Men’s slopestyle Olympic gold medalist Sage Kotsenburg is a good dude

By Mike Wise Washington Post February 8, 2014,

SOCHI, Russia — Nutrition being so crucial to world-class athletic performance, Sage Kotsenburg tweeted a photo of his pre-event meal Friday night, arranging five of them just so, alongside the title of his work of art: “#OlympicOnionRings.”

“I was eating mad snacks,” the first gold medalist of these Winter Olympics said underneath a dish mop of scraggly blond split ends. “Chocolate. Onion rings. Chips. We were chilling really hard. Then we fell asleep watching ‘Fight Club.’ Getting stoked, you know?”

Dude, totally.

It was past 6 p.m. Saturday in a large conference room here when a free radical from Park City, Utah, named Sage, who has a brother named Blaze, and who says “stoked” like, a lot — usually between “mega,” “awesome,” “gnarly,” and “whoa!” — perfectly reprised the role of America’s favorite slacker turned counterculture hero.

“Good old Spicoli,” Kotsenburg said, pumped by the Internet comparisons between himself and the surfer-stoner dude originally played by Sean Penn in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” — and, okay, once played by Shaun White before he went corporate, became part of the establishment and pulled out of the competition

Kotsenburg is a more believable Spicoli anyway. When his parents wanted to come to Sochi to watch, he told them they stress him out too much. “I was kind of like, ‘Hey, if you guys could just kind of hang out at home.’ ”

He had won nothing since he was 11 years old before qualifying for the Olympics, a duration of losing he called “a mega drought.” After qualifying Saturday morning, he tweeted, “Whoa how random is this I made finals at the Olympics!!!”

In the time it took to type this, Kotsenburg’s Twitter followers grew by 5,000, his Q-rating spiking the moment he pulled off something called “the Holy Crail” to win the first slopestyle snowboarding competition in the Olympics.

Slopestyle is a dialed-down version of the halfpipe routine White has won twice at the Winter Games. Think of the advanced kids on the obstacle course at the ski park, flying off rails and jumps and generally mocking the children who can’t do the snowplow once they get off the lift. Now think of one of those kids exponentially showing off, spinning 41 / 2 revolutions, arching his back like a limbo contestant as he holds on to the front of his snowboard while landing flawlessly. Voila! The Holy Crail.

Three minutes before his final run, Kotsenburg grabbed a phone from the backpack of his wax technician — because, really, what’s a great snowboarder without his own wax technician? — and called Blaze in Park City, 2 a.m. there, to tell his brother his plans.

“ ‘Man, I think I’m going to do this trick,’ ” he said. “He was like, ‘You know what, everyone is so stoked, you’ve got this. No pressure.’ ”

I could try to dissect what he did, but I would be faking it worse than if I were trying to explain a quadruple toe loop. Better sometimes to let the artist explain his work:

“Yeah. So I, uh, dropped in, and I did a cab 270 onto the first down rail, then followed up with a half-cab on, back-five off, on the second feature, and then a half-cab up, lay backside 180 off the cannon box, then a cab double cork 1260 Holy Crail from 10 off the toe with rocket air, then a back 1620 Japan.”

Whoa.

“That was the best run of my life, hands down,” Kotsenburg said. “I said to my coach, ‘Hey, Bill, I might do a 1620 Japan. It’s never been done before and I had never tried it before. He was like, ‘You’re in the finals of the Olympics. You might as well go all out.’

“And I just threw it and it ended up coming around just like the 1260, but a full 360 more,” he said. “I could not believe riding out of that that I landed that in the first try.”

Dude!

After he won, Kotsenburg called his father and, by association, 50 people watching live in his house back home.

“He was like, ‘WHAAAAAT!’ And then I was on speakerphone, and hearing their voices was just the coolest thing ever. . . . It could be a dangerous night in Park City.”

Somewhere, Shaun White was probably thinking, “That used to be me,” before he became a corporate leviathan no longer resembling the onion-ring-eating creativity that forced the International Olympic Committee into an uneasy alliance with a bunch of long-haired, teenagers who began doubling as IOC cash cows almost 12 years ago.

Sebastien Toutant, the Canadian who finished ninth, put it best: White is “a rock star. I feel like we don’t stay at the same places as him. We don’t talk. It’d be cool to sit down and just be able to ride like a normal friend.”

“The only thing I feel sad for are the Americans,” he added, referring to White’s decision to withdraw from the event. “They could have had another American in the final today. It’s not my country, it’s not my deal. But they could have had two Americans on the podium.”

What’s important is we got the best dude.

A dude who gets the genesis of his, uh, discipline (“You got to think out of the box every once in a while and bring it back to being creative, and that’s for sure where snowboarding started”), a dude who gets his sport’s place in society (“We’re riding a piece of wood with plastic on it down a hill hitting rails and jumps — it’s like the randomest idea ever”), a dude who, in short, would make Spicoli’s former uncool teacher fold his arms in satisfaction at the medal ceremony.

Wherever Mr. Hand is now, he must be one proud dude.

saturday night’s alright for judith e. wrighting
by Andy White

word miners
rhyme diggers
beat hoppers
everywhere

solid gone
raving on

I can’t write continuous prose
any more
all my phrases
fall into
separate lines
thoughts bookended by

pauses

and as the latest metaphor comes
crashing into my head

a chinese spaceship landing
on the leaf of a magnolia tree

I find myself
back with the prose
of the melbourne plain
(where rain rarely falls)

fixing a house
where the holes get in

hoping

keeps my mind
from wandering

listening to

word miners
rhyme diggers
beat hoppers
everywhere

solid gone
raving on

from “Stolen Moments’ Andy White 2011 (Another Lost Shark Publication)

This week’s Musical Dispatch is from Africa, Mali to be more precise.  Boubacar Traoré is a renowned singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Traoré also goes by the nickname Kar Kar, “the one who dribbles too much” in Bambara, a reference to his soccer playing: “a nickname I got from playing soccer when I was young.

This story comes from Lieve Joris’ “Mali Blues” 1996.  Lieve spent time with Kar whilst researching this book.  They were together in Kar’s birth town, Kayes, Mali, looking at the compound where there were a number of French colonial railway houses.

He (Kar, Boubacar Traoré), came here often with his friends; one of them would act as lookout while the others climbed over the wall to steal fruit.  That’s how they found out about white people’s cats.  Fat, lazy animals, not like the strays in their neighbourhoods that could only be caught and put in the pan after an intensive round-up.

“You ate cat?”

“You bet!  Our mothers were more than happy to lend us a pan when we’d caught one, because cat meat is good for children: it makes them limber and protects them against evil spirits.  Why else would they use so many cats for gris-gris? The skin of a black cat is particularly powerful.  Too bad old people take those kinds of secrets to their graves, just because they can’t find anyone worthy of passing them on to.”

The tame cats in the white people’s gardens caught their fancy, and it wasn’t long before one after the other began disappearing.  Kar sees me shudder and laughs.  “They had so much meat on them that we had no appetite left when evening came around.  Oh, they were so tender.  Especially the haunches.”

“Did your mothers know where those cats came from?”

“No, we didn’t tell them that.  My mother wouldn’t have put up with it; my father worked for a white man.”

Kar’s story made me queasy at first, but now I’m starting to feel a bit of unholy glee.  My white acquaintances’ cats in Bamako (the capital of Mali, in the south of the country, on the River Niger; pop. est 1.7 mil 2009) eat meat their young servants could never afford, and the memory of the Amsterdam animal ambulance racing up to rescue a cat that had almost been asphyxiated by a fire in my neighbourhood still makes me uneasy.  That Kar and his friends dared to wring the necks of those lethargic symbols of Western wellbeing!

“The cat that belonged to the gendarmerie was the fattest of all,” Kar says, “but also the hardest to catch.  It sat on the commander’s windowsill all day, purring.  we lurked around for weeks, whistling, hissing, meowing, trying a thousand different tricks, but there was no way to get it to move.  Until Mani, the biggest rascal in our group, came up with the idea of asking the butcher for some leftovers.  We fried that up into a real tasty meal and used it to lure the cat down off the windowsill.  Then we threw a net over it and raced away.  While we were running, Mani kept yelling: ‘I get the butt!’ “

“You were a bunch of scoundrels!”

“We certainly were.  Sometimes we’d walk past the villa in question the next day and see the lady of the house wandering around with tears in her eyes.  As if there’d been a death in the family!  even the commander of the gendarmerie was out of sorts for days after his cat disappeared.”  Sounding chastened, he adds: “when you’re young, you don’t think about the suffering yu cause others.  Only God can forgive us for what we did back then.”

Now listen to Kar Kar here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4uJP6atMP8

and again here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsjQ0-QIWks

Worst. Culture. War. Ever.

By Guy Rundle
It’s only a culture war if your enemy is copping most of the damage – this is an incompetent mess. The left needs to stop panicking over Abbott and start strategising, writes Guy Rundle

Good God. I’ve been writing about Australian politics for close to 20 years now, and US politics for close to a decade, and I have to say, I’ve seen some crap culture wars in my time, but this one is really a new low.

Since taking power, the Abbott government has shown an unprecedented lack of focus. All new governments wobble a bit, but this one has wobbles in its wobbles. As Abbott arsed around in the first weeks, his loyal retainers in the Murdoch press kept repeating, with diminishing degrees of conviction, “government by adults, government by adults” — even as most of the trouble seemed to come from Christopher Pyne, the one member of parliament who appears to be forever nine years old. His hamfisted dealing with the Gonski question ensured that for a while, the official opposition was the NSW Government.

As our relationship with Indonesia collapsed to its lowest point since the nation’s founding, and we prated on about sovereignty while crossing back and forth on their territorial waters, to the point where they have now dispatched ships to actively enforce it, the yet more feeble cry was heard, “government by adults”. George Brandis attempted to get something going in free speech and the repeal of the “insult” provisions. The Liberal state governments introduced a range of legislation so draconian in so many different ways, that it made a mockery of the Right’s commitment to “freedomwatch” — so much so that incoming rights bureaucrat, former classical liberal, Tim Wilson, was moved to make a few plaintive croaks.

Then the oldskool culture/political war began, banging the drum for a new curriculum, to be reviewed by the most obviously right wing fixers that could be drummed up, to revise a process that took five years to complete. But that was interrupted by Abbott’s announcement that he would seek a specific mention of indigenous people in the preamble to the constitution, something that has been anathema to the rightwing chorus for years.

Then just as everyone was working out what they thought about that, there was the attack on the ABC, and the intimation that it should be “on Australia’s side” —  ie on the government’s side — and then Malcolm Turnbull’s frank rebuttal to that, and then inner Sydney chipmunk Craig Laundy’s statement that reporting on Edward Snowden was “un-Australian”, and then Bolt’s statement that he was indigenous, and on we went.

Come on, this isn’t a culture war! It’s not a culture war when most of the damage is inflicted on your own side by friendly fire. But the only people trying to take it more seriously than the ragged right, are elements of the left, who jump at each chaotic announcement as if it were a 3am knock at the door. Can we stipulate for the record that the Abbott government is doing a terrible job, governmentally and politically, that their immediate post-election drop in the polls reflect this, and then start to strategise from there?

Two obvious points come out of the recent months. The first is that the Abbott government has no real game plan, apart from killing the carbon tax, and stopping the boats, and then a footling series of culture war maneouvres. The real stuff — going up against the union movement, etc is going to be hard, and they’re not in shape for that yet. Truth is, they can’t even manage a culture war, tripping over themselves as different and contradictory initiatives fly every which way.

Why are these political moves proving so chaotic, compared to the last culture war, in the Howard years? The answer is that Howard’s gestures were part of a larger movement, the neoconservative wave rushing through the West after 9/11. The idea that decadent leftists had left the place to wrack and ruin, and that “Western Civ” would now be restored was quite powerful. Now? Meh. Western societies have returned to inward self-preoccupation. In the meantime, they have simply become more left-liberal, more comfortable and relaxed about being post-Christian, post-conservative cultures.

Ten years ago people were still talking about “multiculturalism” as a scourge, as if assimilation could replace it as a strategy. Now the obvious question is, assimilation to what? We have become a more globalised, placeless culture than we ever were. Same-sex marriage may not have been achieved, but it is no longer some exotic bloom. Cory Bernardi’s book did not function as a call to arms, but as a silly season moment of severe oddness, as or more embarrassing to the Coalition as it was to anyone.

That’s one reason why the Howard government was able to run a more efficient culture war. They had things they wanted to get done, and a sufficient external sense of grievance to match and support it. So it was a steady march through the ABC, the museum, the curriculum etc. Even then, it met with little success. Now its major achievement is to draw focus away from its popular policies towards boat arrivals etc.

For people on the left to keep reacting to these scattered and fragmented moves would seem merely to give them a greater efficacy than they have. Everything the Coalition has done — from its pre-election commitment to a range of Labor policies, to the absence of a programme now — is evidence of weakness, not strength. That’s something that a number of us — Tad Tietze on Left Flank, the Piping Shrike blog — have been saying for a while, and it’s something to recognise in a political practice.

What is required is to respond to these various haphazard attacks on public institutions, voluntary groupings (ie unions etc), with a reunification of them, and go on the attack. This would usually be the provenance of the ALP, but since they have abandoned any notion of defending even the most minimal social democratic idea of state and society, and relapsed to some free-market footnote to the government, whining about jobs, it has to be done elsewhere. The Greens don’t have the speaking position yet.

My suggestion is, that with people already starting spontaneous protests about the ABC, the Victorian government’s assembly laws, the Queensland bikie laws, with a renewed focus on refugees and unions, a simple overarching campaign called ‘Public Good’ might be the go. Public Good — emphasising both the idea that distanced public institutions such as the ABC are A Good Thing, but also that, with refugees, there is a strong public desire to do good, to be simply decent, rather than the current metered out sadism.

Public Good — I don’t propose it as any sort of group, meeting in church halls blah blah. I suggest it’s a logo, a symbol, a meme, an evolving set of simple principles which people campaigning on one or other of these issues would attach to what they’re doing. Eventually, if it has some sort of life, it may in turn draw some physical manifestations in its own name. The important thing seems to be to unify these separate issues, set chaotically by the Coalition, and give them a single form, that then starts to set the agenda.

If anyone feels thus inspired and wants to get some sort of logo, words going, circulating, just, well, do it. It lives or dies on simply entering circulation. It’s not the sort of thing that can be readily appropriated. It would look so obviously ridiculous if fluoridationists or creationists were using it. Public Good, as I may have mentioned.

Meanwhile, the Abbott thing shudders on. If it were a musical, it would have closed in the Geelong tryouts.

In reference to yesterday’s blog Quentin has kindly provided us with the construction plans for the Airfix 1: 600 scale Bismarck. Please note the title, “HMS Bismark”, (Even the spelling is wrong). And dear reader, note that the model was printed and manufactured in Kent. So we can gladly say that it’s not the inadvertent mistake made by a “foreign” individual. Furthermore he has also provided us with a stunning rendition of an airfix scale 1: 72  Me 110 Zerstorer, (destroyer) It also shows a sanitised tail fin, sans Swastika.

Quentin Cockburn wrote the following in light of pictures of Sukas.  (Stuka, German in full Sturzkampfflugzeug (“dive-bomber”),  a low-wing, single-engine monoplane—especially the Junkers JU 87 dive-bomber, (the ju87G Kanonenvogel, literally “Cannon Bird”)—used by the German Luftwaffe from 1937 to 1945, with especially telling effect during the first half of World War II.)

Hello Hello…. I think the first one is the more archetypal stuka, and of particular note, the large swastika, (now removed so not to entice young children into Nazism).

by Quentin Cockburn

My son, (he is 11 years old) is constructing a model aeroplane.  I am so pleased that he is doing so, anything that’s a diversion from the computer keyboard, the iPad, and all that other instant gratificational stuff.  Model making can be boring, tedious, drawn-out, but very fascinating.  I’ve trained him well.  People often make a big mistake; they go through the ordeal of making the thing, and then leave it dusty on some shelf or display cabinet, stiff, dull and immovable.  We prefer to keep the models “active”.  We fabricate dioramas, film them in possible scenes, and then finally blow them up.  This last part is much more difficult than it used to be.  ‘Why?’ I hear you ask.  Fireworks of the conventional type are now unobtainable.  We must improvise.  This requires hours of preparation as we can’t even resort to the old standard, the air rifle; that’s more or less banned as well.

Curiously though, I am worried about the state of model making.  Marshall McLuhan wrote about the ‘Medium being the Message’.  At Hernes yesterday we saw splendid models, each with a magnificent painting of a plane, a battleship, a tank.  The german ones are particularly captivating.  The Germans had a message then, it was world domination in shorthand.  A Stuka looks like an evil crow, its evilness accentuated by the wheel spats, the bent wing, talons outstretched machine guns spitting death, on the tail that chisel tipped angular oblong is missing the only defining symbol of evil, the swastika. (Un-airbrushed Stuka in the air, right)  I have been told that swastikas cannot be included in the bravura depictions of warfare.  I am worried about this.  Wasn’t the whole point of our victory over the nazis and their vile policies to defeat that evil symbol, to prove that man was more than machine.  I have been told its airbrushing is to appease the Jewish lobby,  ‘The what?’ I asked.  Surely they of all people would not want us to forget, the banality of evil and all that.  No I am told, the reproduction of that hateful symbol in any shape, manner or form is repugnant, (criminal even) and thus it must be erased,  ‘Bollocks!’ I say.  You might as well go the full monty then, and replace Hitler with Dart Vader.  And what’s at stake here?  Do they think that skinheads will be inspired by the miniature swastikas on any 1:72 scale Messerschmitt and them commit a heinous crime, a crime, dare I say it, ‘against humanity’!

History like this, not taught, but condemned by association, is very dangerous.  That symbol must be recognised for what it is.  To air brush it, gives it a false power.  It will establish and harbour all that comes from holocaust deniers, and fundamentalists.  Besides, my old man fought against that symbol, and his patients, (from both sides), will not want its message to pass in vain.  And for twelve year olds, denying it makes it truly evil, and underground, they’ll want some of that when they’re fifteen.

Worse still, if you wonder about the relevance of this, I have in my possession a model that is well known, none other than that irrepressible Bismarck (left).  Now you’d think, though the swastika has been airbrushed, the message of its sinking, and its audacious venture, all about politics and ideology would not be forgotten, yet the instruction title reads “HMS Bismarck”.  So the story goes the British then sunk their own ship.
You figure.  History Wars, who won? Who knows?

And who could resist this song? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KecIdlEAKhU

February already!  Aren’t we off to a flier?  And our Federal Government doing so very well “now the adults are in charge” as Guy Rundle reports here.  This weeks quote is from him about Minister Christopher Pyne (right): “the one member of parliament who appears to be forever nine years old.”

Our week started in response to News Corporation’s unrelenting push for assimilation of Indigenous Australians with three posts on assimilation.  These are all indigenous authored. The first by Kado Muir, Mitch and Peter Watts, examined our Federal Governments newly appointed Indigenous Advisor Council and discusses the nature of the appointments.   The second, titled “Warren Mundine: the White Sheep of the Family” is by Gary Foley.  The third, also by Gary Foley, focusses on Noel Pearson in which the author argues “it is clear that what Pearson’s ideas are ultimately about is pure and simple assimilationism.”  Read that post here

In our seventeenth chapter of Man as Machine Tarquin O’Flaherty uses quotes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet to emphasise his argument.  He also, by the by, informs us of the origin of Hansard.  Enthralling reading here

Passive Complicity has an ongoing interest in both Education and Equality, and this post brings both together with Luke Mansillo’s “Education, government funded inequality”  It is of interest that our Government continues to fund private enterprise education but can find no money to support manufacturing or food processing.  (see todays main post for more on inequality in the US)

This week’s Musical Dispatch from the Front was first published on 19 August 2010.  Passive Complicity wishes that it was not just as relevant today as it was back then.

Poetry Sunday – “To his coy mistress” by Andrew Marvell – “I think any young lady on reading this poem might be persuaded to the belief that the poet only has the girl’s interest at heart.” writes Poetry Editor, Ira Maine. Make up your own mind after reading the said poem and Ira’s comments here

Good reading, join the conversation.

Cheers
Cecil Poole

There are numerous studies confirming significant and serious deleterious consequences of wealth and income inequality.  These studies also indicate the passive acceptance of this growing inequality.  The vast bulk of wealth creation (and wealth transfer) since the Global Financial Crisis has been to to already seriously wealthy.  Today’s link takes you to a site that shows the inequality is not only far greater than the bulk of US citizens would like, but far greater than they believe to be the case.  Thanks to Alan Kolher of The Eureka Report for this: Inequality in America (a six minute video powerpoint press).

After (and only after) watching this presentation are you permitted to read Ira Maine’s story below.

‘Yes,’ said the Rabbi, nodding his head, ‘and now we’re just waiting for the change!’.

“I think any young lady on reading this poem might be persuaded to the belief that the poet only has the girl’s interest at heart.” writes Poetry Editor, Ira Maine.

Make up your own mind after reading the said poem and Ira’s comments below

To His Coy Mistress

BY ANDREW MARVELL

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love’s day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires and more slow;

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

       But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found;

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long-preserved virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust;

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

       Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour

Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Thorough the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) is an odd and interesting man. Born in Yorkshire,  becomes MP for Kingston-on-Hull, friend and secretary to John Milton (who is fiercely anti-monarchy) serves as an MP in Cromwell’s government, and (miraculously) serves again as MP following the Restoration. Pleads successfully for Milton’s life to be spared when he is liable to be executed for his anti-monarchist views. Marvell is famously know as a great survivor and held various important posts until his death in 1678.

‘To His Coy Mistress’ is a poem designed to loosen ladies’ resolve. 
The poet, quite rightly begins by agreeing with the lady in question, that coyness was most certainly not a crime. He does add, however, that had we ‘…world enough and time…’ we could of course, take up positions at either ends of our worlds and love each other from a vast distance and over aeons of time.. He tells her that he would love her ‘..ten years before the Flood…’ and she, in her turn, could refuse his advances ‘…Till the conversion of the Jews…’ That is how taken he is with her, how smitten. If there was time his love would grow as slowly as vegetables until that love was ‘…vaster than Empires…’ He would devote at least a hundred years to the praise of her forehead and eyes, and then at least two hundred to adore each breast, and  ‘…but  thirty thousand to the rest…’

And why would he do this?

‘…For Lady, you deserve this State…’  She deserves nothing less than this level of adoration and that he would willingly devote himself to this level of blissful worship…except…

‘…But at my back I always hear

Times winged chariot hurrying near:…’

Sadly there is no time. Our lives are brief and allow no time for the proper business of love because before you know it;

‘…yonder all before us lie,

Desarts of vast Eternitie…’ (Deserts of…)

The emptiness, the bleak landscape of decay and death.

After so brief a period of life, our beauty is dissipated, gone, and is not coming back. Beauty, your beauty will have no place in the tomb, nor will my all too brief love song.

Then will ‘…your quaint Honour turn to dust…’ and the only thing that will breach your maidenhead will be worms!

‘…Then Worms shall try

That long Preserv’d Virginity…’

This is a jolt, a deliberate reminder, a coarse interjection and calculated to remind the girl of how fleeting youth and beauty are, and how they must not be wasted.

She wobbles! She trembles! He turns the screw;

“…The graves a fine and private place,
‘But none I think do there embrace…’

And now the persuasion, the soft and sussurrating warmth, the breathy words…

‘…Now therefore, while the youthful hew

Sits on thy skin like morning dew…’

And every pore is alive with instant fires, let us sport!

 Let us , rather than wait in ‘…Time’s slow chapt power…’, let us roll all our strength, all our pleasures all our sweetness up into one glorious ball, and tear our pleasures from the iron gates of life!

Thus though we cannot stop time passing, we’ll give it a hell of a run for it’s money!

I think any young lady on reading this poem might be persuaded  to the belief that the poet only has the girl’s interest at heart.  

IRA

Japangardi was driving from Ntaria (Hermannsburg) to Wallace Rockhole when he came across four or five policemen around a campfire. He was flagged down and Japangardi made some off the cuff remark that he’d already been stopped (and fined) by police that day. He thinks that his remark was interpreted as him being “cheeky” and a thorough examination of his vehicle ensued. One of his grandchildren was asleep on the back seat, which resulted in another fine. A white woman drove past and was not asked to stop. When I suggested that he should have pointed out the difference in treatment, Japangardi said “What? And have the yurrkunyufind another reason to fine me?”

Japangardi incidentally is a non-drinker, regularly attends church, is very much a family man, takes part in ceremonies and is a highly respected member of Yuendumu society. He is also on “Income Management”. People are able to use Income Managed money to pay fines. Any left-over they can spend on food.

Just as well they are forbidden to spend it on grog, tobacco and pornography. After all, they have such a lot of spending money. Bus loads of Yuendumu people used to go on pilgrimages to Canberra to stock up on pornography. The Intervention put a stop to that. I really think Mal Brough deserved that Bennelong Society medal.

Jakamarra was talking to a couple of his friends in the Yipirinya Shopping Centre.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/centralaustralia/3097131177/

The shopping centre was named after the Yipirinya caterpillar. Alice Springs is part of the ayepe-arenye caterpillar dreaming. The Yipirinya shopping centre is owned by Centrecorp. Centrecorp is an Aboriginal owned investment body set up to provide funding for when the royalties from (non renewable) minerals on Aboriginal land in Central Australia inevitably dry up. Call it a communal Superannuation or Savings scheme if you wish.

A uniformed security guard approached Jakamarra and his friends and told them to “move on”.  Many would have complied. Jakamarra refused. Damn impudence!

Jakamarra years ago was a Justice of the Peace. He has been the elected President of the Yuendumu Council, and is heavily involved in ceremonies. He speaks several languages and is one of the most capable interpreters (both language and culture) that Yuendumu boasts. I think the security guard was very astute, recognising the danger that Jakamarra and his friends pose to the Yipirinya shoppers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS_CLIF1h-o

Police entered Jangala’s house. They didn’t have a search warrant, they were looking for a young man they had an arrest warrant for. They didn’t find the young man but just as well they entered Jangala’s house, they found and seized a bag of fire-works. Yuendumu’s women and children are now much safer.

Jangala works for the School, he is the community liason officer and follows up on truancy. What sort of an example does he think he is setting?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aip619LJMDo

Wendy and Nungarrayi gave a one week Warlpiri course to Central Land Council personnel in Alice Springs. Nungarrayi’s daughter Nampijimpa, had to go to hospital, so Nungarrayi was waiting for Wendy in Alice Springs whilst looking after her five grandchildren. When Nampijimpa came out of hospital she had to wait for the course to run its course to get a lift back to Yuendumu. She was house bound because one child was too young to walk and another had both his legs in plaster after an operation. Nampijimpa is now back in Yuendumu surrounded and supported by her extended family. The father of the children is in gaol for traffic offences. He is a criminal. He’ll be out in a couple of weeks, having learnt his lesson.

Nyirrpi community have long asked for a police presence. Their prayers were answered with the advent of the Intervention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUifJfwBSZs

Wendy and another Nangala go to Nyirrpi once a fortnight to help at the school with the Warlpiri language programme.

Recently the topic of conversation at the school staff room was a man that had been booked for unlicensed driving of an unregistered vehicle. The consensus amongst the white staff was that this man was rather stupid, only the day before he’d been booked for the same offences.

He is a criminal, he gets firewood for his family in an old unregistered vehicle. He has not passed a test in which he demonstrates that he knows who to give way to at an intersection, nor does he know how to parallel park

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ-loe3xXLg

This man considered being caught and fined and perhaps even sent to prison a lesser risk than to become redundant to his family. When he gets out of gaol, he’ll be welcomed with open arms by his family. He’ll go back to getting firewood in an old unregistered car and be respected for it. He’ll be somebody. He may never learn to parallel park, a real handicap in Nyirrpi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h75MiZmYwv4

This from my father’s anecdotes:

SEP’08- On one occasion dad drove me into Melbourne. On finishing my business we returned to his car, to be confronted by a ‘brown bomber’ writing out a parking ticket. We were only a minute or so late, but the parking inspector had not an ounce of compassion. When dad’s polite plea was ignored, he let fly: “You should be ashamed wearing such a uniform… I was in Germany in 1930 and I saw your type… put on a bloody uniform and you think you’re God almighty…. you start with writing parking tickets and next thing you know you’re in charge of a gas chamber….” and so on…slightly embarrassing it was, but more amusing than embarrassing! There is no justice: dad ended up having to pay the fine!

Put on a uniform and next thing you know you’re on the front line. You’re the infantry for the assimilationist assault on remote Aboriginal Australia.    

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWDQRBtw8J0

Seperti biasa aku selesai dengan sebuah lagu bagus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZselcrgNSO8

Selamat tinggal, sampai waktu berikutnya

Jujur