Poll Day - Australia

Australia goes to the polls tomorrow.
Politics seems to have lost its way
Public opinion polls dictate policy decisions on difficult issues
Elected prime ministers are toppled by their own party
Tony Abbott (Liberal/Conservative) speaks empty rehearsed lines
Julia Gillard (Centre left Labor) seeks to reinvent herself mid campaign
and invokes mysterious notions of democracy to excuse a lack of leadership and courage.
Bob Brown (Greens) sells an idealised vision of the future
Joe Hockey (Shadow Treasurer) can barely cope with the most rudimentary notions of economics
The media ask inane questions and publish opinionated drivel
Debates are glorified press conferences
The old fashioned Town Hall public meeting returns
and is turned into another version of an opinion poll

It's depressing.
Gone the days of my local candidate
standing on the back of a truck with a dodgy PA system
Gone are politicians with ideas and convictions
In their place we have manufactured and cautious campaigns
and slogans slogans slogans
Moving forward; we will we will we will;
Stop the boats; great big new tax;
It's all bullshit written by some computer program
that thinks we're all idiots.
and sadly it works -
many of us are just that
Idiots
with no grasp of the true issues or the options.

I'll vote tomorrow
I would even if it weren't compulsory.
One pleasure I'll have is voting for Kevin Rudd
even though his party dumped him.
He's my local representative.

The other is seeing my children (in their twenties)
become really engaged with an election for the first time.
(The main chartacters are so absurd they've grabbed their attention -
perhaps for all the wrong reasons)
It's ironic that it's probably one of the worst examples
of democracy I've experienced in a long time.

I'm going to an election party tomorrow night
in character as a politician who no one has heard of.
Another irony there.
This politician is long serving but stands for nothing.
No profile, no position, no name.

Magpie 23 - Fire Postscript

This week the prompt for the Magpie writers was an antique fire extinguisher. I wrote about Bob Hawke, an antique former prime Minister of Australia. Many others wrote about fire and smoke and near death experiences.

Yesterday I visited my wife in her city building to take her for a coffee; it was her birthday. As I arrived at 2:30pm there was a queue for the lift. Strange i thought, that all these people had taken afternoon tea at the same time! It gradually dawned on me that there had been an evacuation. FIRE!! I couldn't see Andrea anywhere in the foyer or in the queue so I headed for the 9th floor to surprise her. She was pleased to see me but perplexed, as we left the building, to find all her colleagues re-entering the building.

She suddenly realised that she had missed the evacuation, missed the fire, had been missed by the fire warden and, well, died on her birthday and gone to heaven. That's where I come in - narcissisist that i am. My helpful observation was that death on your birthday would make for a neat entry on your headstone.

She enjoyed the coffee but not the joke.

Wry Cooder

Wry Cooder. Who is Wry Cooder? Sadly I have had to clumsily explain to a number of people old enough to be my children who this Ry Cooder dude is.

So I went to a concert on Saturday night where a man in his prime spent an hour and forty five minutes visiting his back catalogue of never-were hit songs. This man who plays slide guitar like no one else; a man who leaves out so many notes it's like a meditation on the unspoken, the invisible, the insubstantial; a man who plays his guitar much better than he communicates in the spoken form - shut up Ry and just play.

How do you explain to people who were't born in the 70s, the significance of a musician who never had a hit; who is better known for his collaborations with Cuban musicians and African guitar maestros like Ali Farka Toure (love saying that name); thirty somethings who haven't heard of the Buena Vista Social Club and for whom Cuba only conjures up images of over proof rum, Bill Clinton's unusual habits with cigars and, well, it's part of America isn't it? ; who've never heard of Castro or the Cuban missile crisis or perhaps even JFK; who ask where Paris Texas is, assuming I've become very confused about my geography.

Am I getting old?

Life does matter

Confirmed.
I will be the 'Meet the Listener' guest on Life Matters next Tuesday.
I get my (almost) 15 minutes of fame with Richard Aide on ABC Radio National (Australia). 9:45am Brisbane time.
They're interested in my life as a clown and ,as it turns out, stories from my blog.

The program, 'Life Matters', should be a must listen for anyone interested in people and well...life. A daily dose is recommended 9-10am Monday to Friday.

Loani,
I think I need a design makeover of 'my missing life' to help new visitors find their way around. Any suggestions?

Good light in Broome

I'm off to Broome and the Kimberleys for three weeks

Roebuck Bay

Geikie Gorge

No blogging in the bush but plenty of time for writing I hope.

I'll leave you with the last verse and chorus of a Neil Murray song: 'Good light in Broome".

This man is a much underestimated Australian singer-songwriter who writes about the back country in a way no one else does.

Good light in Broome,

well I’ll be there soon

I know exactly what I’m a gonna do

Sit on the beach, stare at the moon

Haven’t you heard? there’s good light in Broome

Well when I get to Cable Beach, I’ll fall right out of the truck and into the sea

With my clothes still on, I’ll plunge under the waves

And all the dirt will drain away

And just like Bunjil, I’ll get two dogs

And every evenin’ I’ll walk them along

On the edge of the country, take in the view

Just like I heard, there’s good light in Broome

Good light in Broome,

well I’ll be there soon

I know exactly what I’m a gonna do

Sit on the beach, stare at the moon

Didn’t I tell ya? there’s good light in Broome

Journey complete

It's done. 16 mini stories, one big story. I have no idea how it reads in total. I'll read it through in a few days and start editing it into a consistent whole.
Your comments would be helpful in this. Does it constitute one story. Did it hold together. Was there any dramatic tension which kept you interested?

Now for some new stuff. I'm working on a set of poems based on the beaches of North stradbroke island.
I'll get on to them in the next week.
And maybe some other stuff.
Thanks to anyone who followed these 16 stories through to the end. I owe you a coffee.

Little Hat - the origins of my new blog identity

It's a long story which I shall try and keep short. Sort of an interesting story for this "Australia Day"

Basically my great grandfather Lorenzo, travelled to Australia and settled in Northern NSW using the name Capelin. Everyone in the extended family was a Capelin.

However some recent family research unearthed his marriage certificate which had him married in Sydney under a different name - Perin. A further check was made of the passenger list of the ship on which he ultimately arrived. The "James Patterson's" passenger list also had him as Perin. Alarm bells sounded and the detective work began. Unfortunately, even trips to Veneto in Italy by distant cousins following this lead unearthed nothing but a theory - which goes like this.

Perin seems to be a name associated with the Austro-Italians of the alps north of Veneto. Perhaps the family had, at some point in time, migrated down to the plains. So far so good, but why the change in name? Well, it happens that Italian families were often known by their craft or some other characteristic - the Grosettis were the fat mob for example. Capelin, in Italian means "little hat' and we have concocted the story that maybe the Perin/Capelins continued to wear their traditional Austrian hats after their move to the plains - you know the little ones with a feather and worn with short pants! and became known as the Capelins. Best we can do to understand the mystery at this stage.

cappellino = hat

cappellini = hats

piccolo cappelino = little hat

Doesn't quite work: Steve Piccolo Cappellino

Lucky they were Italo-Austrian.

If they were German speaking Austrian I'd be Steve Wenig Hat

little hat

I've changed my blog identity. There's a story behind this. Anyone interested?