Quadrant articles from July 2003

Quadrant archives from July 2003

Europe, witch hunting and censorship. (Editorial).
July 1, 2003... THE FALLOUT for the European Union of the Iraq war has only just begun. The clutch of Central and Eastern European countries which a couple of months ago signed up to join an extended union, and most of which, including Poland and the Czech...

The outback ghettoes. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2003... SIR: Peter Howson's article on "The Failure of Aboriginal Segregation" (May 2003) should be compulsory reading for all pundits who write or speak on Aboriginal policy. My own experience in this area is minuscule compared to Howson's, having...

Poetic Redress. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2003... SIR: I write to comment on the quality of the poetry published recently in Quadrant. As far as I am aware, while there have been numerous articles published on the poetry of individuals, there has been no criticism or evaluation over the past...

Odd women's business. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2003... SIR: I would like to draw to your attention a few of the many inconsistencies in The Meeting of the Waters by Margaret Simons. According to Simons, Sarah Milera gave some vital information about women's business to Rose Draper before Christmas...

No arts industry. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2003... SIR: Professor Donald Horne broached a very relevant issue when he declared, in a speech delivered at a seminar on arts management in Sydney in March, that the arts are not an industry. But, surprisingly, there has been scarcely any discussion...

Dogma and clear thinking. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2003... SIR: Anthony Seiver's response (Letters, May 2003) to Jenny Teichman's article (March 2003) on Darwinism seriously misunderstands the author's intentions. He may be right to complain that her article was "misplaced"--under the heading of...

Poetic pomegranates. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2003... SIR: In the April 2003 issue your reviewer spoke warmly about these lines by Barry Hill: Come my love let us go into the fields into the vineyards for the whole night. Let us see if the vines have flowered ...

Stand by your male! (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2003... SIR: Peter Kocan's review of Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture (May 2003) describes some depressing reading for males. However, men should take heart: not all women suffer from misandry. In a song called...

Semper Purificanda: the living Church in a secular world. (Religion).
July 1, 2003... I AM GRATEFUL to the Secretary and Committee of the Catalyst for Renewal for the invitation to speak to you. It is generally useful for Catholics to talk together about the work of Christ and the Church which is so dear to us all. Quite a few...

Moth.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... MOTH Not crazily circling a plump pear whose bright scorch it can't resist but resting on a fullblown peony papering the wall behind my bedside lamp: small white wings textured like embroidery threads. That...

Jan Hus, Cardinal Beran and religious freedom.
July 1, 2003... ONE OF THE GREAT legacies of Pope John Paul II will be his unswerving advocacy of human rights, whether in the dark days of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, or in the more nuanced times that have followed the fall of Soviet communism....

Cinnamon.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... CINNAMON At the verge of sienna, the red in paintings on Pompeii's walls, leopard yellow stalking forests--perhaps it's my favourite colour And if I sand toast with cinnamon it becomes a magic carpet, flies me to...

Science in the service of meaninglessness.
July 1, 2003... SCIENCE IS OFTEN presumed to have played an important part in the demise of faith in the modern world, while remaining unaffected by the situation of meaninglessness that has followed in its wake. This is an overstated claim and one that needs...

An interview with Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic. (Europe).(Interview)
July 1, 2003... Quadrant editor P.P. McGuinness interviewed the recently elected President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, in his office at the Hradcany Castle in Prague on April 30. Dr Klaus has visited Australia on two occasions for the Centre for...

An antipodean witch craze. (Politics).
July 1, 2003... ... in times of fear men do not think clearly: they retreat into fixed positions, fixed prejudices. --Hugh Trevor-Roper A MODERN witch craze--our very own, grown in the antipodes, with paedophilia as its crowning subject. But this...

Komdu langan veg (Come the Long Distance Home). (Three Poems by Pall Olafsson).(Poem)
July 1, 2003... KOMDU LANGAN VEG (Come the Long Distance Home) Come love, come quickly through the wildflower hinterlands, Across the storm-lit hills, the whale-black desert sands. The glacier torrents tumble, but cannot do you harm, ...

Hrislan og laekurinn (The Love of the Birch Tree and the Stream). (Three Poems by Pall Olafsson).(Poem)
July 1, 2003... HRISLAN OG LAEKURINN (The Love of the Birch Tree and the Stream) Hey little birch tree, life is chic! Your tresses tickle your amorous creek, You pillowtalk like newlyweds, Old amorous sun above your heads. So much...

Saell var eg tha (So Joyous I Was). (Three Poems by Pall Olafsson).(Poem)
July 1, 2003... SAELL VAR EG THA (So Joyous I Was) One midnight sun, with cause, I was so blissed, so blessed, When pure and loveliest You opened like a rose. I knew you lithe and close, You showed me all your favour. Yes...

Even of Sky, Tree, Bird.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... EVEN OF SKY, TREE, BIRD For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers... --Romans 8:23 The light has painted, as if with an air-brush, ibis, wattle and cloud on the river's canvas. But just...

An Unfinished Simile.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... AN UNFINISHED SIMILE From my train window I watch pass the musical bush. Its Eden-growth canopy an even-flow melody but punctuated in staccato time by near-dead trees, at attention. Their point is...

On the long road to truth: new books on frontier history. (History).(The Australian Experience, Goodbye Bussamarai and In Looking for Blackfella's Point explore the history of race relations in Australia)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... AS EVERY schoolboy and girl and television viewer now knows, extensive and deadly frontier conflict scarred early Australia. The National Museum should (though it probably won't) thank Quadrant and Keith Windschuttle for provoking debate about...

Biking the Central Otago Rail Trail.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... BIKING THE CENTRAL OTAGO RAIL TRAIL From Waipiata, north to Wedderburn on a clear, still, bright autumn Saturday, it's airy and eerie on the old rail trail, the land sloping right to left from the Ida and Hawkdun...

Bat in a Jar.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... BAT IN A JAR 1 I cup a glass jar over the small bat sleeping in the curtain fold. 2 Should I keep it a while longer--pygmy bat in the glass jar? 3 Wishing my small sons were...

Australia's greatest jurist: Philip Ayres' Owen Dixon. (Law).(Biography)
July 1, 2003... SIR OWEN DIXON possessed the most formidable legal mind in all of our history. If there was a Nobel Prize for reasoning he was the most likely Australian to have been a recipient. Amongst the philosophers of the world, and particularly amongst...

Helping the islands to help themselves. (The Pacific).
July 1, 2003... GRAEME DOBELL in "The Reluctant Pacific Nation (Quadrant, May 2003) opened up a much-needed debate on Australia s relations with the Pacific. The background to his paper is thirty years of more than 3 per cent population growth in the region...

A plea to Quadrant readers.
July 1, 2003... from The Lavoisier Group * Dear Reader, Machiavelli warned the Prince that what "physicians say about a disease is applicable here: that at a beginning a disease is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose; but as time passes, not having...

Graduate and childless. (Society).
July 1, 2003... THERE IS NOTHING much to worry about in declining fertility, according to Russell Blackford ("Is Declining Fertility a Problem?", Quadrant, March 2003) and P.P. McGuinness ("Fertility Decline and Population Panic", September 2002). The planet...

Obituary.(Kenneth Maddock was an authority on Australian Aboriginal social structure)(Obituary)
July 1, 2003... KENNETH JAMES MADDOCK, 1937-2003. KEN MADDOCK is sometimes described as an anthropologist of the "old school", but in fact e was something much rarer--a man who took the questions raised by the old school of anthropologists seriously, who...

The Nostril Songs.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... THE NOSTRIL SONGS P. Ovidius Naso when banished from Rome remained in the city for days on slave clothing, for weeks in his study, for decades in living noses-- Trees register the dog and the dog...

Flints.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... FLINTS 1. Don't ask what something means as if it means the same thing to trillions of others, ascertain what it means to you. 2. I wanted things to stay the same only after I realised ...

Ranting and raving about America. (Devine).
July 1, 2003... THOUGH GROSS and irritating, recent expressions of anti-Americanism in Australia convince me that it is of little consequence here. It is often frivolous, vehement but mostly passionless, lazily deceitful or ill-informed and without political...

More means worse, again: what the Year 12 exams reveal. (Education).
July 1, 2003... FROM EARLY September to mid-January Australian newspapers cultivate their annual bout of examination fever. The infection is incubated by the Year 12 examinations. The various tests held in primary and lower secondary schools produce only a...

Despite Hitler, Shakespeare and the accountant. (First Person).
July 1, 2003... THIS IS A NARRATIVE disclosing how my progress through life was disarranged by three men: Adolf Hitler, William Shakespeare and an accountant. Fortunately this nasty trio failed to inhibit me. My story starts after a busy, rather ordinary...

The Children's Asylum.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... THE CHILDREN'S ASYLUM The nuns are talking but she can't understand what they say. She feels far away, in this ward where all the beds are tilted upright, are too tall, are trees. Long thin girls are sleeping...

Portrait of My Mother as Xipe Totec.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... PORTRAIT OF MY MOTHER AS XIPE TOTEC When she said she was Xipe Totec Aztec god of springtime, I believed her. Sitting me down opposite her rocking-chair she explained what that meant: she needed to flay my skin ...

Susan & the studmuffins.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... SUSAN & THE STUDMUFFINS I am scribbling lines on an envelope sitting in a chrome & leather lounge drinking coffee & waiting for the hair stylist. "Why do you write poems?" Minutes tip-toe by on soft soled shoes ...

The Feast.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... THE FEAST I go back to the eve of my eighteenth birthday, open the grey curtains and let moonlight flood in as I unscrew the mirror. It's thin and narrow as a silent girl who never leaves her room, ...

P.G. Wodehouse and the natural order. (Literature).(Biography)
July 1, 2003... "Right ho, then. So much for the western front. We now turn to the eastern." "Sir?" "I speak in parables, Jeeves. " --Right Ho, Jeeves IN ANSWER TO HIS Aunt Dahlia's need when her daughter, Angela, has broken off the...

The Mineral Mother.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... THE MINERAL MOTHER Your face has the violet luminescence of the long dead. Night after night I dreamt of this descent until I reached the basalt door where you wait to greet me, your irises streaked like falcon's...

The struggles of the little magazines.
July 1, 2003... THE DEMISE of the main print magazine of creative writing in Queensland, Imago, has gone unremarked. After some thirteen years, this is a setback to the local literary community, especially just when there are signs that it is developing a...

Reigning cats.
July 1, 2003... IT IS A GENERAL RULE of publishing that books about cats sell and books about dogs do not. In mainstream non-fiction publishing the most popular books are said to be about cats, golf and the Third Reich, and there have been some ingenious...

The red coat.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... THE RED COAT How wretched you made us, old charmer, and how good to have you around when we felt you belonged to us and not to the woman in the red coat Mother and I saw you with that day in Little Collins...

War reporting, then and now. (Film).
July 1, 2003... AT THE HEIGHT of the "All history is present history" controversy in the middle of the last century, American historian John Hexter commented that far from viewing the past in terms of current events, he interpreted current events in terms of...

Dorethea and the Huli.
July 1, 2003... Paradisaea apoda," Mrs Shrewsbury said. "I think one should use the scientific names--don't you?" "Oh, yes!" said Dorethea. Then she reinstated honesty by adding: "One should... if one can." Mrs Shrewsbury had her laptop computer at...

The Orchid Hunter.(Poem)
July 1, 2003... THE ORCHID HUNTER Each morning I am an orchid hunter. I need to find the flowers triggered by rains, to circle the lake and pick from its overhanging branches the large oculatas shaped like grinning masks, ...

A family portrait.
July 1, 2003... The Rat has only attended Father Pricop's Sunday service half a dozen times in seventeen years. This morning he would have happily slept until noon, breathing in Diamanta's spicy perfume, until that delicious moment when she woke up and tiptoed...

May-Ling.
July 1, 2003... 1. May-Ling calls out to Anny as Anny gets out of her car. May-Ling's voice bounces out through the screen door where she is standing and out onto the street in North Ryde. Anny climbs over the small white iron gate that leads to the front...

Capitalism and its critics.(The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought, by Jerry Z. Muller; Alfred A. Knopf, 2002, about $60. WHILE CAPITALISM'S critics have often doubted its future, recent supporters and opponents agree on its past. Whether or...

The battles of economic reform.(The Experience of Middle Australia: The Dark Side of Economic Reform)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... The Experience of Middle Australia: The Dark Side of Economic Reform, by Michael Pusey; Cambridge University Press, 2003, $36.95. IN 1991 MICHAEL PUSEY published Economic Rationalism in Canberra. He showed, after interviewing a few hundred...

The anti-economists.(Economics and its Enemies: Two Centuries of Anti-Economics)(Book Review)
July 1, 2003... Economics and its Enemies: Two Centuries of Anti-Economics, by William Coleman; Palgrave, 2002, about $130. SCHOLARSHIP IS a rare enough thing in our universities these days, and rarer still in the social sciences, like economics. Even...

The prism of the ages. (Ryan).
July 1, 2003... THOUGH THE PROCESS had already long been in train, it would have been about thirty-five years ago that I caught for myself the first linguistic whiff of menace, a small early omen of the postmodernist delusion which encourages us to throw away...