Have no fear

For those people who panicked, thought I had run away or entered a self-imposed blogging hiatus this is not the case.

I could provide a four page account of what happened. I hope you have more to do with your day than read my dribble. Cutting a long and boring story short: I signed out of the home page for blogspot. I forgot my user-name and password. I attempted to re-set it. Alas blogspot and yahoo are having disagreements. I pursued other means. What seems a life time later (four days) it was reset.

I presume the person that sent me this email was hinting that this blog would be the appropriate forum to bring to your attention..Thanks Dad.

Em,
some Saturday mornings i get to listen to this programme and have just looked up on the internet, low and behold the interview with Peter Macintyre with his house on the river in Kew, 1955, that is before Mum was born. Also, programme on shoes that i partly heard, also very interesting that is ...www.abc.net.au/rn/bydesign
Cheers Dad

p.s. for those of you who have not as yet met my rather eccentric family both my Mother and Father have a passion for 1960s architecture and furniture. One of there favorite architects is Robin Boyd. To say he was their favorite would be a big judgment call. They have diverse tastes and one would hope my Mother's favorite architect is my Dad. Building on this interest for things of the 1950s and 1960s my father's PAJ (that's pride and joy) is the Eames Chair my Mum gave him. He still has the box it was shipped in and is storing it safely. My Mother bought herself a Wassily Chair, actually circa 1925 however it embraces design techniques and styles used in the 1960s. Hopefully one day they can visit this place and this place together. When visiting Herman Miller, all cards and accesses to finances should be remain in a locked vault. It may be too tempting. i've seen my Mother try to restrain herself. While my Father has always been interested in this stuff....Mum I'm not sure, nonetheless, I am sure it is probably a reaction to years of unwilling exposure to antiques selected by others.

And yes to all those Canadians out there I am aware that this is based in Toronto. Apologies to all my Australian friends but Canadians continually need to re-assure themselves how terrible this country is. If you don't believe me read this.

Odd as it is while my Mother has a handbag fetish my Father has a shoe one, primarily for women's shoes. He doesn't wear them, just admires them from a distance. Andrea, Dad I and we would invite Christine Hogarth along ,if she wasn't to busy rising to political prominence in Canada, would do some damage at Miss Louise in Collins Street, Melbourne. Dad, I don't think you've ever purchased a pair of shoes for me, aside from runners. This is your chance... (p.s. I am sure they don't stock large enough sizes for Sarah and Mum so there is not an opportunity for them to be offended.) But I can probably think a number of far more functional things to purchase before a pair of shoes...like water tanks...

In the meantime I have been doing a bit of reading.
This article strikes fear into my heart, 'Poor pitiful Oz', but all it really does is eloquently state the obvious. Richard Neville writes:

"It is said that a leader who thinks of the next election is a politician, but a leader who thinks of the next generation is a statesman. By that criterion, it is no mystery where history will place John Howard. The key threats facing Australia today, including environmental degradation, the rise of militarism and the decline of free speech, are rooted in a decade of toxic federal governance. Instead of storming TV, the views of voters are shaped by it and the shock-jocks. ...Once we were larrikins with a taste of defiance; now we are lapdogs with a thirst for conformity. On the matter of values, John Howard and Kim Beazley are joined at the hip. In Oz 2006, to be a "civil libertarian" is to invite abuse, while to dismiss human rights as "no longer sacrosanct", or to deny inconvenient facts about global warming or indigenous history, is to attract government patronage. Once we had bush poets, mocking the pompous; now we have scribblers, licking the hands of their feeders.
Puffed-up politicians on both sides of the House seek from new arrivals a pledge of citizenship that endorses "Australian values" at a time when our values are tangled in a global tumble-dryer. That a government should demand such endorsement is itself a violation of a core Australian value - the freedom to think what we please. To think, for example, that numerous values exemplified by our Prime Minister are crap.

That's a rather good summary of politics, it's leaders and the change in the Australian psyche over the past decade.

Neville further comments:
"Leaders of developing nations are becoming enraged by our indifference to the impact of emissions on their citizens. A statesman would recognise that the fate of the earth is a shared responsibility, but we have turned our backs on potential climate refugees from waterlogged Tuvalu.... in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, where propaganda was put above truth. The jolly hordes of peaceful protesters in Sydney and Melbourne were branded a "mob", and those who tried to alert the nation to the manipulations of intelligence and the subsequent outbreaks of torture were gagged or slandered. The result is continuing carnage, with the fingerprints of our leaders on the corpses. In the "war on terror", Australia's fair-go reputation was traded for "future security" and a White House banquet."

"Freedom of information has been re-constituted into a new value, the freedom from information. Any document with the potential of "embarrassing" the Government is quarantined from public scrutiny."

Nostalgically, he laments:
"There was a time when Aussies scorned officialdom. The boys from the farms and the factories who swarmed to the front line in the First World War, including those who landed at Gallipoli, were renowned for their disregard of red tape and for pricking the pomp of superiors. ...The huge anti-war moratoriums of the Vietnam era also displayed a sharp defiance for delusions of big-wigs...."

"Today's TV politics is unable to provide perspective, history, meaning or foresight."

For the entire article from the Age click here.

Stay tuned for:
1. re-adjusting to life at Bond and law school after a time down south
2. Canadian and Australian language variations
3. My new flatmate Erin
4. De-brief from the races at the Gold-Coast Turf Club on Saturday
5. Pending social and academic commitments at Bond
6. Planned travels