Almost there

Apart from sleepless nights and a head that spins, and worse every fraction of stress always goes to my gut! there is a sense that almost all plans are almost there.
I am in the middle of just transferring the itinerary for S & I and it convinces me of one thing.... though it is good to be able to book stuff on the net, I understand better why there is such a thing as a travel agent
It just takes so much time, and there are too many balls to keep in the air.
Well once we are in the air it will all just happen.
A number of people have asked me what will happen to blogging in the next month or two and the best answer is to say it will be spasmodic.
This is largely to do with internet & computer access and not because, dear reader, I do not love you.
I have said to a number of enquirers....Perhaps you could be the guest blogger...but so far no takers
Today's picture is the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano, where we will be staying!!

Lest we forget

Someone remarked to me the other day that Remembrance (Armistice) Day is now kept much more enthusiastically in England than he remembered it. He is perhaps a decade and a half younger than me. I remembered Armistice Day being quite big, I told him. Buttressed as it was by the poppies of Flanders field, it is one of those childhood things that was quite big for me (in the 50s). He however ( a child of the sixties growing up in the 70 s &8os) was part of a time when these things were held in some disdain.
Everyone notes the same about ANZAC day.
I have listened to the Dawn service already; and there are a myriad of cars outside my window...even parked in our driveway!! attending the Blackwood wreath laying.
It is interesting to note the ebb and flow. Growing up in the shadow of the War it loomed large in people's minds, but the economic rationalists put it behind them.
Now we are facing a resurgence. It says a lot about people's state of mind I suspect. We are once again putting aside our carefree hearts and picking up the mantle of sombre reflection of life.
AAAAhhh enough of that.......
It is interesting to note (here) that when you Google 'Flanders' in the images you get more pictures of Ned Flanders from The Simpsons than you do of Flanders Field.

Measuring out my life

One of the most perceptive comments about the movement of life is the oft quoted line of Eliot's poem The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock ..I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.
Some days seem like that to me, I go from one cup of coffee to the next...though perhaps I could more accruately say I have measured out my life by radio programs.
There are certain things I like to listen to and they rather punctuate the week.
Sometimes I find myself organising my life around them...being in the right place at the right time....or being close to the radio at the right time.
Mondays are often like that...because I like to listen to Tony Wright making comment about the ridiculous carryings on in our nation's capital. And then on Monday at 10 you get The Two Chris's (one now a Minister of the Crown, and the other a former Senator) who are perhaps good example of that carry on.
Then sometimes, like Eliot, I look back and see how pathetically small it all us.
Contrast with a rather overwhelming family week last week.
When we had the funeral of the last person in a generation. So now in that branch of the Little family (my mother) I am part of the oldest generation. That is secretly overpowering I think.
We had a wedding, and the matron of honour decided she would give birth...not during the ceremony, so a new generation continues. The wedding was terrific and there was a real sense of family.
At one stage we had a "Clark photo" and though there were thirty odd of us I suppose (and could have been more) there were only my immediate family who are actually still called Clark. And in that curious way that things go on, I realised because I have daughters and my brother has no children...it is unlikely that our name will be perpetuated any way.
Does it matter?...Is it coffee spoons...or radio programs? Maybe. But important to one's own family

Good advert

I am not usually up to including YouTube in the blog but this one is special and warrants a look

Not a drop

I was wondering in the shower (necessarily two minutes) this morning just what could go wrong next. This was not just the mere meanderings of my tiny little life, pathetic as it is; this was more mega-stuff.
One could be forgiven for thinking that things are really stuffed. Adelaide may have only 40 days of water left if it doesn't rain soon! The PM suggested yesterday (last ditch attempt of course) that we should all pray for rain...And I mean that! but what did he mean?
Did he mean that we are indeed at the point where there is no solution and so we might as well do something useless like pray? Did he mean ...ahh well it can't hurt? Did he mean tyo suggest that as a person of deep faith he believed that the Lord God (Adonai Elohenu oops...HaShem) could effect the replenishing of the Murray Darling basin....Or did he have a more profound view of prayer...like my friend A who says that rain-prayer helps us to express our needs and commit ourselves to God in everything. It would be good to think that a PM had such a sophisticated view.

Any way back to the shower. I came across the good news that you can now buy caffeinated soap {here}...why? I hear you ask!
So that while you are in the shower for your two minutes. You can also get your fix...which will kick in within five minutes.
Sounds plausible...and you would save the cup of boiling water.
BUT the joy of coffee is to do with drinking it isn't it. I have imagined already this morning sipping capuccino on the Piazza Navona (pictured) or the Boulevard St Germain...................

Getting ready

I am not promising anything, but I will probably send a broadsheet email to any who want over the next few weeks while we are away...not of blogging but of what cakes we have been eating, wine we have been drinking, and sights we have been seeing

If you would like to be "on the list" can you send an email to frstephenclark@hotmail.com so I can get an address book together.
If I don't really know who you are just tell me (and possibly why you would want to be on my email list!!) and you will probably be included.

You need to do this probably by 23rd or 24th April

Où commencons nous?

Two unconnected, yet strangely related stories in my mind, make me ask is the world going mad?
None of us were really surprised that the American gun lobby could twist the travesty of Virginia Tech, to their own advantage. So we heard some whacko (or should it be Waco?) saying "This massacre is reason why everyone should be allowed to carry weapons on to a campus.

"You should be able to shoot a maniac who wants to shoot you!"

There is a certain logic about it. But it is just plain WRONG!!!

But I really think the world is going plain loopy when we talk about sending our Sri Lankans to Guantanamo, so they can send their Cubans to us.

Now am I wrong in thinking that our government don't actually want any refugees of any sort. So what is this all about?
On one level it doesn't really make any difference as long as refugees end up in a safe haven. But our nasty government has never before shown such magnanimity to any refugee.

There are other issues. One of the key issues for Cubans, for example, is that it is clear that they will be more dislocated in Australia than they would be in America...since there is an extensive Hispanic network there but not here. So why would we want to cause these people to be more profoundly dislocated?

And have we forgotte D Hicks and suddenly now think that Guantanamo is a more acceptable place to send our refugees than Christmas Island?

There is clearly more to this than meets the eye. But what is it?


so indeed: "dove cominciamo?"

Energy Issues

I didn't catch the whole of the Four Corners program about new energy technology, but will watch the repeat 11.30 p.m. Wednesday.
There was such a dazzling array of new technologies that one couldn't help but feel buoyed by what is happening in terms of finding solutions to the problems that face us.
One recurring theme, whether it was hot rocks, solar or wind power or even nuclear power was the idea that "new stuff" is minuscule by comparison with old coal and oil generation.
This may be true, but I would suggest it is a very short-sighted view, if we use that argument to say therefore we should seriously curtail investment in nerw technologies.
If the IT explosion has told us nothing else it is that this era of technology is moving so powerfully that today's small and unsophisticated will be tomorrow's big and smart.
We have a bit of a family interest in Petratherm which is the quiet Geothermal achiever. (Our brother-in-law the world famous geologist(!) is a director). South Australia is leading in this area and moving steadily ahead. It can only go one way.

Change and decay

In the way of these thing it has been a week of change and challenge. All sorts of things have happened, including the routine stuff that makes one's life a pain....the hot water at PE stopped working, the toilet at Blackwood blocked (again!!), I broke my reading glasses just before church yesterday morning.
More importantly than this my mother's last surviving sibling, her youngest sister Mildred, died. I was really sad that death had beaten S & I by just a couple of weeks, and that had we been travelling to the UK a month earlier we would have had a little time with my aunty.
Because I was born in the early 1950s (can it be true?) rather than the late, most of the photographs, like this one, of our childhood are in black and white. They do not do justice to the Wasdale Valley (here) where this photo looks like it was taken, but black and white has a way of enhancing portraiture.
Mildred took a fine picture, and this is a good one.
Meanwhile there is a mountain of stuff to do before we go away. Bills to pay, hot water to fix, glasses to mend.
Mildred's death means we are now it, on one side of the family at least, my siblings and I are now the oldest generation.

We've got our local member back

I did tell you that Marty would be the new leader, didn't I?(here)

Death wish

What is most disturbing about the PM's reported comments that 'broadcaster' Alan Jones would never voice prejudice, is the sense of "death wish" about it.
Howards comments are all the more extraordinary in the face of a finding of The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) that Jones had promoted violence by encouraging a biker gang to go to Cronulla and deal with "Lebanese thugs" and "scum" as a prelude to the Cronulla riots.
The PM says that Jones says what a lot of Australians think, and offeres this as a justification. It is no doubt true. But hardly a justification in a temperate society.
Aah, I forgot, we put the language of temperance aside as we tend towards the infinity of an election.
So, maybe it is not Johnnie's death wish we are witnessing but my own.
I think I am saying what a lot of people are thinking.!

Prescience

Even I am surprised by the accuracy of my earlier-rather-later than prediction of the local Liberal party spill (see the entry for March 30). We await the result with interest.
In the meantime the PM looks increasingly worried, not that he is given to smiling, but he always looks sullen and projects a most dismal image. One can only imagine that the prospect (which seems unremitting with every new report) that they will not be able to pull the cat out of the electoral bag must way heavily upon him. Be that as it may, he was oft warned that he would be better to leave at his peak rather than after things started to go down.
Costello must seethe at the thought of the fact that his nemesis will leave only when he is defeated, and he (Costello) will simply not be able to generate enough support to get himself back as PM.
Maybe these are only very short-term projections and don't warrant much thought, but I am on such an high at having been soooooo accurate about Marty's leadership challenge that I am presuming to cast my net wider.
To put my money where my mouth is...it is 8.25 and I am putting my money that Iain Evans will not be the State Liberal leader at midday.

'ron- later-on, that is!

A couple of hundred communions, two baptisms, lots of candles, much scripture, many eggs, feasting and family and we are on the other side of Easter! Church was good, I felt and obviously others were also deeply impacted by the mystery of recorded music and power point.
One of the flock has died, and an aunty is dying. We will probably not get there before she dies.
Poses lots of thoughts for the Easter season. Does life just go on, does Easter make any difference? My major Easter homiletic thoughts for this year are here at my preaching site coromandelpreachings.
Back to it!

Bar the shouting

Strangely, Australians like to shout "Christos Anesti", because Australia has the largest Greek city population outside Athens (in Melbourne)....so we are particularly happy when Greek and Western Easter fall at the same time as they do this year.
When we were young we were confused a little by our Polish antecedents,the highly decorated eggs known as Pisanki were always a great feature of our Easter mornings, and the special breads such as Baranek, often shaped like a sheep were blessed on Saturday.By far the most memorable treat was the Babka cake and the Sernoik (?) cheesecake which we only ever had at Easter. We don't do any of this now.
Any way. Just to let you know that everything is ready to go.
The churches are set up. The Church of Holy John is back in use after the fire....and looks good.
Two new Christians tomorrow when Elysia and Josie are baptised. Had a great chat to one of the dads today, about how he might be a good parent. Very humbling for me.
And another chat with the other dad yesterday. He too is a good dad.

Kerboom...Yikes!

Half awake at 4 a.m. there was a loud explosion, and then a car alarm went off. I tentatively looked around but there was no one. The man over the road, an off-duty police officer, was up looking at the car. But there seemed to be little or no damage.
I went back to bed and was awakened 45 minutes later. Two young cops.
"Did you hear an explosion?"
"Yes I did."
"Well it was your letter box, and there 's a piece of it there."
Curiouser and curiouser, the piece had flown about 30 or so feet...I mean 10 metres ...and landed surprisingly just outside the front door. Still no one to be seen.
Dear Tilly didn't make a noise. I am now awake! Bugger!

A good wife

Despite the big T being an appalling workplace, SJ Clark does what she can to bolster team spirit. So she has slaved to make Easter Cakes for her workmates.
they lap them up.
SJ is oft amazed how some of them never seem to have had a homemade cake before! (I don't know why since mother-in-law SI couldn't bake a cake if her life depended on it. She can however darn!)
So there are chokkie goodies (that's Chucklit!) and cornflake cookies for morning tea.

An awful report beganm circulating on Sky News yesterday about just how awful the modern work place is

Family blames Telstra

The family of a young call centre worker has blamed Telstra for contributing to her suicide in January.

It is believed 21-year-old Sally Sandic took her life after months of mounting pressure at work.

The family is accusing Telstra of raising performance targets by up to 300 per cent, and forcing Sally to make an early return from stress leave.

Her mother said she is angry Telstra never acknowledged Sally's success or offered support.

Telstra claims Sally was one of their best employees.

The family is now considering a lawsuit.

It is no doubt true. Why managers don't have the feintest idea about how to build community morale and support their staff is beyond me. But they don't seem to know if their fundaments are ignited.
Good on SJ any way

Terror nullius

No this is not about Mr Hicks (well not completely) it is as usual about the mountain of stuff that always seesm to o'erwhelm me close to big festivals.
Any way set my mind to thinking about this recurring terror. Yes, that is sometimes what it feels like. I remember one Holy Saturday afternoon where I just felt that it was not going to be possible to get everything ready to begin the Easter Celebration that evening, and indeed I felt in a state of collapse.
Since then I have realised that such terror is largely imaginary, and there is now a sense of when you get to sitting in the darkness on Maundy Thursday evening that it's all down hill from here.
That is one way of dealing with terror...and also realising that what we often name as "terror" is nothing of the sort. Panic, maybe. Faithlessness, perhaps. But mainly one just needs to get a life!
Did set me thinking about terror though.
There is the terror of people driving. I will have to drive the road there and back four times if I want to spend time with my family as well as be a priest. Others will be doing the same thing.
On that stretech there are black and red markers. Too many. Blacks mark the fatalities, and reds the injuries. They increase from month to month. One fear I have is that in a decade or so there will be no stretch of that oft-travelled rad where you cannot see one of these reminders.
Terror, too, because of the fragility of children. One girl a couple of years older than my youngest murdered in the last months, two kids the same age victims of men driving up and trying to grab them. What a terror this must be for them, and for their families.
The terror too of the wretched Tsunami. We don't suffer here, (even though we imagine we might...I live 300 metres above sea level) but the most delicate economies, like the Solomons have no fall back position.
Amidst all this, there is always (for me) a real terror about Good Friday. I often listen to Liszt's Stabat Mater and Passion Meditations. The music is terrifying...you can hear the nails.
For some elsewhere that terror is still a reality.

And there is a real sense of dawn on Easter Day when the terror of death broken open is a reality.This is I think a real terror, but a positive one. It scares us to death to think that things might not be as we think they are.

Twas ever so

In the way of these things, as Holy Week goes on for a priest almost everything seems to get subsumed by the events that the week relates to.
After 50+ years,I know this feeling well, and it is good to not fight it, indeed I rather enjoy giving in to the flow.
Events that are happening about us in this world begin to echo the events that took place in the life of Jesus. This is hardly surprising since the story has about it that sort of universal quality that is called "archetypal". That is it sets out and refers to eternal truths. We are quite familiar with this . And the Christian stories are not the only "archetypal" stories. They occur as legends and myths, and as the heroic stories of society. So we hear echoes, not just of religious stories but of universal truths.

So I am struck by the theme of 'injustice', and how powerful political leaders are often not free to do the right thing. Though Pilate was nobody's bunny, and was in almost every sense a total despot. We read how he listened to the charges about Jesus and simply said....these charges are trumped up :

Then the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, ‘We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king.’ Then Pilate asked him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ He answered, ‘You say so.’ Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, ‘I find no basis for an accusation against this man.’

This is how Luke's Gospel reads, and (as is so typical) he sends Jesus off to someone else, so that he won't be seen to do the wrong thing. But he is not allowed to do this.
This attitude looks very like the buck-passing that we have seen with Hicks. Nothing much to do with facts, a lot to do with pressure and political expediency.
Which is why we then read in the story:

‘Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged and then release him.’ But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed. So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted. He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished.

That is, Pilate just gives up and does what he believes is popular even though he has clearly stated that it is wrong.

There is, as is said elsewhere "nothing new under the sun"

Agreeing with the man

It is such a rare occurrence that I should note that I actually agree with Prime Minister Howard about something. Interviewed on radio today Mrs Howard was referred to as his "partner", the PM remarked that he didn't have a partner, Jeanette was his wife.
This has received all sorts of brickbats today (must be a slow news day). Some ringing in to say how sad it was that the PM didn't view his wife as his partner, one commentator saying that "partner" was a nice word with pleasant connotations.
All that rather misses the point.
Without decrying any of those who choose to be partnered rather than married, or even to describe their legitmate spouses as "my partner", Howard was making a point. It is different to call someone your husband or wife rather than your "partner".
Truculent old thing that I am, I always find myself muttering under my breath when someone asks me "my partner's name"..."I'm not a lawyer, or a doctor".
I actually think the term "partner" is pretty sterile...suitable for lawyers and doctors....and that being a husband or a wife has a much stronger connotation for me.

It does not have that for everyone. One SMS on radio this a.m. said "The last thing I want my partner to do for me is to make me his wife!" There is a difference you see.
"Partner" has some advantages. It is gender neutral. It can apply to same-sex relationships as well as heterosexual relationships. For that matter it could apply to multiple partner relationships. But that is not what I have committed myself to.
My wife and I commit ourselves to marriage. And that is important for us, as well as having being difficult and confronting. I am not content to be reduced down to the lowest common denominator of "partner".
Ok if that's what you want. Not for me, or for little Johnny!

Nucleosis

There is a sense in which we are all being gently weaned to an inevitability with respect to nuclear energy.
The Premier visiting the laregst Copper/Uranium mine in the world....Antifagasto.
He looks out in awe, and the implication is....we should have one like that here. We can have the biggest Uranium mine in the world. Then we will be looked up by anyone who has any sense.
The catalyst BHP-Billiton says we can make this happen. But better than we can have desalination at Port Augusta or Whyalla, and everyone knows there is a great big sea out there just ready to be desalinated and solve the drought.
Ahh says the PM, if you have a big mine and desalinated water then you need a reactor to go with it. It would be foolish...even immoral to not get one, or two or maybe three .

And have we also forgotten that it is in the eyes of the PM and the world at large highly desirable that SA become the dump for all the world's spent nuclear fuel.

Wow. What a rosy future!

Well if not rosey then glowing, in fact everyone in the state will no longer need electricty we will all glow of our own accord. Not mono but multi-nucleosis!

Thought of the day

There are posts for each day in Holy Week at "Coromandel Preachings" (here) where my occasional homilies, sermons and talks are posted.

First things first

The first thing on my list of things to do today is to write a list of things to do for this week.
Apart from all the usual things like ensuring things are ready to go for the weekend...where there are enough extra things any way because of the celebration of Easter.
There is also:

• The need to practice 'walking to the bus' with S ...as she will have to do this by herself when we are away
• A sewage leak at the Church property is going to mean spending extra time clearing hedgerow and just "being there" when the workmen are there
• Our truculent neighbour appears to have spent yesterday afternoon revamping his list of complaints with ever-incresing vehemence, and, it might be said never ending reiteration of issues that I can do little about
• the lawns need to be cut...one downside of a tiuny little bit of rain afdter months of waiting

In the way of such lists, written to ensure that things don't get overlooked they have a way of growing and growing.
But I suppose it was ever so.

Free Broadband

If you are a google fan then you will have seen their ad (one day special I think) for free home wireless broadband TiSP (here).
It is amazingly designed to plug in to your home plumbing system.
Further comments will help you to understand the subtlety.