Quadrant articles from April 2005

Quadrant archives from April 2005

W(h)ither republicanism?(Editorial)(Editorial)
April 1, 2005... MUCH TO THE CHARGIN of our local republicans the Australian community seems to have lost none of its enthusiasm for visiting royalty. And much to the chagrin of our local monarchists, this has not made visiting British royalty any more popular....

All Christmas and no Easter.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... SIR: In December's Quadrant James Franklin asked "Is Jensenism compatible with Christianity?" and claimed of Sydney Anglicans that they "fear the gospels, for the gospel message is inconvenient". This brand of "narrow" "Bible-based"...

Votes for Aborigines.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... SIR: In your March issue, Justice Kirby states that Aborigines were excluded from voting in the referenda on the adoption of the Constitution. This is true of some colonies, but not all. Aborigines had the vote in South Australia in the 1890s....

The Great Leader and the Baltic states.(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2005... SIR: Your editorial (March 2005) relating to our erstwhile Great Leader, in conjunction with the thirty-year cabinet documents release, calls to mind another contentious issue for which Australians have received no acceptable justification. ...

The name of the Pope.(Religion)
April 1, 2005... ALTHOUGH CONJECTURE about the person of John Paul II's successor has increased in the past year or two, few if any observers have speculated on how a new pontiff might choose to name himself. It is customary for a newly elected pope at the end...

Questions in Early Summer.(Poem)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... QUESTIONS IN EARLY SUMMER A wild thanks, but where does it go? Can it unlock my status quo when my love pauses on the stair, her bell-skirt spreading patterns there? She casts me her insouciant smile. So where can...

Christmas Poem.(Poem)
April 1, 2005... CHRISTMAS POEM "What is in the East?" --Elizabeth Bishop What is in the East? hope, that's what. Dawn too and camels-- they always strode from East to West embroidered across my brothers' shirts....

A world without the humanities?(Universities)(Liberal arts and the New Humanties)
April 1, 2005... WRITING IN 1869, Matthew Arnold described culture as the "study and pursuit of perfection". The quest for the perfection of culture has, as its reward, "increased sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased sympathy". The humanities...

The human spirit under tyranny: Isaiah Berlin's The Soviet Mind.(Literature)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... IN 1940 ISAIAH BERLIN wrote to his father from New York. 'America," he said, "was a great big glaring sunlit extrovert over-articulated scene" and Americans were a "two-times-two equals four, sort of people, who want yes or no for an answer...

The Faith and Charm.(Poem)
April 1, 2005... THE FAITH AND CHARM (An incident during the Battle of Arnhem, 1944) The chaplain and the major dropped to war, went to their separate tasks in Arnhem town through the lethal days of mid-September, chaplain with his faith,...

Proddies and Micks.(History)(Protestants and Catholics)(Sectarianism)
April 1, 2005... "WHAT'S A CATHOLIC?" I asked my grandmother, on hearing a neighbour being described as such. "It's like, I go to one bootmaker and she goes to another," Grandma replied quickly, unaccustomed awkwardness in her voice. I was perhaps four, but the...

Impossible.(Poem)
April 1, 2005... IMPOSSIBLE Impossible to guess what went through her mind when she dressed to go shopping this morning, that tubby woman in the tight T-shirt with eye-glasses stencilled over the bulge of her bosom ...

How I wrote the liberal conspiracy: is it time to revive the Congress for Cultural Freedom in the war against terror?
April 1, 2005... "I WOULDN'T have your job for all the tea in China!" announced Diana Trilling as she waved me into her apartment in Upper West Side Manhattan, her pop eyes bulging under dishevelled reddened hair. "Your story is littered with broken...

The hurry.(Poem)
April 1, 2005... THE HURRY Two big men in a tiny car, like cartoon elephants from a children's picture-book; It bulges around them fit to burst, tyres hard to the bitumen. Where are they going so fast and with no hint of a smile?

How Papua New Guinea works.(The Pacific)(Strengthening Our Neighbour: Australia and the Future of Papua New Guinea)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... IN THE WAKE of George Bush's pre-emptive strike in Iraq, the Howard government has embarked on a policy of active intervention in Papua New Guinean affairs, ostensibly to prevent its becoming a future zone of instability, or a "failed state"....

Old Photo: the Union Buries ...(Poem)
April 1, 2005... OLD PHOTO: THE UNION BURIES... A solid pack around his grave. Good steel to a magnet, the sky leaden with the warmth, somehow, of common ground. I did not know them all but the bulk of them knew me. Their leader ...

Not all that funny, Mungo.(John Howard, Australian Prime Minister)(Not Happy, John!)(Run, Johnny, Run)(God under Howard)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... JOHN HOWARD'S vaccination--the process by which weak doses of a poison give immunity to it--must be almost complete. The latest, and probably superfluous, jabs have been administered by the authors of three bizarre books that appeared shortly...

Shift Work.(Poem)
April 1, 2005... SHIFT WORK All my life I've worked shift work --casual remark at 45th school reunion and here we are at the end of the dog watch the sky in the east blast-furnace red "mother" at home, now without the kids to...

Freedom.(Poem)
April 1, 2005... FREEDOM How foolishly I once thought of freedom. When my first son was small I sometimes dreamed of the day I'd be independent of his demands. At times the chores of fatherhood hung upon me like chains. ...

I Walk from the Shops.(Poem)
April 1, 2005... I WALK FROM THE SHOPS I see a fellow fall, I go to lend a hand hear his phrases mangle as he tries to stand. "Sit down over here, and I will fetch my car," but Alien to Earthling's ear is where we...

Royal showbiz and the Australian Republic.(The Constitution)(Australian Republican Movement)
April 1, 2005... TWO OF THE BRIGHTER stars in the celebrity firmament were in conjunction recently. The short visit to Australia of Prince Charles just before his controversial wedding to Camilla Parker-Bowles coincided with the brief return of the newly...

Death from Exposure.(Poem)
April 1, 2005... DEATH FROM EXPOSURE That winter. We missed her stark face at work. Days till she was found, under his verandah. Even student torturers used to go in awe. She had zero small talk. It made no sense she had his key....

The culture wars in the schools.(politically correct bias in education)
April 1, 2005... LAST YEAR, Prime Minister Howard suggested that government schools might be too politically correct and that this left-wing bias in the curriculum is one of the reasons why parents are turning to independent schools. Is it true--has the...

Window on Brillacot: tales of a French town.(personal narrative)(Short Story)
April 1, 2005... BEFORE BRILLACOT BORN IN INDONESIA, schooled in Australia, I had never looked on France as a real home until fifteen years ago. Despite our childhood biennial sojourns in France with our expatriate French parents, France to us children was...

Coming of age.(Poem)
April 1, 2005... COMING OF AGE Remember when a haircut meant the continental barber with the foot-pump chair and just two prices: men and boys? Remember the star-cut photos showing neater versions of the young Elvis or Johnny...

In the Suburbs.(poem)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... IN THE SUBURBS i. m. our old cat, killed by the neighbours 'Jack Russells Noon. The garden bored and formal, a private school assembly of plants whose Principal goes on about the future: its usual rhetoric of light. ...

Hospital.(poem)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... HOSPITAL Wakes to this silence, not peace-- the hospital waiting. Night nurses pass the other side of mirrors: even their shadows corridors made of light. Only the angel Morphine now with arum fingers soothes the...

Housekeeping.(poem)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... HOUSEKEEPING This house is busy with spiders. Whenever you step through doorways you break invisible threads-- Brown House Spiders interrogate its windows and weave such small surmises-- Daddy-long-legs make its...

Cockroaches.(poem)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... COCKROACHES In your night kitchen they vanish: rewound film, its scratches and feelers, feelers and scratchers. Salvage your a.m. face from this mirror: your dreams are a...

Books and the many-sided life.(readers and reading)
April 1, 2005... WHEN I WAS about sixteen, a friend of mine, an Indian boy who played in my cricket team and who possessed both a strong, direct intelligence and a delicate and delightful sense of humour, asked me why I bothered to read. I remember struggling...

Sentence.(poem)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... SENTENCE I. I knew. I knew you. I knew you would. I knew you would eventually. I knew you would eventually be. I knew you would eventually be executed.

Two old masters.(John Ford and the American West)(Million Dollar Baby)(Rope Burns reissued as Million Dollar Baby)(Movie Review)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... SIXTEEN YEARS AGO I found myself in Old Tucson, Arizona. Old Tucson is a standing set built first for the film of the same name, then altered--dressed and redressed it is called in the industry--for classic westerns such as Rio Bravo and...

Nike at the Megaliths.(poem)(Poem)
April 1, 2005... NIKE AT THE MEGALITHS At the megalithic temple in early afternoon heat a sunscreened woman walks away from her tour group, the tone of the amplified commentary slick as instructions to youths on a sports...

Tango.(Short Story)
April 1, 2005... Tango is a passionate dance; a conversation between two people in which they can express every musical mood through steps and improvised movement. --source unknown Just before nine o'clock in the evening, Sofya gets out of her car and...

A genuine Australian political classic.(Liberty and Liberalism)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... Liberty and Liberalism, by Bruce Smith; Centre for Independent Studies, 2005, $59.95. BRUCE SMITH might be an unprepossessing name but it was held by one of the outstanding intellectuals of Australian history. If the recent republication...

Plain mister.(Bypass: The Story of a Road)(book)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... Bypass: The Story of a Road, by Michael McGirr; Picador, 2004, $30. FATHER MICHAEL MCGIRR, sometime editor of the Jesuit journal Eureka Street, decided at the age of forty to resign from the priesthood. The temptation of a literary life...

The roots of globalisation.(The Global Reach of Empire: Britain's Maritime Expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans 1764-1815)(book)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... The Global Reach of Empire: Britain's Maritime Expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans 1764-1815, by Alan Frost; The Miegunyah Press, 2003, $59.95. CONTEMPORARY political debate often centres on protection of markets, removal of trade...

Stalin's man in Australia.(Kisch in Australia: The Untold Story)(book)(Egon Kisch, journalist)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... Kisch in Australia: The Untold Story, by Heidi Zogbaum; Scribe Publications, 2004, $26.95. HEIDI ZOGBAUM'S meticulously researched narrative takes a fresh look at Australia's spectacular encounter with Egon Kisch. A product of the...

Caught in the vortex.(Fresh Fields)(book)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... Fresh Fields, by Peter Kocan; HarperCollins, 2004, $27.95. PETER KOCAN'S new novel, Fresh Fields, is a stark, harrowing, yet deeply courageous work of immense power and magnitude. It was fashionable some years ago for literary critics...

Big babe on campus.(I am Charlotte Simmons)(book)(Book Review)
April 1, 2005... I am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe; Vintage, 2004, $49.95. THE YOUNG frat-brats at Tom Wolfe's mythical ivy-league Dupont University use the freshettes--the "fresh meat" as they scornfully term them--in order to boast about their...

Joyce Don of Tooborac.(Letters to the editor contributor)(Obituary)
April 1, 2005... THIRTY-ODD YEARS ago, we made the big decision to shift the family's main base to the country, and bought a bare block of land at Tooborac, not far from the precise geographic centre of Victoria. Instead of having to agist our horses at a...