The mystery man on the moon

A Man in the Moon?

You may wonder why I've asked my good friend Dipen Bhattacharya if I could reproduce a piece that he wrote on 4 March 2013.

   The reason is embedded in a traumatic series of events for Bangladesh 42 years ago, which affected me deeply. I'd finished a series of theses on the origins of Pakistan, the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, and India-Pakistan relations up to what was then the present day.

   At that time, the subcontinent erupted in what was called civil war in Pakistan, ending with India's involvement and the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971. Bangladesh was born, and not a moment too soon. During the war, Bengalis of what was former East Pakistan were subjected by the Pakistan army to killing, brutality and horror on a massive scale.

   But there were some Bengalis who sided with the occupying troops, for reasons I won't go into here. They gave up intellectuals to the enemy simply because they were potential leaders. 

   The Hindus of Bangladesh (10% of the population) were a special target, but no Bengali in the former East Pakistan was safe.

   Amazingly, some of these traitors were able to escape punishment until very recently – again, for reasons I won't go into except to say they were protected by right-wing politicians and political Islamists of the worst type – those who have acquired more power now than ever before, even though Bengali Islam was never of the extreme type. In fact, Bangladeshi Islam is typically what I'll call 'liberal' [to put it simplistically] until the comparatively recent influence of Saudi orthodoxy [another story].

   A sense of over-arching Bengali identity has typically blunted religious difference, but the survivors from the traumas of 1969 to 1971 have long memories – with good reason. Torture, murder, rape and plunder don't disappear in people's minds. They've also witnessed revisionist attempts at an enforcement of strict orthodoxy of a sort alien to old Bengal, and thus to put the traitors into the category of true Muslims. Little wonder the Jamaati are loathed by so many, Muslim and Hindu alike.

   So this is not a tale of Hindu-Muslim differences in Bangladesh. Muslim Bengalis suffered terribly, too, at the hands of West Pakistani military thugs. Nor is it to make fools of village folk, because we all have our self-delusions, and the Jamaat has done its mischief amongst them, convincing some that murderers are martyrs. They never were, nor are, nor ever will be heroes.

   I visited Bangladesh for the first time of many trips soon after 1971, and saw the legacy of the horror and the destruction caused by the war. There was no doubt what my Ph D topic would be. No, not about the war, but how, in those first years of freedom, an exploited province in a former state that never should have been created was going to become a new nation.

Dipen Bhattacharya

   Dipen is an astrophysicist by training and has now spent the greater part of his life in universities in the USA, but Bangladesh will always be his spiritual home. I know he would not want me to embarrass him with the praise he deserves as a highly respected polymath as well, very much in the Bengali tradition of the true intellectual. As with my dear friends Tahsinah and Mahbub Ahmed, we've known each other for some 25 years.

Now I'll allow him to tell his story!

Delwar Hossain Sayeedi

Sayedee’s Face on the Moon: Astronomers’ Nightmare
by Dipen Bhattacharya

You ask how is it possible that in the year of 2013, people could be fooled to see a convicted killer’s face on the moon. But that’s what the Jamaat propaganda has accomplished. In the early hours of Sunday morning, in many parts of Bangladesh, Jamaat activists announced, using loudspeakers, that the image of Sayedee could be seen on the moon. The idea is so preposterous that, even in medieval times, this would not get any traction. But in twenty-first century Bangladesh, it did.

We laughed at the outrageous idea and made fun of the ridiculous photoshop-ed image of Sayedee posted in the Jamaati site Basherkella. Unfortunately, the atrocious call was sufficient to get people out of their houses and infused them with enough Jihadi energy for an early morning rampage. Villagers marched to attack a police station. As a consequence, in Bogra, several people were killed. Sad indeed.

How is this possible? This defies all logic, even Jamaati logic. What does the future hold for a country where thousands can be tricked into believing something so absurd? The Daily Star reports several people called the newspaper to determine the veracity of the sighting. Are the people in Bangladesh so gullible? What is the state of education in the country?

Before I became aware of the Bogra mayhem, I was doing a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation for the amount of energy to create a visible image on the moon. It is necessary to project this energy (light) on the moon so that it would be visible from the earth. The numbers are astronomical, because to put an image on the moon that would be visible from here, you have to match the solar flux at the moon.

The total solar power received over the face of the moon is about 10^16 watts (ten thousand terawatt). That’s 16 zeroes after one. One terawatt is 1,000 gigawatt or 1,000 billion watts. The moon has an albedo of about 0.12, that means about 12% of the solar light is reflected off the lunar surface and on the 2nd March evening about 75% of the moon was illuminated. All this means, on that fateful night, the total lunar power was about 10^15 watts (one thousand terawatt).

Now, how are you going to project a picture of Sayedee on the moon? Let’s use a LCD or multimedia projector. How much energy does the bulb need? About 10^16 watts (ten thousand terawatt).

We are going to assume that the projector beam can be approximated with a very narrow pencil beam so that, as it arrives at the moon, it spreads out just enough to cover the entire moon. The moon has a radius of about 1737 km. We are not going to take into account any light absorption within our atmosphere. We are also assuming there is no other energy loss during transmission.

This means we would need an LCD projector of 10^16 watts. Remember, the moon has to reflect this light to make it visible for us.

What is the total power output of the entire world? 2,300 gigawatt or 2.3 terawatt. That is 2300 x 10^9 or 2.3 x 10^12 watts. Hence, even if we pumped the entire world energy generated per second to our projector, it would have fallen short of the needed wattage or energy by a factor of 5000. (The 5000 number will be much higher if we had taken into account the atmospheric extinction and the directional albedo of the moon.)

So even the energy generated by the entire world will not be capable of reproducing a speck of Sayedee’s red beard on the moon.

Of course, 2.3 x 10^12 watts of power will instantly vaporize the projector, computer, the operators and the entire installation.

But when people believe in divine intervention, all these calculations are beside the point.

Wikipedia's Man on the Moon

PS: Without the aid of telescopes, in the past, people in certain parts of the world did imagine a man’s face on the moon. I found one of them in the Wikipedia pages. The features of the face are mostly given by the dark material of the lunar maria. If anything, this man’s face looks like a human skull, maybe not far from Sayedee’s true image.

To me, the Southern Hemisphere moon has always presented a much happier visage than the Northern one, because it is 'upside-down' by the Northern standards. 

Many thanks, Dipen.

My Southern Hemisphere Man in the Moon

Dipen Bhattacharya and Denis Wright, California 1996.

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Assembling thoughts – then and now

All my life, until I became accustomed to the use of word-processors, I thought out what I was writing in a quite different way from now. I reflected carefully upon what was to go into the sentence, and it was only then that I committed it to paper. Changes had to be by carets and balloons with arrows, which are unattractive and hard to read in a handwritten letter. Maybe today they would be viewed with a certain charm.
  
   It took me ages to switch to the mode I'm sure most people have learned if they've never had to write something by hand. Then, it had to be legible, carefully composed, with no scratchings out, grammatical flaws and spelling errors. Now, that all comes later.

   Somehow the thought processes while composing at a computer screen are different, and it's reflected in what comes out. It may have a certain form of precision but I wouldn't call it as seamless as pen and paper efforts. 

   Not mine, anyway.
  
   Now, when starting on a new project that needs structure, I usually open a page in Word and simply throw down in point form my random thoughts on the subject. Spelling, typos and grammar are irrelevant.
  
   When I've run out of ideas or think I've got enough, I arrange these points in a rough order. Items that are subsets are rearranged and indented beneath their parents. Others are added as I think of them, and slotted in to what I think will be their place in the project. Many will recognise this as outlining.
  
   Language-based research too is an utterly different process from how we did it in the past; that is, by going to a library, reading sources, taking notes by hand and organising them, but I won't go into that here. We are in the age of keyword search, the pdf file, cut and paste, and clever note-organising programs like Filemaker. We relate these to the outline prepared in the way I described above.
  
   Depending on the topic, we can do it all from home. That's the big difference. For some tasks, libraries and their books and manuscripts (all of which I love) are indispensable, but we live in a fast-changing world.

   One last thing. All the above are rapidly becoming superseded. Kids wanting to know about or how to do something go to youtube and see it demonstrated. Then they may go to Wikipedia and other sources, but text-based learning is rapidly becoming second choice.
  
   For complex pieces, I prefer text; the words, and the way they focus and orientate my thoughts. If you've bothered to read this from start to finish – about 500 words – you're probably sympathetic, but our train's stopping at fewer and fewer stations.
  
   The express is faster, but there's much more of the country missed on the way to the destination. And what flits by may be the richest part of the understanding of what we're writing about.

Part of an earlier draft – very different to what's on the page above!

  

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Farndale Ladies meet James & Wright

   Hamlet:

       I'll have grounds
       More relative than this — the play's the thing
       Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
                             Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 603–605

A while back I was reading the minutes of an ADMS meeting. I looked across at Tracey and said, "You know there's a production of Farndale Ladies coming up."

   "Yes. I know."

   "So you know my next question."

   "I can guess."

   She didn't really have to guess.

   For more than three years now, my illness has separated her from doing something that was an intimate part of her life. Our lives. She had performed in and choreographed, sometimes co-directed ADMS productions for several years, right back to Les Mis in 2002. This was on top of her job as solicitor and several University administrative roles.

   That was until December 2009. Suddenly, she faced the unexpected role of carer for a man diagnosed with a brain tumour of the worst type. Without hesitation, she gave everything else up and took that on. Everything.

   I knew she deeply missed the intimacy of the theatre and the camaraderie of our friends ("our" because I was heavily involved as well) in getting these productions together. The unpredictable course of my illness gave her little choice.

   There's immense grief in the certain prospect of losing one's partner and it's intensified by losing so much else as well.

   I felt this grief as my own private guilt. It ate away at me just as the lack of theatre fellowship and constant touch with strong friendships was the source of sadness she hid from me.

   Or tried to. But you don't think I knew? Of course I did. No matter what is happening with me now, I wanted this to change.

   "So will you do something for me – and you'll audition, at least?"

   She was very hesitant, but she knows the rare occasions I dig my heels in, and this was one.

   "All right. I suppose. But...."

   "But me no buts." It's an old line but none the worse for being said with utter sincerity.

   "But," I said, "there is a condition, and you have to agree to it."

   I'm not used to putting conditions on anything in Tracey's life, nor she on mine, and normally she'd respond with a gesture that's the second-rudest on the scale, but she knew this was vital.

   "Yes?"

❆     ❆     ❆     ❆     ❆

The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society is the classic amateur group which runs community theatre in its own little domain. Its performers and production staff are not quite hopeless but on the borderline, and therefore the resulting performance is a triumph of mediocrity over any sort of potential they might muster collectively. Yea, a triumph of forlorn incompetence over noble ambition. 

   But, as Shakespeare's Hamlet says, "The play's the thing." The play within a play. So it is with this one, but unlike Hamlet, there are no consciences to prick; just a lot of ribs to tickle.

   It starts with us, the theatre audience, looking at backstage Macbeth with all the frantic preparations for a grand performance of Macbeth going on. Badly. The set is as good as the handyman can make it, and from our opening view of the Macbeth backstage, it looks only marginally less inspiring than when turned round to face us. That's revealed in a terrible set change we aren't supposed to see, but bad lighting cues give us a grim picture. 

   And so we are no longer backstage, but are faced with the grim spectacle – the Farndale Ladies' performance of scraps of Macbeth.

  In reality, it is not an easy play to perform well. You'd think it should be, because if there are any genuine stuffups, our actors playing Farndale ladies playing Macbeth might hope to get away with the audience thinking these are part of the Farndale script.

   I doubt it. Likewise the actors have to be scrupulous in playing their roles as credible Farndale ladies and laddies bitching at each other one minute, and melodramatic, painfully unconvincing Shakespearean performers the next.

   Mercifully we are not treated to the entire Macbeth script. You'll readily guess which bits are chosen for the onstage performances.

   Done without proper discipline, the whole play will look like a hastily thrust together Year 10 High School end-of-year show. Performed well, it is an excellent blend of split timing, character acting and utter farce.

❆     ❆     ❆     ❆     ❆

   So, what was the promise I was so keen to extract from Tracey?

   By the time the show goes on in the Town Hall in a week and a day, we will have lived with the ups and downs of this unpredictable cancer for 1197 days. There is no knowing its course. It can change dramatically, even before I complete the sentence I am now typing. Changes have been as sudden as that several times now. We have no illusions.

   "Whatever happens to me during the course of this show, you must keep to the stage traditions you and your family have lived with your whole life. 'The Show Must Go On.' If they cart me off to the hospital just before a performance, you've got to do the right thing by everyone, including me. You put your mind to the job and get on stage when you're needed. You promise?"

   She hesitated a long time.

   "Yes. I will."

   Tracey will read this only when it's on the blog. I want you all to be my witnesses. This is what I want. 

   The play now has the services of a great Macduff/witch. Unfortunate things happen to her as a Farndale witch. In view of my footnote, I hope it stays that way – just as it is in the script. At least MacDuff doesn't cop a dagger by mistake. Well, let's hope so anyway. With Farndale, you can never be quite sure....

Photo at rehearsal courtesy Terry Cooke

____

Tracey comes from a family of stage performers, and was on stage singing and dancing at age 5. Both her mother and father have long careers in Australian national theatre as performers.   Her brother Jimi is a leading guitarist and blues performer internationally.

   Tracey has her own history of 'going on' under difficult circumstances. She took on the role of Mrs Lovett in the Playhouse production of Sweeney Todd when, very sadly, the lead was diagnosed with cancer. Tracey learned the part in the three weeks before Opening Night. Don't ask me how. Sondheim songs are a nightmare to learn.

   Then in a Matinee performance, Mrs Lovett was, as usual, thrown into the oven, but the mattress was out of place and her back was badly damaged. She went on to do the night performance anyway – I don't know how. It ended once again with her being tossed into the Lovett pie-oven furnace.

   In a rush dinner after a matinee performance as narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, her chair collapsed and her back was injured. She went on half an hour later for the evening performance, and the audience had no idea she could barely stand.

   So don't anyone try to tell me that a performance should be cancelled on my account!  

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Yellow Brick Road – work complete

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The time has come when I can no longer walk safely down the steps of our house, even though there are only three of them. In fact, it is not longer safe for me to walk anywhere but a few well chosen steps inside our house. 

   Recently I took a fancy swallow dive with shoulder-twist and jack-knife down the Playhouse steps, in spite of there being three people around me and hanging on the Tracey's arm. I managed to rip a chunk out of my right arm and spectacular bruising of the left, but although it still damned-well feels like it as I type this, no bones were broken. 

   That was it. Some of the crew of the Armidale Drama and Musical Society [of which the Playhouse is a part] – stepped in. They knew the danger was even greater at our home. A ramp would be made from scratch and built within three hours of measuring up on Sunday 3 March, just before they were due to work on the latest ADMS production [about which I intend to write shortly].

I'll name names here because these Three Musketeers well deserve more than a passing mention.

Methuen Morgan – my big little bro, I call him. He comes from a large family of brothers. I never had one until my sisters all married excellent men and I got three. But "Jak" [another story I'll not relate here] is my friend-bro, and never was there a better man. He's a stage actor/singer, Psych First Class Hons man doing his Ph D, handyman, cattle rustler breeder and bloke you'd want on your side in a bar-room brawl – which, needless to say, he and I go looking for to the pub nightly. I can't count the times he's stepped in for Tracey and me when we really needed a friend.

Alan Wilkinson – stage actor/singer of the Paul Robeson variety [though little physical resemblance, it must be said], restorer of antique furniture, highly skilled builder and cabinet-maker-craftsman, former teacher, master of the English language and all its intricacies and nuances, and the best and most reliable friend anyone could have. In my recent illness it's Alan who has saved us one way or the other in difficulties he's so good at dealing with. [I say this while acknowledging the wonderful help of others too.]

And taa-daaahhh!! Colin Barry – Stage Manager without peer, though has been known to sneak on stage all too rarely as an actor [I have film footage]. I've left him to last because he is the best of men, working quietly and methodically in the background with steely resolution and honesty in every way and always, always gets the job done. He's an Infrastructure Manager with FMS at the university, and with his wife and family a notable caregiver for children in distress. Why doesn't this man have an OA rather than a company exec whose greatest fame is in the squillions s/he may have made? 

Now, to the job at hand – the ramp. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Alan, Methuen [in cap], and Colin [doing the maths]

 

 

 

 

I know.... this is a bit out of sync – but it seems right!

The Soxy seal of approval.

The Yellow Brick Road [must ask set artists to paint the bricks on!]

Back in Kansas – heels were clicked and magic happened.

 

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Dancing with rosellas

Arnott's logo

As it turns out, my title for this piece couldn't be more accurate, but for different reasons from those I had for naming it that. 

    Below is the story I posted several hours ago. It contains an error of fact. This error demonstrates a confusion between icons, thereby creating a story on mixed memories. 

    It now concerns two memorable Australian companies, Rosella and Arnott's. Regardless of what's written below, it was Arnott's, established even earlier than Rosella, which supplied the critical element of the story.

    To be honest, I don't mind having confused the two. The way this can happen in remembered experience makes as good a story as the original one. Anyway, I've got an excuse....

    I leave the story exactly as it was, because what's fundamental to it doesn't change. Thanks to my dear sisters for giving me the clue that I might have got things a wee bit wrong, and apologies to Arnott's. Maybe a better title now would be "A Tale of Two Parrots".

❉     ❉     ❉     ❉     ❉

When we were kids, the School Fancy Dress Ball was one of the highlights of the year.

   The good thing about these balls was Practice. You might think this strange, but it meant that for a couple of weeks before the ball, we would be marched down to the Diggers Arms Dance Hall to practice the manoeuvres for the Grand March – akin, on a slightly smaller scale, to what you might see at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, but with a motley collection of forty or so Calliope State School pupils instead of an entire US Civil War battalion of flawless clones.

   Again you might wonder why this Practice could possibly have any attraction, but what it meant was that for at least an hour on several afternoons, we escaped from the normal tedium of English, Maths and Social Studies inside the schoolroom. Any activity which took us from that fate was a plus. Well, it was for me anyway.

   Mothers may have taken a different view, because it meant they had to wrack their brains to find or make a fancy dress costume, often for four or five kids. I don't know if they hated or loved this – it was bound to be a personal thing. For some, it may have brought back happy memories of being Alice in Wonderland or dressing up in some weird garb that was supposed to represent a hero of the day.

   I dunno. That part of it wasn't our problem. All I know is that they turned out kids dressed in something for the March – ballerinas and Caspers, Robin Hoods and William Tells, Hiawathas and many Pocahontii, scrawny Phantoms (as in the Ghost Who Walks – you don't know him? Forget it – you had to be there....) and strange regalia purporting to clothe Orientals of one sort or another.

Current Rosella Co Label

   One year, Mum had this bright idea. In the Sunday Mail, the Rosella Foods Company had offered to send a package of labels, posters, little parrot images et many als, to anyone wanting to make a fancy dress costume.

   Stuck for something for me to wear, Mum wrote and asked for one, and true to its word as a real Australian company, a large package arrived in the mail.

   Mum made some Roman toga-like thing to be used as a base, and festooned it with the brightly covered labels. A crown superstructure, likewise adorned, was wrapped round my head. Pride and joy for me (at about seven years of age, in my defence) was a cardboard cutout of a parrot so large that, with a kind of handle attached, I could hold it aloft as I took part in the Grand March. Admittedly, it interfered badly with the waltz with a partner at the end.

   In short, I was a walking advertisement for Rosella jam and tomato sauce. It was impressive with its riot of colour. Nothing quite like it had ever before been seen at a Calliope School Fancy Dress Ball and, I was quite sure, was a delight to the eye of the admirers around the hall. Nor will it ever be seen again.

   Today, the Rosella Food Co, as iconically Australian as Vegemite (sadly, Australian no more) has been swallowed up by the food giants too, after being around since 1895. It is, or was, older than the Commonwealth of Australia, cobbled together as a Johnny-come-lately affair in 1901.

   Obviously, my experience of holding the joyously-coloured cardboard parrot aloft like a Roman shield gives me a sentimental attachment to the venerable company that few can share – unless, that is, their mother took up the generous Rosella offer as well, and bedecked their kid in the brilliant colours of the Eastern Rosella or Rainbow Lorikeet.

   There was one thing I found which is a great disappointment. I went online looking for what I believe was the parrot on the original label. That parrot stood on a perch on one leg, and held a partially-munched Sao biscuit up to its beak with the other, just as did the one I held aloft when thrilling the multitude at the ball. I know they were thrilled – they were, after all, smiling widely in sheer admiration.

   There seems no image of that avian cracker-cruncher anywhere online. I'm shocked. Has every line of history been rewritten in favour of that imposter I now see?*

   The other thing is that in Queensland, where I come from, Rosella was far better known for making jams than anything else. It even made jam from rosella flowers, along with those of unfashionable fruits for jam like pineapple and quince.

   I loved pineapple jam, with the cracker-munching rosella parrot on the jam-tin label, perched there happily. Reading that label and saying hello to the rosella, you could sit for a whole breakfast scoffing toast thickly spread with pineapple jam. 

   Well, I could. I was happy to read anything. Stop smirking.

   Anyway, vale Rosella Food Co. So long, and thanks for the parrots. And memories.

––
* Ah, the irony of that question in view of my introduction!

What's below has nothing to do with my story, but it's too good to miss. I had to include it; forgive me, Mad Dog, for not securing your permission first, but let me know and I'll explain the circumstances. From your brilliant website, Madang – Ples Bilong Mi

Madang – Ples Bilong Mi

My cousin Beth and I in more traditional Fancy Dress for an earlier School Ball

 
 

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Getting it wrong

All the discussion generated by my previous blog posting has made me think much more deeply than I imagined; about what it is to be the carer, the close relative and/or friend who is the visitor or written correspondent, and the way I come across to them.

    I'm not one for the blame game, but I see now that I am part of the difficulty for visitors, or even those who know me only through my writing. It's not just the other person. I'm sure I give a dismissive impression about myself sometimes that cues a visitor or correspondent to turn quickly to other things.

    Sometimes I may not want to discuss in any detail my ailments if, for whatever reason, I'm feeling unwilling. It may be as simple as 'I haven't shaved this morning and feel like I look like something the cat dragged in.' The visitor, of course, really doesn't care about that and nor should they. It's minutiae that's not even on their radar. But you know how it is. Ego's a pain.

    As long as the air is filled with chatter it seems all right. Silence is awkward. Silence or breaks in conversation aren't tolerated in our society. They're taken as cues for action – e.g., that it's time to go [maybe it is, maybe not] – or just to fill the space with ... anything.

    In other words, silences can be minefields for clear communication – and in the end it's no-one's fault.

    And sometimes it's a matter or plain can't. In wrestling with something that badly needs discussion, I can often be my own worst enemy. The words just come out wrong – and this gets worse the less I am sure of the topic, and, to be perfectly frank, the way this disease has progressed. So the other person gets it wrong.

    If I give wrong cues, of course it's misinterpreted. If others give wrong cues, the result's the same. Miscommunication. I can patch it over a bit in written communication, but not face-to-face.

    What I'm scared of is that people reading the thread concerning visits will now be so afraid of not 'getting it right' that they won't communicate at all. That's the last thing I want.

    In my present state, even being sent a long email daunts me a bit. The brief email with a sincere 'no need to respond' [I probably will!] is often all I need, and most appreciated. But don't make it so short that you leave out something in your life that is important to you. If it's important to you, it probably is to me.

    I'm not as I was even 12 months ago. I'm less stable in all sorts of ways. More than ever before, I need far more quietness and solitude [where I do my best communicating], and the necessarily flexible routine I have. 

   My best therapy [which in my case means "stress release"] is composing my blog stories, even though they now take ten times as long. They are also my way of communicating with the world, especially my family close friends, even though, as I said in almost my first blog piece in 2010, that idea is anathema to some.

   If few read them, that's OK. It means they're interested in the topic, however bad my story. If this interests you, read the comments on the previous story. They are better than anything I've written on the subject.

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Horses on tables and elephants in the room

"The horse on the table"

It was only comparatively recently that a friend wrote to me and said, "Have you ever read that story about the horse on the table?"

   I had to admit that I hadn't.

   I went searching for it online and found it. It's only a couple of book pages in length, but the intent of the story can be condensed much further. Reading it will set the scene fully, but here's the gist of it.

   The horse on the table is a rather more specific form of the 'elephant in the room' – the thing strongly affecting people's lives that is very important but no-one can bear to talk about. 

   In this case, it's referring to the impending death of the person being visited. It sits on the table right between the visitor and the person with the illness. Very often, no-one knows how to deal with it, because it's not going to go away. It's just there where it doesn't belong. Like a horse between the salt and pepper shakers.

   The problem is that sometimes it's X, the ill person, who doesn't want to confront it, and at other times Y, the guest, prefers not to. Both might not want to. Both may want to, but are scared the other does not.

   So more often than not, the horse sits there as the visit goes on, looming larger and larger as long as it doesn't get a mention.

   I've had this sort of experience, but much depends on my visitor[s] and my relationship with them. I surely don't want to spend the entire time talking about my illness, and I'm certain they don't want it to be the sole topic of conversation. I do want to know what is going on in my visitors' lives, and the wonderful gossip they have up their sleeve to share with me.

   I have no qualms in talking about details of my illness or, for that matter, my impending death, with detachment that makes some people shrink in horror. With some people I can even joke about it, up to a point – sometimes in a macabre way that would unsettle others. 

   Tracey and I have no horse on the table. What's happening to me physically and intellectually as this disease progresses affects us to the core and there's simply no room for equus mortis.

   The only visit that's unsatisfactory is the one where we're trapped in this groove of talking about inconsequential things when, after the best part of an hour, no true contact has been made. I haven't even been asked how I feel. That question's too much like inviting the horse to loom up with a quizzical look in its eye.

   By the end of the visit I end up knowing how painting their back room is going, the antics of their neighbour I wouldn't know from Adam, and the potholes in the street down the road, but they have no better idea where I'm at than they had when they arrived. Of course, they may gather a good deal about me without asking, from the shakiness of my arm and the difficulty I have to sit down and the other observable points of deterioration but....

   It's nice to be asked. Watto wouldn't hesitate, so don't you.

   The horse is on the table and always will be, but don't be afraid of it. It won't eat you, I promise. And you'll feel all the better for asking.

   'My son, it is the horse on the dining-room table. It is a horse that visits every house and sits on every dining-room table - the tables of the rich and of the poor, of the simple and of the wise. This horse just sits there, but its presence makes you wish to leave without speaking of it. If you leave, you will always fear the presence of the horse. When it sits on your table, you will wish to speak of it, but you may not be able to.

   'However, if you speak about the horse, then you will find that others can also speak about the horse - most others, at least, if you are gentle and kind as you speak. The horse will remain on the dining-room table, but you will not be so distraught. You will enjoy your repast, and you will enjoy the company of the host and hostess. Or, if it is your table, you will enjoy the presence of your guests. You cannot make magic to have the horse disappear, but you can speak of the horse and thereby render it less powerful.'*

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*http://jfs.e-contentmanagement.com/archives/vol/4/issue/2/article/2511/the-horse-on-the-diningroom-table 

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Tit for tat and Trinder's hat

We were chatting the other day with Maureen and Watto, and something came up where I said, "It's tit for tat."

   "What's the origin of that, I wonder?"

   "Perhaps it's come from 'this' for 'that'," Maureen suggested.

   That sounds logical, but I wanted to see what the oracle said.

   Some sources indicated that Maureen was on the right track, but there was another I found worth reading. It contends that it's a variant of "tip for tap", as recorded c. 1466:

   "Strokis grete, not tippe nor tapp."

   The change to "tit" and "tat" made its first recorded literary appearance in 1556:

   "That is tit for tat in this altricacion [altercation]."

Source

   It goes on to mention that the saying is the parent for the Cockney rhyming slang for "hat" best known for its use by the famous comic, Tommy Trinder (1909 – 1989).  He called his hat, which came to be his trademark symbol, his "titfer". No doubt it always caused a bit of a titter.

   I didn't know that, but then I'm a baby-boomer, and he was most famous for his keeping Britain a little bit cheerier during that awful conflict a few years before I was born.

   On a more serious note, I've always felt that Christianity's ideal of turning the other cheek has certain merit. While the religion as it's been practised over the last two thousand years has many horrendous things to answer for, that ideal is an advance for western civilisation compared with the 'tit for tat' so emphatically expressed in the Jewish and Islamic texts (and in the Old Testament of the Bible). "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

   Gandhi echoes the same sentiment as the New Testament Christian dictum with his saying, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." Not to retaliate was explicit in his doctrine of ahimsa (non-violent non-cooperation), used with great effect against the British.

   Even so, there is very little evidence that Christians practise or have ever practised the ideal, but I'm not surprised by this. I am also convinced that turning the other cheek simply cannot be applied to everything. It wouldn't have worked against some of the world's great dictators, who can only have been restrained by violent resistance. 

   In this respect, the Taoist approach is the most sensible, and I wrote an ANZAC Day story in 2012 about that.

   Yet it can be applied with good effect in other ways. There are times when turning the other cheek seems to resulted in a better outcome; or at least its derivatives of compassion, tolerance, acceptance and forgiveness have. In some circumstances it's the only way to move on and find some peace, hard as that can be to achieve. I have several examples of that, but I won't go further with them here.

"Tit for tat," eh? And here was I, with my schoolboy mind, hoping to unearth something much more vulgar.

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Our Moon, Jupiter and Stellarium

There was a lot of talk last night on social media about an interesting phenomenon – the Moon and Jupiter being so close together you could have been forgiven for thinking that the Moon had its very own moon.

   It wasn't a perfect night for viewing it from Armidale, with intermittent cloud and mist. Christian didn't even bother getting the powerful binoculars and tripod out, even though the unusual sight was visible at times.

   I opened the program Stellarium on my big computer. It's a brilliant program (freely dowloadable for your computer), and I have it set to view the sky in real time. I found the Moon quickly, which isn't surprising because it's one of those sky objects most sighted people do recognise, I'm pretty darn sure.

   Jupiter is a wonder because with even medium-power binoculars you can view it and see its own moons as shining pinpoints of light. With no other planet can you do that.

   After some fiddling and zooming I had the image of the Moon and Jupiter at the right size. Being in real time at that magnification, it was crawling downwards to screen left (or 7 o'clock) to where the relevant data for the sighting were, at the bottom of the screen.

   I quickly took a partial screen capture and immediately posted it to Twitter, saying this:

Behold the moon, Jupiter and its moons from Armidale a few minutes ago. pic.twitter.com/l0NSCiTx

   Christian and I discussed the phenomenon for a few minutes and then the rather splendid image I tweeted started to be retweeted. 

   At that point, with people complimenting me on the great photograph, I realised I had better explain on Twitter the source of the image – that it was computer generated via Stellarium, but in real time and a perfect match for the real thing in terms of technical and astronomical accuracy. It was not a photograph. Anyone with Stellarium would easily spot it if they were familiar with the program, so what would be the point of pretending it was?

   The image is so dramatic that it set off a retweeting storm. I even "trended". (Don't ask if you're not a Twitter fan; if you are, you'll know already.) Because I and my followers have followers across the world, it went worldwide.

   It deserves to, because it's beautiful. Here it is. But remember – it's not a photo. I used to be able to do plenty with cameras, but not that.

Jupiter, with its moons, on the right. Viewing it in the real sky can be more dramatic.

The night sky, Armidale, Tuesday, 19 February 2013 7:45 PM via Stellarium

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