indomitable spirit, that is both the right of every child and that is certainly an inheritance from that child's father.
I have thought much in the last few weeks about what funeral services have become.
I am sick and tired of being told by unthinking people that "We don't want this to be sad, we want it to be a celebration of their life."
There is something wrong, I suggest, about not being allowed to be sad at a funeral. In fact it is a denial of the grief that should be allowed to have full sway at such times.
I am not saying that we should not celebrate a person's life...we should do that too. But let's get this stuff into perspective.
And I can manage (quite often) to do two things at the same time!
I recently attended a funeral at which a man's golfing buddy told stories (for a very long time) about how much the deceased used to drink, and how his wife was a golf widow. My predominant feeling after 20 minutes or more of this was that this was more like a 21st or 60th than a funeral. There was a deep pall of embarassment as this wore on.
There is a place for genuine humour in eulogy, but as this wore on the pain on the widow's face became more and more evident. Was this really a "celebration"? It was more what the Yanks call a "roast", and quite inappropriate.
Thanks goodness the Irwins had the sense to curtail this for the actual funeral, and the Memorial was kept to a decent hour. One news commentator did make the observation that it became a singalong! I wonder what that means.
Nor do I quite understand who gets State funerals. I have nothing against Peter Brock, but I don't imagine that top flight scientists or even literary figures and musicians would get offered such as easily.
We did see that on both occasions (Brock and Irwin) there were political hangers-on from Little Johnny to Big Kym, and that probably explains the riddle of how these state funerals are offered. "twas ever so!!"

Is this all there is?

It was interesting to hear (as always) Andrew Denton interview Jamie Oliver on Enough Rope last night. I am not a person who warms to Oliver, he seems like a right opinionated little brat most of the time. Not, in fact, unlike Denton! Or what Denton used to be like when he was Oliver's age.
With that extraordinary courage of a style of modern presenter, Denton would boldly go where no one had ever gone before. Most of it was daring and amusing like getting Rolf Harris to sing Stairway to Heaven with his 'wobble board'.
Denton it seems to me is highly intelligent and articulate, and Enough Rope ha sshown us that he is simply not only a good interviewer but a great one. Able to put his guests at ease they do indeed use the rope given, not so much to hang themselves but, to be exposed in an intimate way.
Not that Oliver is any stranger to exposing himself. One scene shown last night of him and his wife having a distressing encounter in front of the cameras during a documentary on their life was particularly poignant. And I thought Oliver expressed the rationale of his actions quite well. If I choose to be honest then honest I shall be.
Such an attitude needs to be scrutinised since there is nothing more dishonest than the man who protests absolute honesty of life when there are glaring omissions or an ability to be brutally introspective.
I speak from personal experience!
But Oliver strikes me as better than this.
Whilst clearly having grand designs...or perhaps big visions is a less emotive terms.... nevertheless his subject matter is a rationale of day to day life which seems firmly grounded in reality and well thought through.
He talks of the need for people, families, men to take food seriously. An issue which is increasingly important in our society, to be grounded in common sense and healthy lifestyle without going overboard. From this he draws a commitment to family life which (like Denton's) is strangely unfamiliar to much of this modern world. He understands the need to allow his wife space to be herself and to make her decisions. To teach children the basics of coping with life (like cooking and proper food preparation) which seems to be so hard these days.
It prompts us to note that life is given meaning in its day to day living and not just in the enactment of the great political, world-stage sort of stuff which so often fascinates us but is not where we live 90% of our life.
Is this all there is? yes, and it is plenty and good!
So make the most of the little stuff of today.

Death wish

Reports this morning (see here) that the sexual health unit SHINE ( a semi-government body) provided lists of sex workers and their "specialities" to disabled people makes me wonder if there is a death wish in this organisation. It would seem, for example, that there might be an illegality involved here. At the very least SHINE is naive. At its best it is trying to deal responsibly with a difficult issue...sexual relationships and the disabled.
They are also "accused" of training sex-workers in ethical practices in dealing with disabled people. Given the "fait accomplit" of so-called 'sex work', it seems to me better to educate people than to perpetuate ignorance. Education does not sanction illegal or immoral behaviour, any more than history sanctions war!
SHINE it seems to me does good work, particularly in the development of their curriculum for schools. Whilst this curriculum is not without its dertractors I have had cause to defend it in various forums in the last few years. Some of the stuff is brutally frank, and I accept that some parents of minor children will not want this sort of material: masturbation, homosexuality, std's, sexual "techniques, prostitution, abuse and the like being discussed without their knowledge and consent.
That is not my choice, I am happy to trust my children's educators to deal with this material properly. More than that I am happy to trust my children to engage openly and honestly with it, and I want them to know that I am happy to discuss any of this sort of stuff with me...if they choose...to think that this sort of material is not of interest to kids and will not be discussed.
It is not surpising that SHINE's chief antagonist is the Family First Party. They are entitled to their opinion, by and large I think they are promoting a new-prudishness which is also (in its way) a kind of death wish.
This naivete that seems to promote ignorance in preference to knowledge is indeed a death wish, for our children in an era when sexually transmitted diseases may well spell a death sentence.

Busting out all over

A moment of sunshine
wisteria bursts open
shocking us all
summer might be
around the corner

Values for money

Heard on radio this a.m. was the comment that Beazley takes two steps forward and four steps back.
I can't help but agree. Is the man a total idiot?
Yesterday's foray into the world of populist political propaganda would seem to suggest that he, like his political nemesis, has abnegated his repsonsibility for visionary politiocal leadership and decided to go with what appeals to rednecks in our midst.
While there is no doubt that saying visitors to our fair shores should be prepared to affirm their acceptance of "Australian Values" will appeal to the rudimentary emotions of many people most of us can see through the shallowness of this sort of comment.
Mr Howard is past master in tapping into this sort of populism, and using it to his advantage. But it is not LEADERSHIP, per se, it is followership!!
And lest we think that Beazley's new-found shallowness is something unique to the Laborites let me point out that the cartoon above was drawn not this week but last year. And the politician speaking is not Beazley but Costello (see here)
I was bemused when this mornign's radio was ineterviewing some young backpacking tourists....Would you sign up to Australian values? Ohh yes!! But what might they be? Ohh patting koalas and so on.
And that does indeed beg the question doesn't it? What are Australian values?
The ill-defined "mateship"...but what does it mean? The equally ill-defined -"fair go"?
What of the more obvious clear values of acceptance of diversity and democracy? (mateship and fair-go would seem to be derivative of them rather than vice versa).
Doesn't Beazley's proposal actually go against these Australian values?
It is time for him to go. It is spineless, weak leadership which needs to make way for better, more truly value-laden vision. Combet?...maybe Certainly not the roosters. Maybe the Labor party is now dead. Mr Beazley certainly does not seem able to breathe life into it with this sort of rubbish.

Girl blitz

Sorry to keep going on about the younger child...but yesterday she actually had a day when she didn't win a prize!
Which is in contrast to the weekend when she was part of a winning team for the very impressive Tournament of Minds state competition

Sophie was in the Social Sciences team.

The Advertiser today has this story

Walford girls can't be beaten

CARA JENKIN, SCIENCE REPORTER

September 13, 2006 12:15am

Article from:

WALFORD Anglican School students have proven girls are as capable in maths and engineering as in language.

Teams from the school took out all three senior categories of the Tournament of Minds competition.

That was the first time a school has won all secondary categories of Maths Engineering, Language Literature and Social Science in one year since the competition began in 1991.

Tournament of Minds presents Year 7 to 10 students with a problem and students must creatively present a solution.

Walford facilitator Yvonne Colsey said the result showed girls could achieve in whatever they put their minds to. "Especially in the Maths Engineering category, they're as capable of arriving at solutions as the boys are," she said. "The problems are always difficult and there are hit and misses as to if they will work on the day."

The Maths Engineering team was able to launch an object and make it perform two manoeuvres unassisted, using a bird perch they constructed themselves.

The Social Science team acted out the role of particles in an atom, while the Language Literature team wrote a script to the theme of a Greek tragedy.

"You always expect it could be hard but that's what you sign up for," Year 9 student Matilde Wiese said.

The 21 students will represent SA in national finals in Adelaide on October 21.

Lest we forget

Sophie won her section of the Oliphant Science Award on Friday. Computer Applications. She and friend Katie designed a quiz game on CD ROM. It didn't take them long (and could have been better). Indeed it is interesting to note the process that has taken place in both of them since they submitted their entry. Every now and then they would say something like....Oh we could have had spoken answers, or more questions or this or that. The challenge to improve the project was, I guess, what it is all about.
Oliphant, pictured left, would have approved I suspect. A gifted scientist, one of those who worked on the Manhattan project, he lived his life seeking to improve on that "achievement". One might even say regretting it, and working to ensure that those wretched bombs might never be used again.
My sense of pride in our youngest daughter is tangible, as it should be. I can be the worst of parents in wanting her to do her best. Lest we I forget, I have to remind myself this week, in the push for perfection, she is only 12.

A good doctor, who can find one?

I seem to have had so much fun going to doctors, optometrists, pharmacists and so on in the last six weeks. Yesterday I went to my local GP because the cardiac specialist (everything's OK thank you very much) thought my cholesterol was high and should be medicated. It should be lower than 5.5 and was 5.6!
The specialist felt that he could not prescribe medication but that I needed to report back to Dr L my GP. Which I duly did. He rolled his eyes but was loyal to his colleague even though he wondered why on earth I had been advised that way. And even though I invited him (naughtily) to be critical of his slack mate!
Any way good old Dr L did his duty. Because he is a good GP it takes a while to get in to see him, so there had been a 2 week gap from the time I made the original follow-up appointment. In the meantime I had thought up two other things to ask him about as well. So I warned him at the beginning of the consult that I had three things. We duly went through them all. Not hurriedly but rigorously (I felt), and at the end I left with a feeling that all will be well.
No cholesterol medication and two new directions to pursue for better health. An invitation to come back in 2 weeks for a follow-up to check that all was going well (but if everything is OK then I don't have to).
So I ask the Proverbs question (for wife put doctor). Who can find a good doctor? Well, I'm glad to say things seem good on that front.

The end of the day

In what has been quite a miserable day, really, the work has gone on apace and the car park is looking pretty good.

It is interesting that when there was no bitumen it looked huge (certainly bigger than its predecessor) now that it is bitumised it looks smaller!
All things have a distorted relativity I suppose.

To make this car park work properly has required (which is not immediately obvious to the naked eye) metres of undergrounded pipe connected to stormwater, and a pumping system to get the water to the street so that our neighbours to the rear are not flooded.
Given the fact that there has been a little precipitation today, it does seem to be working!

Tar-rar-rar

We used to call bitumen "tar" when I was a child. Today as I sat at my morning meditation I began to smell tar!
This indicates the unremitting march to the completion of the Childcare Centre. Time table is that the bitument should be finished by next week and they anticipate handing over the building in a month!!
The time draws on. This Sunday we have time to think about some of the implications of this for us.
Herewith photographic evidence of the unremitting march

The tangled web of freedom

There is no doubt that we live in a variety of different worlds at the same time, which is why we sometimes feel disoriented.
The world according to Bush is a curious place. (see here)I do not quite understand how the president of the land of the free can say to his people that torture is OK. I do not understand how a born again Christian can say that torture is OK. I do not understand how a loving father can say torture is OK.
However we might see and rationalise all this Bush's recent announcements are shocking to those of us who think that there is some merit in trying to say we want a world without violence.
When the voice of the West is so outspoken against Islam, chiefly because it does not espouse the same humble and peaceful values of Christianity I am at a loss to understand how we can look ourselves straight in the eye let alone everyone else.
It is easy to adopt the Mike Moore attitude and mock Bush, which is a piercing strategy. But my suspicion is that we must do better than this. As Bush's time runs out (the possibility of the congress changing hands and falling out of his control in November is a real one...even likely) will he become even more desperate and attempt to push through what he can before he loses the ability to do so.
Perhaps it has ever been so, but I think we live in troubling times.

In the midst of crikey on the stubble

No one would doubt that the early death of Steve Irwin is sad. Though a Ms G Greer commented today (in The Guardian) that there was no fragile habitat into which he would not crash (the pot calling the kettle black perhaps). I think that is what quiet people like me found so disturbing about him. The world will be sadder but slightly quieter and certainly less ridiculous.
I mourn the loss of the great Colin Thiele. Not so much for the books of my childhood, because they weren't as I grew up in another country with non-Australian schools and parents.
He did speak at my first graduation with wit and candour about the development of schools in Sa in the late 19th and early 20th century . His contribution as an educationalist, author and genuine all-round nice guy was steadfast but profound. Much greater, in my opinion, than Irwin's which was pretty superficial.
Amidst all this Cam died. Father of eight, and grandfather of many. Married to his one wife of 57 years he will be cremated on Friday by a large group of people but no press coverage at all.
Death contains all these contradictions.
Don't even start me on the conference I went to yesterday, and my feelings about death in the church.

selling the farm

Mr Costello's recent foray to soften the electorate for the sale of Medibank Private will no doubt cause the Opposition to froth and foam, and indeed it may be doctrinaire and ideologically based but it is quite different from the sale of key infrastructure like Telstra.
The private health insurance market is essentially that, a private market, it is not as if the Government's ownership of such an asset actually benefits those who otherwise would not be able to afford private insurance. In some cases, certain Medibank products are actually more expensive than their private counterparts.
The question is whether the members would benefit by such a sale., This, it seems to me, is a little more complex. It may depend on how it might be sold. It could for example be just sold to another fund which is what Herr Senator Minchin seems to suggest in his infallible way (is he yesterday's man?), or Costello suggests it could be floated like Telstra on the stock exchange.
Such a public float may indeed bring more rigour to the industry as a whole if they then have to perform for shareholders and not just Boards.
So it could be a good thing, n'est-ce pas?

A successful day

Wide eyes and disgusting fat, battered and deep freid in fat says it all doesn't it.
Weather was absolutely faboo yesterday for the show.....and good luck to them.
Pity the poor cannonball lady who got fired out of the cannon and missed the net!! But you can't win them all!

Hoards of people, of course. You become rather aware as the day goes on that this is pretty draining for absolutely everyone. The rawness of the uncultured emotion is something very culturally profound, I suspect. And not a little wearing.
Which is probably why kids want to go every year and parents only manage it once every two or three!!
This year we didn't allow S to go by herself, though other parents had obviously let some of her peers go, maybe next year!!!

To show or not to show

For good or for ill we are off to the Show today. So only a short blog.
The weather is fantastic so, typical show, it will start raining tomorrow!
Looking forward to a nice day with K&Sop