The joys of Gutenberg

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Why this illustration? Read on.

One of the most pleasurable things for me to do on a daily basis is to go to my RSS feed for Project Gutenberg. It shows me the new additions to its vast resources that have become available for today.

Project Gutenberg is a wonderful organisation. It has been putting books free of copyright online for many years - at least 36,000 of them. Books, that is, not years....

  Before I go any further, let me clear one thing up here and now. I am, probably like you, a bibliophile. I love the books in my bookcases. They are my friends, some more than fifty years old. I love that they have different looks, formats, colours, and smells. I can tell you a book that comes from the subcontinent, Europe or North America just by its smell. I love different typefaces and fonts and the sheer feel of a book in my hands.

  Hand. Not hands. That's my problem, you see. Only one of my hands now works with the dexterity needed for reading a book, and manipulating a book in order to read it is very much a two-handed operation. Turning pages. Holding a fat paperback open. Reading in towards the too-narrow gutter between pages. It can't be done. And even worse, the font size is usually about six-point seraph and practically unreadable in poor light.

  So there's my problem, but I've adapted. Using Calibre or Kindle (free book-reading programs) on my computer, I can read anything, with my choice of how it looks on the page. That's often a damn sight better than the publishers of hard copy books trying to save money on the cost of paper. I can download practically any book on the market, or free of charge, if from somewhere like Gutenberg. I can do it on the cheapest Kindle reader on the market, and be able to hold it one-handed if necessary. It may be when I'm in bed, or when the ads are on TV.

  It works for me.

  But, as usual, I've made a long intro to what I really wanted to say, which was that there are some truly fascinating free books available. All the ones you said you were going to read but never did, and many on the Gutenberg site. You never know what's coming up.

  Take just the last two weeks' worth of new offerings, e.g. What a smorgasbord! There's something for everyone there, and some surprises. Novels, classics, scientific studies, political discourses, journals and reference books - in a variety of languages.

  The thing is, something that looks absolutely boring can turn out to be quite the opposite when you view it. Something as wonderful a piece of literature as Madame Bovary doesn't need any justification, but what about The Corner House Girls Snowbound by Grace Brooks Hill? Or And So They Were Married by Florence Morse Kingsley? Would you go for The Adventure of the Devil's Foot by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?

  Or in other categories, Why Lincoln Laughed by Russell Herman Conwell or An essay on the American contribution and the democratic idea by Winston Churchill. Maybe Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1851. Eighteenth Century lectures on elocution by Thomas Sheridan turned out to be more intriguing than I expected.

  Given my lifetime study of Bengali culture, I was delighted to come across the folktales of Bengal, beautifully illustrated in colour, and couldn't resist looking at (from the days of the Raj, obviously) Tempting Curry Dishes by Thomas J. Murrey. The only trouble with it was that for each dish, a bottle of J. P. Smith's Curry Powder was an essential ingredient!

  I was shocked at the novelty of seeing three recent items that seem rather strange in the middle of the antiquarianism of other books available; a book on email, surfing the net and a novel on computer terrorism. It was like a timewarp. They didn't quite seem to belong there.

  There were a few that I'll leave to the enquiring minds of others. Although I don't doubt in the slightest their contribution to scholarship and learning, Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson, Geographic Variation in the North American Cyprinid Fish, Hybopsis gracilis by Cross and Olund, and Remarks on the practice and policy of lending Bodleian printed books and manuscripts by Chandler are titles I won't be downloading to the Kindle.

  Oh - nor will The Water-Works and Sewerage of Monterrey, N. L., Mexico be high on the list.

  Here's the selection of books mentioned above available from Gutenberg in the past two weeks. Flaubert is in French, but there is an English edition available.

Folk-Tales of Bengal by Lal Behari Day
Language: English

The Corner House Girls Snowbound by Grace Brooks Hill
Language: English

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Language: French

And So They Were Married by Florence Morse Kingsley
Language: English

The Adventure of the Devil's Foot by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Language: English

Why Lincoln Laughed by Russell Herman Conwell
Language: English

An essay on the American contribution and the democratic idea by Winston Churchill
Language: English

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1851 by Various
Language: English

Tempting Curry Dishes by Thomas J. Murrey
Language: English

Surfing the Internet by Jean Armour Polly
Language: English

Email 101 by John Goodwin
Language: English

Terminal Compromise: computer terrorism: when privacy and freedom are the victims: a novel
Language: English

ASCE 1193: The Water-Works and Sewerage of Monterrey, N. L., Mexico by George Robert Graham Conway
Language: English

Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson
Language: English

A Discourse Being Introductory to his Course of Lectures on Elocution and the English Language (1759
Language: English Thomas Sheridan

Geographic Variation in the North American Cyprinid Fish, Hybopsis gracilis by Cross and Olund
Language: English

Remarks on the practice and policy of lending Bodleian printed books and manuscripts by Chandler
Language: English

Had Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier been read widely in modern times, I suspect Afghanistan would have been left alone (as it should have been, always!)

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Master of St Trinians, Ronald Searle

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I don't know all that much about him myself, but I do know about what or who he created - those smart, wicked, inventive girls of St Trinians who delighted adults and kids in films with antics that became the stuff of legend.

  I don't even know as much about his cartoons as I should, but Ronald Searle's enduring fame rests on them. What I can see now with crystal clarity is that his style of cartooning influenced that great and mysterious art form for a generation. Others who know this black art will speak on that with the authority I lack, and I leave it to them.

  At Teacher's College I stayed with my aunt and uncle and my cousins in the early 1960s. Uncle George was a serious man with an incisive mind, but had a keen sense of humour as well, and nothing brought it out so much as the St Trinians black and white movies of the era. His chuckles through these movies remain with me and I suspect it was their infectious nature that added much to the fun of watching them and make the memories so vivid.

  The thing about the belles of St Trinians was their constant 'up yours' to authority, their great schemes which always came off because of the sheer creativity of their naughtiness. Is it going too far to say that they made their contribution to the Women's Liberation Movement that was about to break like a tidal wave over the western world? I'm not sure, but of one thing I am. They jolly well did it on their own, old thing, sometimes with hockey sticks and lacrosse racquets, evading house mistresses in the dark passages of St Trinians dorms as they wove their nefarious schemes and brought them to fruition. They were absolutely free spirits, working the structures of authority exactly to their own advantage.

  There was, I see now more than I ever did before, a great deal of the Ronald Searle slant on life in their attitude.

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Shining India (Dalhousie Postage)

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There are some coincidences that seem remarkable, but then I guess for every one we notice, all the millions of possibilities that might have been we never know about, and never will.

  So it was when I wrote down on my 'stories to write' file that it might be amusing for people in 2012 to see classic bureaucracy in action as it was in India in 1972 when I was there. You might also call it job-sharing. Hinduism is such a maze of castes that job-sharing comes naturally; work is all dished out in small parcels.

  I was going to write on my experiences of this in the Post Office in New Delhi when trying to post parcels of Indian books back home forty years ago, but my ace in this game was trumped well and truly by this experience just last week written about by my friend Michael. He and his wife Julie travel frequently to the subcontinent, and are veterans of journeying around India.

  I had intended to post a few items of Julie's on my blog, and still will do so, because no-one captures the flavour of India quite as well as she does. But just because of this coincidence of my recollection, my intention and his experience, Michael's parcel-posting story will come first. Here it is. This is no exaggeration. What amazes me is that nothing in forty years seems to have changed in this respect, except for novelties like flash drives and photocopiers.

  All the images (photos taken at the hill station of Dalhousie, way up to the north in India) are Julie's, and came with the parcel-posting story. In an earlier edition of this piece I said they were Michael's. I haven't attempted to caption them.

Shining India (Dalhousie Postage)

We had one parcel and a large envelope to post in Dalhousie. We tied and taped up the parcel, then Julie and I headed off to the Post Office at Gandhi Chowk, which we had seen on an earlier trip - a large and official looking place. Surely it should be fairly easy to prosecute our small task in this place.

The clerk behind the 'Multi-business' window told us there was no wrapping at the PO, but we could get wrapping and the wax sealing done at the 'Emporium' shop across the Chowk. He also said we had to wrap up the large envelope as well, as it was really a parcel. In India all parcels have to be wrapped in calico cloth and sewn up. This is usually done by a tailor or often parcel wrappers sit outside Post Offices (but not in Dalhousie). Then the sewn seams have to be sealed with wax. They light a candle and liquefy a stick of wax in it, smearing the seam in a spot with the wax and pressing with some kind of seal, which may be just a flat piece of metal. I was surprised they couldn't treat our large envelope as an envelope, but then, this is India, so wrap it we must.

The Emporium said no - couldn't do that there. So I went to the next shop - same story. Then in the fourth shop they told me there was a tailor 'downside', but we had to buy the cloth from him. We decided to just find the tailor and see if he had cloth. Sure enough, on a small street that wound down from the Chowk we found a very noble tailor who indicated 'no problem'. It's such a relief to find someone who says “No problem” in India, and often adding, “Why not?” as if it's the commonest thing in the world to fulfil your request after you have been traipsing for hours or days to get something done.

I had forgotten my felt pen, which I had thoughtfully remembered to bring from Australia. You have to write the addresses (From and To) on the calico with a felt pen. But I'd left it back in our little cottage. Julie and I went back to get, and I returned alone to complete the simple task of postage. The tailor indicated he couldn't do the sealing. “Upside” he gestured. I asked the PO but they again told me the Emporium would do it.

No, the Emporium couldn't, so again I went next door (“No”) and next door. “Yes. Why not?” said the man, “Take a seat”. So I sat in his shawl-and-sari shop while he and another man set about the sealing task. It was quite pleasant, and took about half and hour. They were very thorough, in-between receiving old friends and talking with a bunch of men sitting together with their hands under a common blanket, over a fire pot or heater I assumed. Turning the parcels over and over to find any remaining spots that needed sealing. When it was done I said, “How much?”. “No money” they said with the characteristic head and hand wave (palm upwards and twisting) which Indians do when they mean, 'it's for free' or 'I haven't a clue'.

I then realised being in the cloth business each of these shops always sent parcels off, and as such did their own wrapping and sealing. The first two shops couldn't be bothered, but the third didn't charge because it wasn't part of their main business - they were just happy to help me out. It is funny how often Indians will spontaneously act out of no self-interest, just as they will try to rip you off if they can. All depends on how they feel, or who you meet.

Back to the PO. I had to fill out a form they said, as I juggled my parcels, and spoke to the same man who was now at a different counter - the 'Savings Bank' window. He wandered aimlessly around the office for some time, looking through the door to something noisy happening there, then seemed to remember me and dived into a few drawer0s with the help of two other men, at a different counter. All the time I was trying not to show my apprehension - surely the next obstacle won't be insurmountable! It nearly was.

“We have no forms.” He said. “Only this one, and you need four - two for each parcel.” He added as he held up a faded crinkled piece of paper he had dug from the back of some drawer. “Take this and photostat three more.” “Where?” I said. “Outside.”

Juggling my parcels I asked the Emporium. “Downside” they said. Down the lane again, and found a photo-printing shop. “No” they nodded, “next door”. Please let this be easy I prayed - surely it won't all come unstuck now. Next door the attendant said “Yes, come in.” Thank Hanuman I whispered, as I entered their little shop. Then began an exchange between him and another man who was standing on his chair lighting some incense in a high-up tiny shrine typical of such shops. “No,” They turned to me, “it's broken.” Bummer. “Where?” I asked. “Backside” they said and indicated they meant along a lane which runs off level behind the Chowk.

Up the lane I went, and once again dodging with my parcels between two of the three different games of cricket that were been conducted on the Chowk, I walked along asking for 'photostat'. “At the end of bazaar.” Someone told me. I reached the last few shops and there was a computer game shop which looked promising, except this man had been useless on a previous occasion when I was trying to have train tickets printed out from a memory stick, plus he had some angry dog in his section of the shop which was behind glass doors, so I was not feeling hopeful.

I entered and opened the glass doors - dog was gone, thank Hanuman. “Yes, why not?” he jiggled his head, and directed another man there to do the job. This guy took my form and we went next door into the pool-table shop, behind the players and lo-and-behold, there was a big photocopying machine, which did the job. I got four copies - couldn't bear to leave the PO without at least one parcel posting form, for the next poor unfortunate poster.

Back to PO, forms in hand. The man was now at a different counter again. He told me what to write on the form, and after three goes, back and forth across the empty Post Office to adjust details, we both agreed it was correct. He weighed them up, printed tickets (could he possibly print from a memory stick I thought, but put that insane idea aside) and pasted them on the parcels. At which point he stressed I should write 'Parcel' after 'Air Mail' on both parcels. For Hanuman's sake I thought, surely they can see it's a parcel? Could he borrow my felt pen to write it on? Yes of course - anything to complete this bizarre experience successfully.

Next he had to write the postal ticket numbers and PO name on the parcels, but unfortunately his biro wouldn't work. “Could I borrow you pen?” he mumbled in broken English. “Sure.” I pulled it out - anything more you'd like for me to do to help me get this place to operate? I felt like saying. But actually, I sensed the blood of success very close, and didn't dare deviate from task-focus for a second. Anything could still go wrong!

But no, he finished off his part, handed back my pen, and went about his business. “Is that it?” I asked, in trepidation. “Yes, why not?” he replied. “All done.”

There's one very important thing I just remembered that I wanted to say about this system. In my experience, every package arrived at its destination abroad in mint condition. Being sewn and wax-sealed in strong calico, there was no chance any of the contents could go missing, and the registration system for packages made the chances of its disappearing very small.

This to me was always the thing about bureaucracy in India. It could be painfully slow and tedious, but in the end, things got done.

There's a joke even the Indians themselves make about "Indian Standard Time". I've had a lot of experience with it over the years. It has its own sequence and its own rhythm. In the modern terminology, it's definitely serial processing, not parallel. It pays to be patient, persistent and forgiving, if you don't want to die of frustration and western-style rage.... but it works!

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A New Year's Tale

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'The Little Match Girl' 

Hans Andersen

I hated, and yet was fascinated by this story when we read it as children in reading class, again and again as we did; a similar fascination, I guess, to that when we are passing by a fatal car accident. Its charm is its style; a combination of sorrow and sentimentality that never failed to stir me, though it always raised deep and negative responses that still remain as part of my being.

I was fascinated by the fact it could happen in a large city of great riches that such an event might occur, secure as we were in our tiny country village where even the poorest would never endure such things.  I daresay it did teach me a moral lesson, but perhaps not one the author intended. It taught me not that death was some sort of mystical and joyful escape for a child, but that it should never happen that way in the first place.

There are many millions of children in the world today in similar poverty-stricken circumstances. Spare a thought for them tonight, this New Year's Eve for 2012, and think of a way you can brighten some child's life; even just one.

The Little Match Girl

It was the last night of the year, New Year's Eve, and it was terribly cold! It was snowing, and soon it would be dark.

Through the cold and the darkness, a poor little girl wandered in the street, with bare feet and no scarf for her head. She had, indeed, worn slippers when she left home, but they were not much use. They were very big slippers that her mother had worn before her. They were so big that the little girl had lost them rushing to cross the street in between two carts.

One of the slippers was nowhere to be found, and the other was taken by a boy who intended to use it as a cradle when he had children of his own.

The little girl wandered along in her bare feet which were blue with cold. She was carrying several matches in her old apron and was holding one bundle in her hand. It had been a bad day for her; no one had bought any matches and she had not earned a single penny. She was very hungry and very cold, and looked very frail. Poor little girl!

Lights were glittering from all the windows and there was a wonderful smell of roasting meat along the whole street. All the little girl could think of was that it was New Year's Eve. She sat down and tried to warm herself in a corner between two houses. She grew colder and colder, but she did not dare to go home for she would have to take back all the matches, but not one penny. Her father would beat her and, besides, it would be cold at home as well. They only lived in a little hut and the wind blew right through it, even though the biggest cracks had been stuffed with straw and rags.

Her little hands were almost dead with cold. A lighted match would at least do some good! Maybe she would dare to take just one out of the bundle, strike it against the wall, and warm her fingers!

And so she took one. Whoosh! How it sparkled! How it burned! It was a gentle warm flame, just like a little candle when she held her hand around it. But what a strange light! It seemed to the little girl as if she were sitting in front of a huge iron stove with polished brass knobs and gleaming pots and pans. The fire was magnificent and gave out so much warmth! The child had just stretched her feet out to warm them, when the flame went out and the stove disappeared. She was sitting there with only a little burnt match-end in her hand.

The girl struck another match which burned and glowed, and where the light fell on the wall it became transparent like gauze. The child could see into a room where a table was covered with a white cloth and set with fine china. There was a roast goose, stuffed with prunes and apples, which filled the room with a delicious smell. What a surprise! Suddenly the goose jumped from its plate and rolled on the floor, straight to the poor girl, with the fork and knife still in its back.

Then the match went out and there was nothing to see but the thick, cold wall.

She struck a third match. Immediately she found herself sitting under a magnificent Christmas tree. It was even bigger and more beautifully decorated than the one she had seen through the glass doors at the rich merchant's house last Christmas. A thousand candles were burning on the green branches, and it seemed as if all the colourful figures were smiling at her. The little girl held up both hands and the match went out. The Christmas candles rose higher and higher, and she then realized they were just stars. One of them fell and made a long streak of fire in the sky.

“Someone is dying,” whispered the little girl, for her old grandmother, who was the only one who had ever been kind to her, but who had died, used to say to her: 'If you see a falling star it means that a soul is going up to heaven.'

She struck another match against the wall which made a great light. This time in the middle of that brightness she saw her grandmother. She looked so sweet and so shinning.

'Oh granny, take me with you,' cried the girl. 'When the match goes out, I know you won't be there any longer. You will disappear just like the iron stove, the roasted goose and the beautiful Christmas tree.'

She suddenly struck the rest of the bundle because she wanted to keep her grandmother, and the matches shone so gloriously that it was brighter than daylight. Never before had her grandmother seemed so tall and so beautiful. She took the little girl on her arms and they both flew away in radiant joy, higher and higher until there was no more cold, no more hunger and no more suffering. They were in Paradise.

In the cold, early morning, the little girl was still sitting in the corner between the two houses. Her cheeks were red and she had a smile on her lips…she was dead, frozen to death on New Year's Eve.

New Year's morning rose over her little body sitting there with the matches, one bundle almost completely burn up.

'She just wanted to keep herself warm!' someone said.

But no one knew what beautiful things she had seen, nor in what radiance she had entered the New Year with her old grandmother.

The story, though beautifully written, gives me no joy, nor ever did.  Starvation, disease and poverty were the handmaidens of death in nineteenth century Europe, and account for the sorrowful and frightening tales by Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. No wonder there were so many 'wicked stepmother' stories from the time. New wives taken by widowers would often have been barely older than their step-children. One hesitates to think of the likely abuse in many families.

It is no better in many parts of the world today. It doesn't need the comfort of Paradise to keep people under control; it needs the application of compassion and generosity in present lives.

I know, my addition to the story reads like some sort of secularist sermon. So be it.

A thought for the billion Little Match Girls and Boys out there all over the world on New Year's Eve for 2012. 

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Scared of the sacred silence, and red wine

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I'm writing several things, but there's time for listening and time for silence. Here are two things that have just come to me on this.

  The first is about what might be called sacred space.

  'Sacred' has an amusing connotation for Tracey and me, because in reading essays on this topic for Religions 101, I'd find that students often reversed the keys when typing, and 'sacred' became 'scared'. In an essay intended to be serious, this could have some peculiar results in terms of meaning. We often joked about what was 'scared', especially when one of the cabernets were used to drink was 'Sacred Hill'.

  'Would you like a Scared Hill?' she might ask me.

  We often had a Scared Hill.

  But to be serious now.

Interruption-free space is sacred. Yet, in the digital era we live in, we are losing hold of the few sacred spaces that remain untouched by email, the internet, people, and other forms of distraction. Our cars now have mobile phone integration and a thousand satellite radio stations. When walking from one place to another, we have our devices streaming data from dozens of sources. Even at our bedside, we now have our iPads with heaps of digital apps and the world's information at our fingertips.

http://the99percent.com/articles/6947/What-Happened-to-Downtime-The-Extinction-of-Deep-Thinking-Sacred-Space

It's not always like this, even though many of us have lost the notion of sacred space for ourselves.

In Africa listening is a guiding principle. It's a principle that's been lost in the constant chatter of the Western world, where no one seems to have the time or even the desire to listen to anyone else. From my own experience, I've noticed how much faster I have to answer a question during a TV interview than I did 10, maybe even 5, years ago. It's as if we have completely lost the ability to listen. We talk and talk, and we end up frightened by silence, the refuge of those who are at a loss for an answer.

  By HENNING MANKELL

http://redwitch.tumblr.com/post/14939589529/in-africa-listening-is-a-guiding-principle-its-a

  In other words, the last line of this underlines the fact that sometimes we are scared of the sacred silences in life. Remember those uncomfortable pauses in conversations at a dinner party when, for no apparent reason, there is silence; an empty space that we desperately feel needs to be filled with words?

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Wasting time and Kahlil Gibran

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I've always liked the days between Christmas and New Year. When I was at the university, these were regarded as the days off. The university was like a tomb.

  We were granted four weeks annual leave. The sad truth is that I, like many academics, never took four weeks off in any year. We were so busy teaching and filling in forms and assessing essays and theses for the remainder of the year that four whole weeks in a row were beyond the pale as time off. That was research and writing time beyond what we could squeeze in during term. Publish or perish became the imperative - and, it seems looking at the way universities are going, so it remains.

  That's another story.

  Anyway, at the end of December, I always tried to take that little break away completely from professional matters, but the compulsion to work was strong. Even worse was the feeling of guilt when I wasn't working at an academic task. Many will recognise that.  It's an obsession; an addiction - and it can wreck your life.

  Once, when I was a young schoolteacher, my mother and youngest sister and I went on holidays to Currumbin Beach on the Gold Coast. It was and still is a glorious spot. The house we rented was just across from the beach itself.

  It was, in fact, the time when a rather sad romantic interlude occurred that I wrote about some time ago.

  I felt a compulsion to be on the beach at all times, though late teen hormones helped generate that. But one afternoon, as I looked out on that idyllic beach, gentle breeze blowing so that the ocean became choppy, I rebelled.

  Right then, that's not what I wanted to do. I wanted to lie on the bed and read my book, and listen to Linda Ronstadt singing Different Drum.

  I wanted to 'waste time'. So I did. And I enjoyed it immensely.

  'Wasting time' to me meant doing exactly what I felt like, no matter what it was. It didn't necessarily mean doing sweet bugger-all, though that would have been all right too.

  It's a pity I didn't take enough notice of that precept and apply it to more of my professional life in subsequent years, even though I chose to work because  I enjoyed that too. But 'wasting time' is something, looking back, I ought to have done more of.

  This morning I said to my net-friends:

I always think the days between Christmas and New Year are the best if you're on holidays. Let the old year mellow out. Waste time.

  I had to add, 'if you're on holidays' because I know not everyone can be.

  An old friend (and I mean that in the nicest way, Grant Winkler) responded: 

"A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou...." Well, not exactly thee, Denis…

  I knew what he meant. He's entitled to quote Kahlil Gibran at me in the circumstances. It was pretty much what Kahlil was on about.

  Debbie Green wrote back:

Indeed Denis. We sometimes feel our days must be filled with purpose and intent, when sitting still is what is best for us and the universe.

  I responded:

If you've lost the capacity to enjoy 'wasting' time (meaning doing just what you want), you've lost the art of living.

  Another friend, a lawyer (and we know all too well that lawyers generally spend way too much time in their offices) added:

Indeed. It's very lovely to have 'shaggy dog time'. It seems to me we had more of this time in the past, but I may be dreaming.

  I don't think she was dreaming. I think we did make more time in the past for 'doing nothing', even if, for too many of us, it was much less time than it should have been.

  Don't make that mistake. 'Shaggy dog time' can turn out to be the most important time in your whole life. If you have the next few days free, then do what you want, even if it's sleeping in a darkened room half the day - or ... well... hang-gliding. Maybe.

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A duckling, poddy calves, and freedom 2

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pt 1 | pt 2 <<you are here

A poddy calf is called that because of a sad thing that befalls them a few days after birth.

  It may not be the same these days, and I hope it isn't, but this is how it used to work. A few days after birth, they were taken away from their mothers to join other poddy calves in a large pen.

  That happens because you want milk in your tea and on your cornflakes, or cream on your dessert, and cow's milk is needed if you cook, eat real butter or feed your babies. Dairy farmers have to sell their milk to keep their farms producing what you want.

Jersey calves - like ours

  There was not enough time in a dairy farmer's day for sentiment in this. Separating cows and calves was the most efficient way to have milk for you and cash coming in. Family dairy farms in the 1950s were on a knife-edge financially, so that how it was. Life or death in these matters, with little romance.

  The poddy calves were fed on a portion of the milk that could be spared. Often it was skim milk produced after going through the cream separator, so its food value was much reduced. Other things were added to the calves' rations to give what they drank a bit of bulk and protein.

  You've seen undernourished kids in places where food is scarce. Often they have big pod-shaped bellies and are skinny as a rake otherwise.

  So it was, all too often, with poddy calves. That's where the word comes from, though these days I expect they are treated differently and are healthier, because they get the right supplements that many farmers couldn't afford just after World War 2. The name 'poddy' for hand-reared calves has stuck.

  Long intro, sorry, but you need to understand why, in those days at least, poddies were kept in small enclosures for quite a few weeks before they could be let out and graze and fend for themselves. They don't start eating grass straight away any more than human babies start on solid foods.

  The point here is that they have no concept of a world beyond their little enclosure from the moment they're born until the first time they are let out into an open paddock. I can't help thinking that's rather like how Australians are if they never leave the incredible safety and security of this country.

  When they're old enough, they are released, often one by one. It is then that a rather delightful thing happens. I don't think I've ever seen it not happen for any poddy calf, though I've witnessed these first moments of freedom countless times.

  The gate is opened when the calf is close to it. Sometimes it has to be pushed out into the open. Quite often it is reluctant to go, because nothing seems to compute for it. 

  There are no barriers in front. No matter where it went in the past, there was always a solid fence. This could be dangerous. The unknown often feels that way....

  It stands there motionless, blinking like an idiot, as if it had never been in sunlight. Finally, sniffing the grass suspiciously, it takes a few tentative steps forward as if walking on ice. The outside grass probably smells sweet after the little patches of kikuyu that might have survived in the enclosure only because they are so unattractive.  Like most creatures, bovines can't abide the smell on the grass of what's on it that's come from their own stomach and bladder.

  Then for another few moments, maybe longer, they stare at the vast world ahead. Some switch turns on in their heads, and they start to run.

  It's the funniest thing, or we as kids used to think so. It's something you never forget. They'd race down the hill with every ounce of strength and speed they possessed, and pelt round the corner of the vegetable garden, up to the cattle yard gate - a frantic race with nothing, going nowhere really. Breathing heavily, they'd stop, as this was the first time in their lives they'd ever really stretched out, and what a feeling it must have been.

  In a few moments, they'd start again, only this time it could last for five minutes or so, racing madly and joyously in wide circles, then straight up and down the hill, tails high in the air, sucking air in through their mouths.

  Then it would be all over as the novelty of freedom gave way to curiosity. They'd start to explore this extraordinary new world; Narnia in summer, I guess, once out of the wardrobe.

  Their world would never be the same again. They would return to the pen only with some reluctance, if they went back at all. Usually they were kept in at night for their own safety, not from dingoes but the occasional danger of feral and domestic dogs that might run amok.

  I was going to use this story and the one about the little wild duck we reared in captivity as metaphors for how humanity might learn from these instinctive urges for freedom, as I don't believe we are all that far from our animal natures driven by the genes we share with our fellow creatures.

  Physically, mentally, nothing has changed, except maybe for the worse. "Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they."

  Rousseau said all this so much better than I ever could, and it's truer now than ever. The social contract amongst humans as Rousseau explored it over two centuries ago has been sadly abused in my lifetime, and has spawned all the lunges for freedom we now see all over the world. All of these have been met with the naked display of repressive power and violence.

  But I think I won't go into that after all. Either you get it or you don't.

  The first tastes of freedom for our wild duck and the poddy calves really are about power, and on the human level, whether you have it or not over your own life. 

   I've learned, in the past two years especially, that this is what life is all about, and why people may be willing to die in search of it.

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A duckling, poddy calves, and freedom 1

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When I woke this morning, my brain was on fire.

  I don't mean in a bad way; I meant that ideas were flowing through, separate thoughts and memories that get joined in the way a flame connects separate pieces of wood burning in the glass-fronted heater.

  One memory was about a baby wild duck that we found on the dam when the girls were little. It was small enough to be rescued without protest.

  One of its feet was malformed - not a lot, but a couple of toes were missing and the webbing incomplete. Perhaps the mother and brood had abandoned it on that account, or it may have been the sole survivor of a fox attack; its inability to keep up saving its life.

  We took it up to the house and put it in a spare cage I had built for rearing chickens.

  I think we raised it on normal chicken feed. It's a bit hazy now, but I moved the cage across the grass daily so it was able to forage, digging out little bits for itself of grass, insects... whatever its instinct told it was food for ducklings.  Maybe the girls found treats for it now and again.

  I always think of it as female by the colouring, but I can't be sure. I'm not a duck-sexer and it didn't matter anyway. The girls fussed over her and she didn't mind, but she always had a natural wildness about her.

  In a few weeks, her body grew to maturity. She always walked with a limp, but it didn't bother her much. Through the mesh clipped over the cage, she started looking upwards, exercising her wings. For a day or two, this scouring of the sky, the restlessness and wing-stretching went on.

  We had never intended to keep her as a pet, so one morning, as the beating of wings started, I took the wire netting off the top of the cage, and we watched.

  She stretched her legs and stood tall for a moment on the one good foot and the crumpled one, and flapped her wings strongly. She searched upwards as if there was some target in the blue. Then, with not the least hesitation, she sped skyward at a steep angle, a hundred metres high above us, and circled - a complete circle half a kilometre wide.

  There was no faltering as she headed off unerringly towards the east. She was free.

  I'll tell you the other freedom story tomorrow, and connect the two. But to do that, I need to go backwards in time another thirty years.

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Inside a focal seizure

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My last seizure was on 22 November - nearly a month ago - until the early hours of the morning today, that is. 

  I had an inkling last night it was going to happen. You know how the black ants run all over the place before a storm, or furiously start to build up their nests? That's how my brain felt then, as if it were trying simultaneously to prepare for an event and run away from it. 

  There's no running away. It's not till tomorrow that I have a life-extending hit of Avastin, but if the infusion would have prevented the seizure - and there's no guarantee it would - then it's a day or so too late.

  It was a vivid one, happening at 3.45 am. I always have to turn on the lamp and note the starting time, to see how long it goes for. I do that in case we need to call an ambulance.

  A lot more people read this blog these days and won't understand what a focal seizure really is or does, but the important thing for the moment is that I am fully conscious every moment of it - so it's no trouble for me to remember and describe.

  This one was about 8 on my Richter seizure scale, and lasted about 3-4 minutes. It jolted me awake when I became aware that the fingers on the right hand were spasming, opening and shutting powerfully like a claw. It went through the standard sequence which I won't describe again here; up through the arm, down the right side, and into the leg and foot. 

  As usual, the problem is like that of being in an earthquake - not knowing how strong it's going to get, what parts of the body it will affect, how long it will last, and how many aftershocks there will be.

  It came to an end the way a thug deals with you - a last violent kick or two and then he disappears into the night, leaving you lying there barely able to move a muscle, but glad it's over. Gradually the affected parts of the body get a level of function back. You've survived the onslaught.

  Or I have, yet again, for the nth time. I lost count long ago. 

  I went to the bathroom, knowing that it may not be over. I've had aftershocks before. Walking was difficult and I had to be careful. I felt grateful that yet again there are organs in my body unaffected by the seizures.

  A seizure leaves me with a feeling of torpor or exhaustion, but I know my brain is racing. After a month where I gradually feed a tiny germ of false hope by doing everything in order to be 'normal', I'm reminded once again what 'normal' really means for me. All the exercising, physical and mental, can't change that.

  Still, I accept what can't be changed, and looked for a comfortable sleeping position.

  I lay on the right side, its arm position rearranged by the left, and drifted into an uneasy slumber. A snake as thick as my leg wound its way through the undergrowth somewhere on the forest floor of my brain. I couldn't see either its head or its tail. It changed colour like a chameleon as it passed along, through the fallen branches and dead leaves and the dirt.

  Up there, my consciousness was in two halves. I felt as if one half were trying to invade the other. My right side was warm, tingling and slightly sweaty. The palm of the hand felt as if it had been sitting on a hotplate that was cooling down. The little finger was still pinging - a sign that it may not be over for the night.

  The forest-floor dirt became smooth, and the snake was invisible. The centre of the floor began to collapse inward, the hole increasing in size as the grains of earth disappeared into it. 

  I gathered strength and turned to the left side, and slept.

  It's another day, and sleep has reconnected the vital elements. It's knocked the stuffing out of me a bit and the nausea hasn't yet passed, and I may get another seizure before tomorrow if the past is any guide. Often it isn't.

  But I'm still here, and it's five days till Christmas, and twelve till the New Year, 2012.

[The 'illustrations'? I made them this morning. Because I felt like it, that's why!]

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RIP Hitch. Christopher Hitchens

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Hitchens: sketch based on photo

A few days ago I saw a photo of Christopher Hitchens and wrote on Twitter

A man facing death who now has death in his face. 

  There's a time when the awareness that they are about to die shows vividly in a person's face, and though I had seen several recent pictures of him, it wasn't hard to tell from this one that it would only be days.

  Five, to be exact. He died yesterday.

  Knowing that there would be a vast outpouring of all sorts of reactions to his death amongst my friends and acquaintances on Twitter, I didn't want to be part of the immediate controversy about a man who was both lionised and bitterly resented. One friend, Kimberley Ramplin, simply wrote:

RIP Hitch

  In response to her public comment, I wrote back, publicly:

"RIP Hitch." Perfect. Respect.

  I then closed Twitter for the night.

  Overnight I received a private message in reply to this comment from someone who said: "Why did you say that? Hitchens was far from perfect!"

  Only then I realised how easily words get misinterpreted, especially cryptic ones. What I mean by my comment was not that Hitchens was perfect, but that Kimbo's comment was the perfect one in the circumstances. Say no more, give him time to rest in peace for a little while, and show respect for the dead - especially a man so influential in the interminable philosophical debate about religion as Christopher Hitchens.

  That's all I meant. She and most of my friends would have got it immediately, but not everyone. It drove home to me once again what I have said so many times over my lifetime: 

  "Words are good servants but bad masters."

  Hitchens was an atheist. There are many things about religion that he attacked, and for that he provoked controversy. He did so because he had a prodigious mind and was a master of words, either written or in public debate. This combination made him very persuasive and much feared by his opponents. 

  His greatest enemies were the Christian religious right, not those of the sensible Christian middle ground, or from other religions. Muslims generally seem to have kept a dignified silence in his religious debates, although they have had more reason to be offended by his views on politics and religion than unflinching dogmatists at the blindly ignorant end of the spectrum of Christianity. 

  I should make clear at this point that on many matters of religion, I agree with the essential points that Hitchens always made about them and those who manipulate religion for their own purposes, but this isn't the place for that discussion. I'll simply say that I respect absolutely the right of thinking people to their own religious and philosophical views. Finite minds do have a bit of difficulty grasping the infinite, and it is presumptuous for humans to think that if finite minds can't grasp something, then it can't exist.

  Hitchens didn't have any problems with that particular point, though his atheism was misunderstood, often willfully. He ignored that willful ignorance, knowing that debate with such people is pointless.

  He drove me crazy when two colleagues and I were running a course on Islamic politics for more than a decade. He had very controversial views on this matter, including support for the Bush insanity in Iraq. (There's some irony in the fact that the United States had, almost on the day of Hitchens' death, extracted themselves from Iraq as officially active military participants.)

  We included some of his most persuasive articles on this topic in our teaching material in the course on Middle-Eastern politics; sensible and appropriate academic practice when balanced by opposing views expressed through the incisive writings of the venerable Beirut-based journalist, Robert Fisk.

  When I say he drove me crazy, I really mean the contrast between Hitchens and Fisk drove the students crazy, because they were presented with very persuasive views from each side of the political fence, and some found this hard to handle. Sorting them out year after year in tutorial discussions and essays made an enormous amount of work for us. 

  That was our job, of course. It wasn't our place to convince students who was right and who was wrong; it was to show them how very different conclusions can be arrived at by fine minds - and how prejudices on all our sides were part of the equation.

  Hitchens is going to be remembered more for his views on religion than on politics, because those are the ones that won't be laid to rest. When he died yesterday I was expecting the battery of jokes about what would happen when Hitch the unflinching atheist found himself at the gates of Heaven or Hell. He probably would have been mildly amused by them. 

  It may seem odd, but I didn't expect these jokes to come quite so soon and with such lack of respect for death; his death in particular, because lack of respect for such a potent mind as Hitchens' is lack of understanding of his contribution to rational thought and debate at the highest level. 

  I should have known better. It always happens. Of course, I am pretty sensitive to such matters at the moment. We are nearly the same age and we share a common fate from the same disease. He did what I have attempted to do for two years now - to demystify death without clinging too much to the mysterious. 

  I hope his was made as peaceful as it could be.

  In one of his final articles, he destroyed the proposition by Neitzsche: “Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger.” He knew that that his cancer was indeed going to kill him, and that there was nothing in his treatment that would strengthen him.

  But the attitude to that condition can be strengthening. His age, and his pathway through the disease has many parallels with mine, including what he came to recognise as his own change of views about the final stages.

  It's not a case of Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle...." That's bravado from the young Dylan Thomas who faced an early death but lived only half a life. He simply wasn't ready for death and was full of rage. Hitch wasn't.

  Hitchens came to understand that this was not the way. There's a time to be gentle, and he was aware of it at the end.

  If you read nothing more of his, read that article.

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In praise of cow dung

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So goes a little poem from ancient Indian Sanskrit literature from the 3rd Century CE.

 

  It gently mocks the role of the cow in Hindu religious tradition. And yet, the Indians also know that it fulfills functions in Hindu society that often aren't given a thought in the west.

 

  'Scrawny old bag of bones,' said one of the tour party. 'The best thing would be if someone shot the lot of them. They're useless and cause a lot of trouble. Everyone would be better off.'

 

  Would they now?

 

  Take the obvious things for a traditional village. They provide milk - or some of them do. A family that owns a cow has a little food or income while the cow's lactating. They produce a calf every year for a while and that's worth money. In the end there's a whole industry around their death, not the least of which concerns leather and everything derived from it.

 

  But they're not always productive in this way. For one thing, half of village cattle born are male. They can, it's true, be beasts of burden and pull ploughs, but what of the 'temple-courtyard' oxen that don't do any work? They take every opportunity to thieve produce where they can - food that humans eat. They don't work for their living.

 

  Or so it seems. Yet, no matter how old they are, what gender, how inconvenient they can be getting in the way of traffic and people, they produce one wonderful product that's enormously beneficial.

 

  Dung. There ought to be hymns in Sanskrit in praise of cow dung. Perhaps there are.

 

  It's untrue that cows constantly compete with humans for food, unless the humans are plain careless and leave the garden gate open. Of course, the cow will take what it can get in that case, but that doesn't happen too often. The fruit and vegetables are too valuable a resource for that to be allowed.

 

  The truth is that cows do a great job eating what humans won't - grass, grain stubble, banana and mango skins, paper, corn husks, vegetable peelings, half rotten or spoiled fruit. As to grass, there's no need for motor mowers or wasted labour on such matters.

 

  All of this produces considerable quantities of dung. People have funny ideas about it. It's just vegetable matter that's gone through quite a complicated processing. It doesn't smell bad. And its uses are manifold.

 

  It can be used as garden fertiliser, of course, but in India it probably won't get put on the garden till it's been used for other things.

 

Cow dung cakes ready for use

  There are castes that deal with cow dung. Their job is to collect it fresh and bring it to their area of the village. There it is patted by hand into regular sized cakes of uniform consistency, and sun-dried. They make a living selling these disc-like cowpats. It's not a great living, but the raw materials are always available and the market is assured.

 

  In this form, the dung cakes have many uses. They are crushed and mixed with other things to make a daub plaster for the walls of small houses or shanties.

 

  In the dry season, the floors of the village houses become dusty. Cow dung cakes are crumbled and sprinkled on the earthen floor. This lays the dust and provides a thin clean soft cushion for the feet. It doesn't smell and is virtually sterile.

 

  After some time, it can be scraped up, together with the dusty soil underneath it, and put on the garden as compost. A thin layer of fine dirt covered by a dry dung layer makes a new throwaway carpet.

 

  But there's one other use for the dung cakes that makes them very valuable - as fuel. Wood is scarce and kerosene very expensive. Fires running on either need careful tending.

 

  But a fire burning cow dung yields a slow, steady, uniform heat that is perfect for cooking curries. Women can leave them burning and go out to work. The dung cakes have the qualities of a good cigar; they keep on going for hours and need little maintenance. The smoke from a well-set fire is little but can help to keep unwanted insects like mosquitoes away.

 

  In fact, soap is made from high quality cowdung is highly prized.

 

  So, cow dung is integral to traditional village life, both socially and economically. This means that the 'useless' cow's demise would create a real cost in many different ways. Sadly, it is more and more scorned with the rapid modernisation India is undergoing, but India has always been an evolutionary society rather than revolutionary, so it could take quite a while. Village life is slow to change, which can be both a boon and a bane.

 

  Sometimes we forget that 'useless' things can have a vital role in maintaining fragile balances that make the difference for many between a tolerable life and severe hardship.

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