Forever Isn't Over Yet

The War on Women Gets a Bit More Literal

From Rawstory:

Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, told the Journal-Constitution that the crimes are alarming because of their rapid escalation. 'It’s not a good sign when one arson follows another, after following several burglaries. Something clearly is escalating there and we’re hoping that the strong law enforcement so far can stop it.' The National Abortion Federation and law enforcement agencies have issued warnings to staff and patients at women’s health centers in and around Atlanta to exercise reasonable caution and to be aware of their surroundings at all times.

Threre’s been an outbreak of arson attacks on Atlanta area women’s clinics. They include a fire set during business hours, while people were in the building, and two burglaries in which laptops were stolen containing the personal information of doctors and staff.

it should be noted that most of these clinics do not perform abortions. They are, however, linked to doctors who voiced opposition to abortion restrictions signed into law this month in Georgia.

The physical intimidation is escalating, not just to clinics that perform abortions, but to ob-gyn doctors who dare to speak out against restrictions on abortions.

It's a disgrace. Many people truly don't seem to understand the level of intimidation faced by people who work in women's clinics. Or rather, they won't admit to understanding when in reality, they understand it perfectly well. Not too long ago, a Mississippi legislator, in addition to brushing off home abortion deaths as no big deal, gloated publicly about the fact that physicians performing abortions in that state are literally afraid of being recognized.

Three doctors perform abortions in the state of Mississippi. They fly in from Birmingham. They’re wearing masks…They go in the back door in the parking garage../

With public officials making statements like this, citing physical intimidation as something to be celebrated, is it any wonder that some people in this country feel entitled to set fire to clinics and steal personal information?

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

No custard danish this morning. "We sold the last ones half an hour ago," the boy behind the counter told me when I went in shockingly late, at about 7:00 am. So instead I picked up a couple of raspberry tarts, not tarts as I know them but more like shallow, not too sweet muffins studded with fruit. Another delicious thing we probably won’t be able to get in San Francisco.

Botanic Gardens

I entered beneath under a wrought iron gate. Curving paved paths, trees and shrubs with labels on them, lots of shade. There was a lovely pond with ducks that had pointed rather than blunt beaks. Every now and then I'd hear another bird. I'm not sure what it was, whether it was the Ibis or one of the black and white crows, but it sounded like something between the mew of a siamese cat and the nose a toddler makes as it spits out something that tastes bad. Nearby were signs warning me not to feed the birds because they might get aggressive, which, considering the beaks on the Ibis, stalking moodeily around in the grass seemed like good advice.

I was walking through an especially tropical looking area, shady, lots of palms, when I heard a faint chittering sound overhead. When I stopped and looked up I saw what at first I thought were large brown leather bags hanging in the trees high over my head. Then one of the brown bags stretched its wings. The trees high above my head were festooned with bats, very large, beautiful bats, their fur thick and reddish where a dapple of sun hit them. I watched one fly between the trees, soaring overhead, less like the flapping of a bat than a small, sleek animal caught in mid-leap.

As fascinated as I was, it seemed ill-advised to be just standing beneath all these creatures so I began walking again, slowly because I kept looking up at that shady conclave up in the treetops. They were bedding down for the day. There were always a few who were restless, nudging each other, stretching their wings, or sailing from one tree to another, and there were so many. It took me about a minute to get out from under them.

***

That morning Michael had asked to to find out if there were any (relatively) cheap seats to that night’s ballet performance of Onegin at the Sydney Opera House. It seemed more crowded than it had been when Michael and I visited earlier, and this time, as I approached from the park, I saw up on the highest peak of the Opera House two tiny figures, men black with distance, moving slowly. It looked as though there was actually a staircase of sorts curving over that rooftop, one with railings. Was it possible to get permission to climb up there and enjoy the view? If so, nobody but those two apparently to do it. God knows, I wouldn’t. They were moving, but moving exactly the way I would if I were up there -- veeerrrryyy slowly, with both hands on the railings. I waited until they had disappeared back behind the roof before going on.

I walked up the stairs and around the back of the opera house along the bay. It was another sunny day, and there were more people about, but the crowds seemed in a weird way more serious and less aimless. Everybody seemed on their way someplace else. Between the Circular Quay and the Opera House, I found a small kiosk where a thin lady in her sixties was dispensing information.

Librarians and ladies managing info desks in Sydney all seemed to be very slender, rather dashing women either elderly or in late middle age, with still abundant hair and a flair for using makeup. (And when better to use it than when you actually need it?) No doubt there are overweight people in Sydney, but they didn’t seem as prevalent as in the US.

Where there cheap seats available at tonights performance?” I asked her. Oh yes, she said. Some were as low as $85. If I went into the box office inside the Opera house, they'd show me where the seats were.

So I went back and climbed the stairs and went into the opera-house’s cathedral like lobby, with its miles of polished floor and and peaked ceiling that seemed to swallow up all sound so that every voice was hushed. Approaching the box office, manned by a single clerk, was like approaching an altar.

No, the young man behind the desk told me. There were no $85 seats left. The cheapest were $120. We would not be going to the ballet tonight.

Outside, the sunlight was a little dazzling. The broad white patio between the water and that side of the opera house was crowded. As I left I noticed two groups of teenaged students, boys on one side in blue jackets and ties, girls on another in blue skirts jackets and hats, about to begin a tour of the Opera House, apparently.

***

I had not yet really explored Sydney's downtown, George Street, Pitt Street, etc. so I walked to the modern part of the city, where the high rises and serious people are. It's like many other financial districts. Lots of preoccupied men in business suits talking on cell phones, lots of women in skirts walking in pairs, trotting down the pavement and carrying cups of coffee, traffic, sun bouncing against glass and sidewalks and passing cars, clean chain restaurants with broad windows showing people sitting at pale formica tables and staring into open laptops.

But the sunlight in Sydney isn't like any other sunlight, just as the sunlight in New Orleans, San Francisco, or New York City has its own color and its own way of touching objects. Each city has something that talks to the light and shapes your recollection of it. In Sydney, the downtown has flashes of yellow sandstone, with scrollwork and figures tucked in among all the sleek straight lines and reflective surfaces of a modern city. It gives the air a slightly golden tint even at noon -- at least in memory.


***

The Museum of Sydney, unlike the other two I'd visited, is in its own, modern building. As is fitting for a city museum, it's not especially large, but pleasant to walk through. One video exhibit in one small room dealt with daring Sydney Graffiti artists who specialized in painting slogans on dangerous, inaccessible spaces. In 2003 they'd painted "No War" in red paint on the peak of the Sydney Opera House, up where I'd seen those men creeping about (and some people say peace activists are cowards.)

Another, larger exhibit on the top floor was about Sydney during the Second World war. Lots of fascinating audio on earphones -- the King and the Prime Minister announcing war, a funny song about a makeshift bomb shelter. And there was an explanation for one of the inscriptions I'd seen on the pavement along Darlinghurst Road. A good many American servicemen had been stationed in Sydney, and many Sydney residents got their first real taste of jazz at a club for American servicemen in King's Cross on Darlinghurst. According to the museum literature, our boys had, among Australian women, the reputation for being well heeled, good-looking and courteous (That last is the first time I have ever heard such a claim about Americans.) This led to a good bit of friction between American and Australian troops, who complained that Yanks were, "Overpaid, oversexed, and over here."

My favorite exhibit was an audio visual installation in which the viewer could choose one of ten characters from Sydney's history (played by actors of course) and have them interact with one of the other characters. An aborigine woman in the late 18th century, a dissolute, slightly drunk young british clerk, a n upper class19th century Englishwoman, an Irish servant. If I could, I would have stayed there and tried out every combination, but that would probably have kept me there until the museum closed.

***

Sydney has a Mechanics' Institute on Pitt Street, not too far from Phillip, so I walked to the address I'd found online, 280 Pitt, and entered a very modern high-rise. I stepped out of the elevator a floor too early, and found myself in a small carpeted lobby with three closed double doors facing me. A man, apparently a volunteer, approached me, flyers in hand and asked quietly, "Which event are you attending?"

Three event rooms, I thought. They have at least three event rooms. And they were having three events at once.

I explained I was looking for administration, and he advised me to go another floor up.

Upstairs, when they learned I worked at another Mechanics’ Institute, they were very hospitable and eager to show me around. Their institute looked more modern but they're an older institution by about 20 years, founded in 1833. (Their original building was just down the street and bore a striking resemblance to the SF Mechanics' pre-06 building.) The Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts seems to have a slightly different emphasis than our’s, being more about providing long term and short term venues for non-profits than actually putting on eventsThe events spaces I saw, four meeting rooms and a theater, are apparently used mainly for rentals.

Actual SMSA sponsored literary and author events take place in the Tom Keneally center. The author of Schindler's Ark, when he retired to Manly Beach, didn't want to take his entire private library with him, so he donated it, with other personal memorabilia, to the SMSA. Hence the Tom Keneally Center. It's a spacious, but intimate, brightly colored space, lined with Keneally's books, with a sofa and chairs for gatherings and a small office for Keneally, with an old fashioned knee-hole desk. I signed the visitors’ book. “Enviable” was what I wrote in the comments section. After visiting their library, I left with email addresses and a bag of swag, a mug, some pens and leather bookmarks, and a couple of book bags. The SMSA makes our Mechanics' seem shabby-genteel. And we certainly have no writer in residence to compare with Mr. Keneally.

***

By late afternoon I was back at Kings Cross. I wanted to check my email, and I'd noticed a library branch just down the road from the hotel. It proved to be a typical inner city library, upstairs in a storefront, a single floor of books rather bare bones, but there was a space on the Mezzanine that offered free WiFi. Every chair in the little room with the table was taken, so I sat in the waiting area and turned on my Ipad.

"Excuse me." I looked up. A tall man with a shaven head was standing beside me. He wore a white shirt, a tie, and dark slacks. "You speak English?" he asked, with a slight foreign accent.

"Yes."

"Could you please look at my letter. I have a letter. There." He gestured back at a computer. "And it must be correct. Could you perhaps look at it and correct?"

I could think of no reason to refuse, so I walked over to the empty chair he indicated and sat down in front of the computer.

My default, probably unfair assumption when I get a request like this in a public space is that the person asking for help is cracked. Maybe he was, but it wasn't evident in the letter, which, though long at eight paragraphs, was fairly well organized and scanned logically in spite of a few errors in punctuation and syntax. It seemed to involve some legal dispute about benefits he felt he was owed. There was none of the sulpherous rage I associate with crazy people’s letters, thought here was a sprinkling of irritation over points he felt he’d already one over in an earlier letter. Of course, it could all have been bullshit. If I actually knew what was going on, I might read it and shake my head and say, “this guy is nuts.” Who knows? At any rate, I made the corrections and then, after the file was saved, he offered me the computer. I could use the rest of his time if I wanted, he said. I explained that wasn't necessary, that I had an Ipad, and he thanked me profusely again. I returned to my chair in the waiting area and updated my email.

***


When Michael came in at about 6:00, he asked me why I wasn't dressed to go out to the Opera House and I had to break it to him that we weren't going. He was disappointed, but resigned. He suggested we go to a restaurant that had been recommended to him, out on Crown Street in Surrey Hills. Which turned out to be closed for a private party, so we ended up wandering up and down a uninspiring section of Oxford Street, low, rather flat and dark and undecoratived.

That was where we found The Falconer. The Falconer is the opposite of the restaurant we visited the night before, an easygoing neighborhood place, entered through an odd sliding glass door. It was dim, but not completely dark, with wooden tables, young, casually dressed smiling staff. Everyone there seemed to be friends with the place, to have come there not just to eat but to be comfortable. At one table, a large, ugly man talked earnestly to a slim, smiling, pretty woman, at another a crowd of twenty-somethings, some leaning back, some resting their elbows on the table, one girl nestled in the arms of her boyfriend. The customers looked like they belonged, and not because they’d made an effort to belong.

A young, blonde, bearded aussie who was either in charge for the night or actually owned the place, very thin and hippyish, led us to a table near the front, and got us our menus. We were quite close to a window with a view of the flat, dark, uninteresting street. The shelf next to the table had some interesting things tucked into it -- a yellow manual typewriter, magazines, a coffee table book on design. I drank white wine, Michael drank red. I had a delicious cappellini with tomatos and basil and chunks of ricotta. Michael had eggplant parmesan. The food came in huge bowls, garnished with thick slices of toasted bread that tasted faintly of salt and garlic. It was the best meal we had in Sydney.

All that was left to make the evening complete was gelato, which we got on Victoria street, very lively for a Wednesday night, the gelato place packed. I carried away a dulce de leche in a cup, and Michael a cone of the passionfruit.

“What time does the Botanic gardens open,” he asked me as we walked back to the hotel.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think someone told me sunrise to sunset.”

He thought about this for a moment. ‘If I get up early enough,” he said, “do you think I could get in?”

When Paperwork Trumps Common Sense and Common Decency

From clickorlando.com:

'It's like something out of a horror film. The person just sits there and watches you die,' said Michael Rudi, 17. 'She sat there, looked at me and she did nothing.'

The recent case of a student in Florida who was denied his inhaler by an idiot school nurse highlights the extent to which many school zero-tolerance drug policies are an affront to common sense and common decency. Seventeen-year-old Michael Rudi, whose asthma condition was well known to the school, began gasping for breath one day. Instead of handing him his inhaler, which was in his locker, still in its original packaging, his name clearly visible on the prescription, instead of even calling 911 so paramedics could administer it, they called his mother. By the time she arrived he was on the verge of passing out.

The school’s reasons? Mom and Dad’s documentation on the medication had not been updated that year.

Yep. The school administrators were willing to let a teenaged boy suffocate before their eyes because of paperwork.

It’s a bit staggering to read the number of people who attempt to obliquely justify this by assuming a world-weary air and citing our “lawsuit-happy society” as a rationale. Why, they say, if the nurse had administered that inhaler, the parents might very well have sued the school for saving their son’s life without the proper paperwork!

Right. Happens all the time. Parents can be counted on to be furious when people step in help their children in a dire medical situation.

On the other hand, They never, never sue in cases where the child is allowed to die.

Right?

This video offers a pretty good take on it.



Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

Or at least, not a deliberate one.

After the thudding flop of the first Atlas Shrugged, they are apparently going to release a second one. It’s planned to hit the theaters this October, by which time, supposedly, the 99% will no longer be mad at 1% and will pack movie theaters to take in a story in which the incredibly rich are heroes beleaguered by the villainous and lazy mob that is the rest of us.

It’s interesting to compare the cast lists. Not much overlap there. In fact, there seems to be no overlap, period.

Don’t see why they bother making this when a terrific Part II has already been filmed.

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Apparently Generosity, Education, and Compassion are Now Partisan Issues

President Obama Joplin Commencement Speech 5/21/12: You will encounter greed and selfishness and ignorance and cruelty, and sometimes just bad luck. You’ll meet people who’ll try to build themselves up by tearing others down. You’ll meet people who believe that looking after others us only for suckers.

But you’re from Joplin…You’ll remember that in a town of 50,000 people nearly 50,000 more came in to help in the weeks after the tornado. Perfect strangers who’d neve met you and didn’t ask for anything in return.

President Obama offered a dignified and inspiring commencement speech at a Joplin Missouri High School the other day. Joplin was a town hard hit by deadly tornados almost exactly a year ago. The President emphasized the decency of the many people who offered to help in the wake of the disaster, the courage and resilience of Joplin citizens, and the lessons about pulling together as a community that the young people of Joplin should carry away from the experience.

So naturally he’s being reviled for it in many right wing outlets. The Daily Caller has offered the damning observation that he used the word “march” a couple of times (which, you see, makes the speech “militaristic.”) and counted the number of times he used the word “community” in a speech specifically about a community recovering from a terrible natural disaster. (He used the word seven times which means he’s a COMMUNist!) Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit denounced Obama praising the students for working together after the tornados as “Socialist BS.” (Apparently the correct, all-American response in Hoft’s mind would have been for the residents to transform post-tornados Joplin into an every-man-for-himself Libertarian hellscape.)

And Fox Nation derided it as a “stump speech,” in particular objecting to Obama’s reference to people who “try to build themselves up by tearing others down; who believe looking after others is only for suckers.”

It bothers the folks at Fox that he talked as if that were a bad thing.

I am an optimist in that I believe, in the long run, intelligence and common decency will prevail. I believe that future Americans -- even those who might not be fans of President Obama -- will look back on the comments from these right wingers in the wake of Obama’s Joplin speech and shake their heads in wonder at their sheer, unthinking malice and stupidity.

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

Early in the morning we walked over to Infinity Bakery, a little brown shadowy place on Victoria Street, strictly business, no tables, a counter with a tiny waiting space in front of it, and, when you looked to your right, apparently endless metal shelves of baked goods receding into the back. Two custard danish, one cherry, one pear, and a butter croissant. We stopped at a stand on Darlinghurst Road for coffee, and as the husky Asian fellow prepared it, Michael asked, "You're not open before sunrise? You don't want to be part of the scene?"

The guy laughed. "No. Those folks aren't interested in coffee, and, frankly, I don't think they need it." Breakfast was in our room, before Michael left for the conference center. 

***

This time, instead of walking around the domain, I cut through it. Sun on broad squares of grass, and occasional green silky bulges that were more like mild swellings than hills, trees with unbelievably thick trunks, heavy branches and black, undappled shade, occasional sculptures -- a cage-like gazebo, a tilting, white sort of cairn of stones erected recently by aboriginal artists. I stopped to look at some glass glyphs, etched with poetry. 

Trees were in their thoughts, Peppermint Gum, Black Sally,
White tea tree hung over trees...

An obese, drunken-looking bottle tree half-stood, half-sprawled inside a fence as though the park service was afraid it would get confused and wander off. 

A bird that looked like a black and white crow walked with great dignity in the grass nearby. It paused, and a weird, electronic, warbling music seemed to come from its throat. 

One tall tree had a flock of cockatoos gathered around its top, enjoying the sunlight. The top cockatoo kept calling to another one high up in a tree on the other side of the space. They exchanged loud, slightly derisive sounding squawks, and then most of the cockatoos in the first tree took wing, flew in a beautifully synchronized formation, wheeling gracefully into the other tree. They tried it out, then called out to the other tree, with its top cockatoo and a few remaining loyalists. The top cockatoo in the first tree squawked a few more times, and the birds in the second tree took wing again and returned to the first tree. The cockatoo at the second tree squawked a few more times, they took wing again...

It reminded me of a chant that used to be taken up at parties on different sides of the dance floor when I was in college.

"Party over HERE!"

"No, party over HERE!"

"Ain't nuthin' over THERE!"

"Ain't nuthin' over THERE!

"No, party over HERE,
Ain't NUTHIN' over THERE!"

"No, party over HERE...."

***

Near the edge of the green, is a building graveyard, a plot of land studded with pieces from long-gone buildings. The top of a Corinthian column, decorative carvings of flowers, dedications... A nice place for a reverie on the ephemera we take for permanence, especially since it overlooks the city.

"YWCA 1924"

"This building was opened by her excellency Lady Stoneham, 5, May, 1926, M. Forster President."

"This stone was placed by her excellency Lady Forster 18, June 1925."


***

I wanted to get to The Rocks, and according to my map I could reach it by walking all the way around Circular Quay. So I walked around, past the statue of William Bligh with its slightly defensive inscription, past the large passenger terminal, onward towards the Sydney Harbor bridge, where people grew more and more scarce, pausing to look at the old stone paved ferry ramp now descending into nothing but a view straight across the bay to the Luna Amusement Park with its enormous scary-clown face smiling back across the water.

The walk became solitary and slightly intimidating. I was past the tourist area and strolling on the edge of the working bay, a shady sidewalk with a tall fence on my right behind which seemed to be rows of harbour buildings. On my left was a massive stone wall set into a hill, on top of which I could see the backs of stuccoed houses. For a long time there seemed to be no way of getting up there. I spotted one old stone stairway that stopped halfway down, and was decorated with a playful installation, an enormous web with a plaster spider the size of an Irish Setter. 

Finally I saw a stairway that was apparently meant to be used and angled all the way to the top of the hill, so I crossed the street and climbed.

Now I was in a neighborhood. Not, apparently, a bad neighborhood, but an area where tourists probably didn't venture often and were obviously lost. Modest houses and occasional apartment buildings, corner stores. A woman trundling a hand cart of groceries glanced at me curiously as she passed. I persevered. There were more stairs a little ways down the street, well maintained, rising, with a handrail. The place to go, I decided, was up. And I was right.

***

The Sydney Observatory, surrounded by a small, grassy park, is the highest point in the city. It's a slightly elaborate sandstone building with a square tower that still has on its roof a pole with a ball that drops every day at 1:00 pm -- once an important signal to ships in the bay. Sadly, they no longer fire a canon.

You enter, say hello to the old gentleman behind the counter, and then wander quietly through the rooms. There's antique astronomy equipment on display, telescope, brass spoked wheels, the complex and beautiful equipment once used by British captians for charting the stars, and a video of Sydney's past resident astronomer William Scott (Played by an actor, of course, and lecturing in the slightly chummy, slightly pompous way a 21st century actor imagines a 19th century astronomer would. Very entertaining.)

Outside is a little grassy park where you can sit and admire the view of the city. There are a few benches, a gazebo and, oddly enough, a bust of Danish author Hans Christian Anderson, with a plaque explaining that the original bust, which had been hanging about the city in Phillips Park for a decade or two, was discovered to be AWOL when city employees showed up to be move it to another spot. After the Danish government asked for it back, there was apparently some embarrassed/annoyed back and forth and finally, a new one was made and unveiled in the observatory park by the crown prince and princess of Denmark (The princess is Australian.) It's a very nice bust that seems to be enjoying the view. Nobody knows where the first one resides now. 

As I was reading this inscription, I heard children cheering and noticed a class of uniformed grammar school boys sitting in the shade near the gazebo, listening to a man I suppose was their teacher. Just beyond them I saw a team of about eight joggers, seven men, one woman, in gym shorts and boxing gloves trotting two by two up the slope to the lawn, led by a bald muscular man. He stopped, they stopped. He turned and barked a command and each pair of joggers faced each other their faces set and fierce, and began hitting each other's gloved fists. 

The old gentleman inside gave me directions to The Rocks. "It's quite close by," he said, "Just go through the tunnel and down the stairs."

***

The Rocks, apparently the oldest part of Sydney, is a collection of 19th century buildings with thick walls, small rooms, and sometimes very uneven stone floors. There is a museum, but most of the area consists of shops and eating places aimed at tourists. At the museum, as at the Hyde Street Barracks, the interested visitor is shown various things that were found inside walls, under floors, and tossed into a nearby well that was used as a dump by 19th century residents. The bowls of countless clay pipes, a hat, a shoe, and a small illegal rum still by a long-dead owner which, according to the accompanying text, explains his rather quick wealth. Rum was apparently a form of currency back then, which made moonshining tantamount to counterfeiting and a very serious crime. He probably dumped the still down the well when it looked like he was about to get caught.

I was hungry. I wanted to eat, but the fact is, I found The Rocks confusing. I'd walk into what I thought was the entrance to a restaurant, be pointed by a helpful employee towards the back, go through a couple of small rooms, then find myself on the patio of a completely different restaurant, with no clear idea of how to get out. I tripped and fell twice on uneven floors and endured the humiliation of being helped, muttering excuses, to my feet and having my glasses handed back to me. Finally I decided the thing to do was just get out of The Rocks and find a place less permeated with history. I did dip into a small bookstore where I found the Ruth Park book on Sydney, so the visit was definitely worth while. 

As I left I passed a class of schoolboys -- this time dressed in home-made 19th century costumes, sitting on a bench being lectured by a teacher dressed in a poke bonnet and long skirt. 

***

Fish and chips at Circular Quay. Exactly what I wanted and needed, and therefore the perfect meal. I sat at an outdoor table, savoring perfectly fried food and a coke, watching the sun bounce off the water, gulls fight and crowds of weekenders pass, and listening to two painted aborigine buskers play something cheerful and secretive on a didgeridoo on the sidewalk nearby. At least it seemed cheerful and secretive. Didgeridoos always sound to me like someone talking just after taking a long toke on a joint. 

***

Evening

The gentleman the other day at the finger wharf had told us about a good Italian restaurant over on Challis, not far from the hotel. Fratelli Paradiso. Michael and I walked to Challis, a pleasant street rather like Hyde here in San Francisco in that it's a mixture of residential buildings and upscale restaurants. This was definitely not raffish King's Cross. Fratelli Paradiso proved to be a bit hard to pick out among the restaurants because there was no visible sign, so Michael had to ask one of the employees. We went inside and sat down. 

It was dark. Very dark, mainly lit by candles and the slightly day-glo fluorescent green stripes decorating one wall. There were menus but by candlelight they were unreadable. There were specials hand written on the wall, but white, elegantly seriffed lettering against a dark background -- perhaps a blackboard. Too dim to tell. A good looking young waiter came to our rescue and recited the menu in heavily accented English that only required a couple of repetitions. I ended up seizing on the first thing I understood, a kind of artichokey pasta. I always like artichokes. Michael had a penne with a meat sauce. The food came in large attractive bowls. Mine had something slightly green (couldn't make out much more, even lifting the bowl and holding it close to my eyes) in it that tasted very lemony and nice. Michael said his was good too, but eating something you can't see clearly has something slightly oppressive about it. I was glad when we had paid our bill and were back out on the sidewalk.

On the walk back to the hotel down Darlinghurst Road that night I noticed for the first time the little rectangular metal plates set in the sidewalk, memorials to long-dead businesses and local characters. Darlington Road is a bit more active and crowded in the evening than it is during the day, but Michael waited patiently as I stopped every few minutes to write another inscription down in my notebook:

The Astoria: Cheap eatery, roast and three vegs

Christopher Drennan, 1870-1932, poet, academic, drunk, could usually be found 'quoting bawdy passages from the classics. You could approach the presence as long as you brought him a schooner of beer.'

Oversexed, Overpaid, and over here

Kenneth Slessor:

Where the Black Marias clatter
And peculiar ladies nod
And the flats are rather flatter
And the lodgers rather odd,
Where the night is full of danger
And the darkness filled with fear
And eleven hundred strangers
Live on aspirin and beer...

The California Restaurant and sandwich bar, Established 1930s by Dick McGowan, ex-US Marine:

bar stools, club sandwiches, percolated coffee with creme, the second cup free, decor modern, clientele rowdy.

(The space is now a McDonald's. Dammit.)

Friday Pointing and Laughing: "They're living on nuts and berries..."

Rush Limbaugh on environmentalists and animals:

I mean it’s tough for you to get your arms around this, they really do believe that the primary problem the planet has is us. Humanity. The rest of all lifeforms on this planet are au natural. They are perfectly justified in being. They are unassailable in what they do and how they live, from a tree, to a snail-darter, to a lizard, to a shark, to a lion, to a tiger, they are the essence of perfection. You will never ever hear the environmentalist wackos criticize what lions do. Or criticize what parakeets do. Pick an animal…

Only one response to this is possible:

From the Talking Heads Album Fear of Music -- , “Animals”

They say they don't need money

They're living on nuts and berries

They say animals don't worry

You know animals are hairy?

They think they know what's best

They're making a fool of us

They ought to be more careful

They're setting a bad example…

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

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Gouging the Poor

Barbara Ehrenreich has an excellent piece up on Salon that deals with the gouging of the poor:

All across the country — from California and Texas to Pennsylvania — counties and municipalities have been toughening laws against truancy and ratcheting up enforcement, sometimes going so far as to handcuff children found on the streets during school hours. In New York City, it’s now a crime to put your feet up on a subway seat, even if the rest of the car is empty, and a South Carolina woman spent six days in jail when she was unable to pay a $480 fine for the crime of having a “messy yard.” Some cities — most recently, Houston and Philadelphia — have made it a crime to share food with indigent people in public places.

Being poor itself is not yet a crime, but in at least a third of the states, being in debt can now land you in jail. If a creditor like a landlord or credit card company has a court summons issued for you and you fail to show up on your appointed court date, a warrant will be issued for your arrest. And it is easy enough to miss a court summons, which may have been delivered to the wrong address or, in the case of some bottom-feeding bill collectors, simply tossed in the garbage — a practice so common that the industry even has a term for it: “sewer service.”

Simply being poor is becoming, more and more, a criminal offense. This is not because people in power got together in smoked filled rooms and said, “Let’s implement policies that lock more and more people into poverty.” Nor did we we evolve into homo sapiens because a group of australopithicus africani decided they wanted smaller teeth and less prominent brow ridges. It’s because the current system of bullying low income Americans works out for the 1%.

So they support and implement laws guaranteed to make thousands of Americans even more insecure. A frightened workforce is a malleable workforce.

And an imprisoned workforce is even better.

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

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This morning Darlinghurst Road was quieter. There were a few people out before dawn and the food stands were open, but it wasn't the same carnival atmosphere. At sunrise, the Bada Bing Night Spot actually seemed to close down. Several thin, attractive-but-tired looking girls in jeans and flat shoes emerged and stopped to talk to the bouncers. One of the girls told an apparently funny story that involved a lot of arm-waving. She briefly mimed someone swinging drunkenly on a pole. Everyone laughed, a taxi pulled up, and the girls climbed in. The Bada Bing's doors were closed and the bouncers gone. The sun was out, the week had begun, and Darlinghurst Road had on its innocent face.

***

As we left on our walk to Paddington I saw yet another girl on the street, very lovely in a long flowing lavender dress and loose dark hair. She was standing barefoot on the curb, hailing a taxi with one hand and in the other holding to her chest a pair of hideous high heeled shoes. It occurred to me that the girl we saw the day before from the back, walking barefoot, was probably also carrying hideous high heeled shoes against her front.

***

I'm afraid I didn't find Paddington that interesting. It just seemed to be a long line of clothing boutiques, with an occasional empty storefront, retail versions of the terraced houses. It was before 9:00 am and nothing was open yet. The number of empty, boarded up stores was, in fact a bit striking, and we found one public bulletin board plastered with anguished flyers. "Why am I still VACANT?" one asked, in a letter addressed to local landlords, "Is that what you are asking yourself?" Petitions were up about a clearway that many seemed to be blaming, a few of them half torn off as though someone had tried, unsuccessfully, to remove them.

We walked all the way to where the street ended at another, larger cross street, then walked back on the other side of the street, which, because it had cafes and a school, was a bit more lively. As we approached Paddington Public School, a massive, venerable building connected to a massive venerable church, we heard children's voices laughing, yelling, occasionally screaming, the sound of running feet. Then we heard someone ringing a large hand bell, and the voices began to die down. (It sounded exactly like Sister Boniface ringing the bell at Our Lady of Lourdes.) By the time we passed the noise shouts had died down to a bubbling murmur and we glimpsed clots of uniformed schoolchildren trying to form themselves into something approximating lines.

As we walked on, we encountered several stragglers, a little boy walking almost at a trot and trying to look blase as he adjusted his backpack, his tie slightly askew, a little girl being led demurely by her mother, and, in the garden area just beyond the Paddington Grind Cafe, a boy discreetly urinating into the bushes while his father stood nearby checking text messages on his Iphone. (I could just imagine the conversation immediately preceding that. "Now, for Christ's sake? We're already late!")

***


There was a woman walking her labradoodle in the Paddington Reservoir garden and Michael approached her to ask her about the empty storefronts we'd seen. She was bluff, slightly plump, with short reddish hair. "I've lived here forty years, all my life and never seen it like this," she said. "Paddington is famous, you know. Lot's of important designers got their start here at the Saturday market, and even during the week people come from all over the world just to shop here. And now stores are closing with no notice! No warning signs to customers, you just go there one day and the door is padlocked!"

"And they're staying empty. I blame the internet. Yes, I buy things online sometimes too, I admit that, but I still make the effort to visit our local stores." She sighed and shook her head. "Forty years," she repeated. "I've never seen it like this."

***

Paddington's Chauvel Cinema is in a large, handsome, and venerable building that, according to the cornerstone, had gone up in 1918. It also houses the Paddington Public Library which was, of course, not yet open. The building did not appear to have been built from the same kind of sandstone we'd seen in other old buildings, but it was painted yellow. Perhaps all the sandstone had left Sydney residents with the conviction that some shade of yellow is the proper color for all civic buildings.

The doors to the cinema were open. We walked up a carpeted stairway, into a lobby where we could smell popcorn being popped. Michael accosted someone who looked like he belonged there and asked if it was okay if we looked around a little. "Sure, I don't mind," the guy said, rather vaguely. "Maybe someone will show you around." (It has since occurred to me that we merely assumed he worked there. He might have just been someone hanging around waiting for the Chauvel Cinema Cafe to open.) We took this as permission to explore. Michael was intent on seeing the theater, and he pushed open a door that plainly said "Theater Closed" and we stepped in.

Many years ago, we visited an alleged "movie palace" in Paris and were unimpressed. I had taken away the snotty American assumption that, really, only Americans understand what makes a movie palace a true movie palace. The Chauvel Cinema theater disabused me of this. No, it's not the Castro, but it's close, with an enormous screen covered by a dark red curtain, and rows and rows of upholstered seats beneath a mile-high, elegantly arched ceiling. And (I could not quite get over this) they were popping popcorn before 10:00 am. And the movie posters were for interesting films, THIS IS THE PLACE with Sean Penn, TRISHHMA... And a sign said that if you didn't like the movie they'd give you your money back. Yes, I remain very, very impressed.

***

Back at King's Cross we decided on lunch from a Darlinghurst Road food counter that I'd noticed had been especially crowded the morning before, Four Season's Chicken. There we each ordered a kebab from an unsmiling old greek fellow with a '70's style haircut. When he asked me what kind of sauce I wanted, I took a chance and told him "chile."

If you order a kebab in the United States, you're likely to get a styrofoam container with a skewered kebab and a side of rice pilaf. In Australia, "kebabs" are closer to what we would call a Gyro, tenderly roasted chunks of meat with onions, peppers, and other good things, wrapped in a thick pita-like bread. We carried ours back to our little white cube. The ladies of Darlinghurst Road (and their customers) were right. This was good. More than good. So good that I hesitated before eating the last little morsel because I didn't want it to be over.

Michael hopped on his 11:00 amshuttle to the conference center. I wiped my mouth, finished a cold bottle of Schweppes Bitter Lemon (the only soft-drink I've ever encountered that doesn't leave you thirstier) gathered my purse and my iPad, and set out for my first solitary walk through Sydney.

***

My first stop was the Barracks Museum, a battered looking, forbidding sandstone pile crowned with a clock and the words "L. Macquarie, Esq., Governor 1817." According to Ruth Park:

Hyde Park Barracks were designed as a male convict dormitory. They were built in two years, and from 1822 were occupied by up to nine hundred convicts... There were twelve well ventilated wards, each in charge of a watchman, who had to summon the guard if fighting or sodomy took place. The men slept in hammocks, and were called at sunrise to a nourishing breakfast of porridge, which they hated.

For years, also according to Park, the barracks were neglected, used occasionally as government office buildings, and more or less constantly threatened with demolition by Australians still a wee bit sensitive about their origins as a penal colony. Now, of course, that's changed. It's a museum, its story laid out and graphically depicted with the weird combination of anger, regret, pride, and relish with which modern Australians view their history.

The exhibits included walls where the layers of paint and the old woodwork and brickwork were preserved and labeled, murals depicting Sydney's early, rather harrowing history, several mummified rats, debris like clay pipe bowels and discarded shoes, a revoltingly realistic plastic facsimile of the watery soup the convicts were fed, an upstairs room, peopled only with wooden silhouettes of various past convicts and the very hard-to-read early 19th century paperwork offering their particulars, ghostly voices over the sound system reading quotes from convict histories, and a reconstruction of the room where the inmates slept, hung with uninviting brown hammocks that looked like discarded insect skins. You could even look through the original holes in the wall where warders kept an eye on their charges.

I walked back downstairs to the main room with the murals. A teacher had led her class of eight-year-olds in and they were all settled on a bench in their uniforms (boys in little blue shorts, white shirts, blue jackets and beanies, girls in little blue skirts and white blouses, all carrying backpacks) to listen to her lecture about the barracks.

Which was, I can safely say, unlike anything I ever heard at Slidell Grammar. "Now, children," she said, holding up something that looked like a prop from a Vincent Price movie. "Who can tell me what this is? Nobody? Very well. It's called a cat o' nine tails. See the little knots on the ends...?"

Certainly not the kind of thing Mrs. Wiggins would have told us, which is a pity because I would have been as delighted and fascinated as those kids plainly were.

***

My next stop was the Sydney Police museum which, due to Sydney's perverse practice of changing the names of streets for a while, and then changing them back, was hard to find. I finally located it just off McQuarie street, an old police station, a sandstone cottage among all the sandstone mammoths, with the cut out of a unhappy cartoon convict in one window. I paid my $10 and was handed a small map of the museum, with instructions not to go into a couple of rooms that were being renovated.

There was a room of police uniforms, then and how. A room that seemed devoted to past heroics of the Sydney Police, with some tut-tutting over past excesses involving aborigines. A room where the walls were lined with various horrifying weaponry confiscated from suspects over the past 150 years, everything from makeshift machetes to a tiny, almost jewel-like 19th century revolver. Death masks of various baddies after execution, all looking pretty unhappy. And of course, almost an entire room dedicated to the Pajama Girl, the Jane Doe in chinese pajamas who went unidentified for a few years and was kept in a formaldehyde bath in one of the police stations until they figured out who she was.

All of this has, naturally enough, a sort of cumulative effect that sneaks up on you. I was in the pajama girl room, reading a hanging sign that included pictures of her in life sitting moodily on a beach alongside a photo of what she looked like after they found her when the hanging sign began to sway. I don't mean it moved a little. I mean it swayed from side to side for no reason I could discern. I reached up and stopped it, waited a moment, then continued reading. It started swaying again. I stopped it. Then I very calmly moved on to a smaller section of the room dedicated to a grisly kidnapping/murder.

The lobby had a shelf of Australian-based true crime that included books I suspected would be hard to find in the United States. After a long, pleasurable browse, I chose The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House, by Kate Summerscale, which I later discovered was not about an Australian murder at all. It was about the Constance Kent case, one of of the most English of English murders.

***

I was getting sleepy in the late afternoon, so I decided a flat white was in order, and I stopped at a coffee bar. While the girl was fixing it, I asked her what a flat white was, and she recited almost word for word the same thing the waitress at a completely different place in Manly Beach had said the day before.

"But how is that different from a cafe au lait?" I asked.

She stopped and looked at me, wide-eyed and bit indignant. "It's an Aussie drink!" she exclaimed.

"And it's delicious." I assured her.

She handed me my flat white, apparently mollified. "It's the weakest coffee drink," she told me. "The strongest is cappucino."

***

What we learned at dinner.

If you're in an Australian sushi bar, and at the end of your meal, you ask your young waitress for your "check," she will look confused, ask you to repeat it, and then go confer anxiously with her boss about whether or not they really need to write you a check. The proper term is "bill."

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Why Gay Marriage is Important

Five years ago, we decided to come out to our families. My family was happy I’d found the love of my life. My nieces love Uncle Tom. Unfortunately though,Tom’s family wasn’t as supportive…

Suppose your spouse died and you found yourself legally and personally treated as nothing more than a roommate?

Crossposted from Thoughtcrimes

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