A friend died yesterday

and I am wondering yet again if it is possible to die from a broken heart.

The friend was my beloved Whirlwind's father. He was young, far too young at forty-six. 

I miss the Whirlwind, of course I do. She was an incredible part of my life. In many ways she was the child I never had but she was not my child in the way she was her father's child. She could never have been that.

When she died (and let us use that word "died") her father was never the same. It is something we say about people but it is also true. No parent should lose a child. Losing a child the way he did was  perhaps even harder. He had to agree for them to turn off life support, effectively kill her. His howls of grief as he clung to me at the hospital still cause me an indescribable feeling of helpless misery too. That I was the only adult he felt he could be with at that point is even worse. 

I like C... as a person. I loved him as the Whirlwind's father. We were not related in any way. He had no relations in the world apart from the cousin he lived with when he went to live in the nation's capital. I say "lived with" but in reality they saw very little of each other. Both of them were the sort of public servants who put in very, very long hours. For C... work was a way of trying to avoid the overwhelming grief of losing first his partner and then his daughter. 

Here his hobbies had been his garden, riding his bike with his daughter and putting a fishing line with no bait into the water so he could spend time reading or catching up on sleep. Ms Whirlwind would get cross with him for forgetting to put on sunscreen. 

He went to a place with no garden and rarely rode his bike. Once in a while he and his cousin would take long, silent walks in the parks. Most of his time was spent working. I sent books and he dutifully read them but they did not give him the same pleasure they might once have given him.  He returned here occasionally. After their home was sold I would meet him somewhere in the city and we would sit for several hours over coffee which grew cold and food he barely touched. 

He tried. He really did try to start living again but somehow he could not make it happen. The trips out of the country were not the same when he did not have to work out what time to call his daughter every day. 

I am not going to the funeral. There will not be one. He did not want one. His cousin will be here in another month or so. We will meet for a chat, a reminisce about what might have been perhaps. 

Yes, I am upset. I am sad but I am also relieved. He was not well. He was, despite trying, not happy. He was a hard working man, a very good father. He deserved better.  Rest in peace my friend. 

I am not going to take up another hobby

but I can still take an interest in things other people do as hobbies. There is a difference!

Recently a friend of mine spun some yarn for me. It is something she learned to do after she retired. She had planned to do this. Now, some years down the learning track, she actually spins very well indeed. She spins as well as people who have been doing it for many years. It was something she wanted to do and, being one of those highly intelligent people, she approached the task with thought and preparation. She went to classes. She belongs to a group. She enjoys the process. 

I think that's the entire point. She enjoys what she is doing. It really is a hobby. There is no pressure there.

Other people I know have other hobbies. They pursue them with varying degrees of enthusiasm.  There are people who have "taken up" an activity intended to be a hobby and let it lapse for a long period. Later they have gone back to it. 

Other people do not return to an initial enthusiasm at all. They have tools and other equipment languishing in their sheds and work rooms. The materials have been given away or thrown out.

The late Senior Cat had hobbies which he pursued with enthusiasm. His garden was important but so was his woodworking shed.  It was not just family who benefitted from the food he grew and the things he made. He loved handling timber and working with it. Designing and making conjuring apparatus was a challenge. Indoors he read widely and taught conjuring, study skills and English. He retained his intellectual capacities to the end of his long life and made the most of them.

I hope I can do the same. I do not see "writing" as a hobby. It is an essential part of my being, of my existence. That does not mean there are not days when the idea of writing a blog post does not appeal. No, sitting down to write one is a different thing altogether. It is not the same as writing about the "cathedral cats". I can think about the cats while I am pedalling out and about and I think I would miss them. Saying goodbye to other characters has been very difficult. 

I knit and I crochet. I do not claim to be an expert craftsperson but I enjoy it. I gave up using other people's patterns at around age sixteen. This was not because I am particularly good at knitting or crochet. It is because the challenge is in the design and "seeing if that works" and "what if..." and more. I want to make some buttons to go on the next projects. I have tried one or two ideas and I think I can do it. It won't be easy but that is part of the process. I am impatient to get back to them. 

The reason I have not? There was the state's "Show" and I had things planned for that. In all likelihood it is the last time I will enter anything. I also had the other project I wrote about a short time ago. It involved a hobby but it was done as a "thank you". Next week I will pass it on to someone else to finish. It is one of the rare occasions on which I wish I could sew and do the whole thing myself. Nevertheless it is done and I can think about buttons and other things.

And there is the project the knitting and crochet group at the library is planning. It will involve work but it is related to hobbies I enjoy.

In between I might manage to read a great many more books about all sorts of things...and I suppose I might find a new hobby?    

The High Court has refused leave to appeal

in the Giggle v Tickle case. It is effectively a ruling which leaves women with no legal right to female only spaces under the law.

Before you tell me this is "not true" let me try and explain. The High Court has refused leave to appeal. This means the court believes the law, as it is currently written, was correctly applied by the Federal Court. The court is not saying what the definition of a woman should be. 

The implications of this ruling are potentially catastrophic for women's rights and safety. It is difficult to see how it is now possible to prevent anyone claiming transgender status entering a space designated as being "only" for the gender with which they "identify". This could cover a wide range of services and activities. 

There are already concerns about transgender persons participating in sports teams for women. These concerns often relate to the physical safety of other participants. They are not simply about physical advantage. Who has rights here?  Recently a mother at the library told me how her daughters no longer want to play their chosen sport "because the boys are allowed to play too". Questioning revealed that a bigger and stronger "transgender" teen had been chosen and the rest of the team had been told that person had the "right" to be there. The girls no longer felt safe.

Not so long ago someone casually said to me, "Well if women didn't commit crimes they would not be in prison and they wouldn't have that problem."  What was "that problem"? It was a transgender person claiming the right to be placed in the prison of their preferred gender. The comment completely ignored issues like why the transgender person in question was incarcerated for violent offending against women. It also completely ignored the fact that the offences which land women in prison are all too often due in part to male aggression. Women were seen as the problem!

Given this ruling it will now be interesting to see which way the latest "chest feeding" case will go. A person who identifies as female claims they took measures which allowed them to lactate and chest feed an infant. Another person who took issue with this and raised concerns is now being taken to court for defamation. A judge has asked for more information about what was actually fed to the infant. There have been many questions raised about why someone would actually want to subject an infant to such a procedure. 

The High Court has, rightly, based the decision on the law as it now stands. That is the role of the court. The court is not ruling on "transgender rights". Whether parliament is prepared to review the law is something entirely different. I am not sure they will want to do it. 

 

CANZUK we do it?

There is a proposal being aired for a much stronger association between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. It appears in my main Twitter feed occasionally. 

If the figures are correct then support for the proposal is high in some respects and not others. The idea of "free trade" is one which gets very high approval at around ninety-five percent. Express travel through partner countries was lowest but even that was around fifty-six percent last time a survey was conducted. 

The biggest concerns were, understandably, around housing, health care and agriculture agreements. There are also some fears about those outside the bloc being able to find ways to abuse any such agreement. 

It comes at an interesting time. Migration is under the spotlight here. It is a topic being used to advantage by the red head who leads the party considered to be "far right".  What she is saying and what others like to pretend she is saying are not quite the same thing but there are issues which must be considered. 

"We need migrants but they need to be migrants who will integrate and find their place here. They cannot be people who bring their problems and prejudices here and expect us to change. Current migration policy is almost actively encouraging the latter and not the former," one former federal politician informed me recently. As a member of the party currently in power I found that point of view interesting. 

CANZUK is unlikely to become a unified bloc for all purposes with so many issues which would need to be resolved. Right now we even have a problem with a trade agreement between us and the UK. We are told this is because of concerns about agriculture. That is only part of the story. The present government here has endeavoured to craft an agreement which is politically advantageous to them too. It is not simply about what is good for the country. It is designed to retain power. There is nothing new in that but it is not something they wish the rest of us to know about.

I suspect it is all going to go nowhere, especially at the present time. We will learn nothing more about it while the present government is in power. There is still a widespread belief they can win the next election - with a reduced majority. A CANZUK agreement would not suit their agenda at all. 

The benefits of four countries which have English as at least one official language and similar governance and legal systems should be able to work closely together. This is not the European Union with diverse language and legal systems. It is something which could be much more cohesive. We could do with some of that in the present world. 

Blame the algorithm?

The federal government is attempting to push through more "social media" laws. This time they are asking for "opt out" laws to be passed. They are laws designed to give social media users greater control over what they see in their feeds.

That is the argument anyway. 

This is the same government which is, at least in part, blaming their own unpopularity on "the algorithm". It is also complaining the rise of our redhead's party is due to the same algorithm.

Here is our very own Minister for (among other things) Social Media complaining 

    "the power of online is so strong, the algorithm is so strong that it is overwhelming our public institutions and this is problematic for everybody". 

Really? It is all the fault of Elon Musk and X is it? Is this why there is apparently a wide spread belief the government, particularly the Prime Minister, is lying to us? It doesn't have anything to do with the actual, verifiable fact we are not getting lower electricity bills?

Wrongly used social media is a blight on everyone but demanding the social media giants control the content is wrong. Allowing the government to control the content will doe even more harm. The present government would be more than happy to both blame the algorithm and collect massive fines from social media for failing to  ensure that nothing which harmed the government's chances of re-election was made available. 

There are other things which could be done before that. One would be to require, as required by law, the ABC to actually observe their charter to provide fair, balanced and accurate reporting. It could demand the same of a good many the other media outlets which the general public relies on for news.

There is a good deal of information in the state newspaper this morning about the collapse of an inquiry which was supposed to uncover what would have been appalling instances of "racism" in a major football club. Had they been true then people would possibly be facing court. They were reported as true and kept on being reported as true even when the first doubts were raised. Now someone who was responsible for many of the allegations being made is facing court on a charge of the embezzlement of a large sum of money. It was money intended for indigenous communities.  He was also making claims that the indigenous players themselves have said are not true. Their fellow team mates say the same but the damage done is still great. They have been said to have been subjected to racism and some of the claims are horrific. Living with those claims and having to deny them may be almost as hard as incidents of racism.

The Prime Minister is claiming the purpose of the legislation is to allow people to be in control of what they see. Really? It seems very unlikely to me. The vast majority of people have no idea how such things work or how they are being manipulated. It will also allow the government of the day to heavily influence, indeed ensure, that most people only see what the government wants them to see.

It might be simpler if the government just banned social media for everyone perhaps?  Would that work? 

A school principal has lost her job

over her refusal to endorse  "Wear it purple day" in her school. She was the head of a school where the pupils are under the age of twelve.

"Wear It Purple Day" is apparently a day that encourages people to "create a safer, more supportive and more inclusive world for LGBTQIA+SB young people," according to its website. I had never heard of it.

The school principal felt those matters were not something which should be discussed at school. They should be discussed at home and inside the family. She felt it was not like ANZAC Day or even NAIDOC week where schools do discuss issues around war and racism. 

I will not go into the rights and wrongs of discussing these issues in school although I will admit I would not personally feel comfortable about doing so with young children who were not related to me. Is this really what school is intended to be about?

I know there are people who feel very, very strongly about these issues. They are much more vocal than they were even five years ago. There are court cases which relate to these issues. Some of those cases remain unresolved. People have lost their jobs over these issues. They have been shunned and banned. It has all become very nasty at times. I still do not believe that this is what school is about.

School should surely about giving students the skills and capacity to read, write, calculate, reason and argue? Am I wrong in thinking this? Perhaps I am. Have parents stopped discussing these issues with their children? Perhaps they have. Perhaps they do not have time to deal with such things?

I do not believe people should be losing their positions over these things. The principal in question is apparently just opposed to the issues being discussed in schools. I wonder how she feels about the continuing publication of books about these issues. The local library has many of them. One mother I know has complained to me that she feels it is not appropriate to have books about "gay grandfathers" on the shelves. I wonder if they are really necessary - or appropriate.

We do need to be open about these things if children ask questions but my guess is that most children do not. Why would they? They might think someone is "different" but such differences usually mean very little in childhood.  

It seems to me we are teaching children to believe something is far more significant than it might otherwise be. We are telling them that differences are more important than similarities. I am not sure it is a good thing.  

I have been making a book list

for someone and came across another list. The second list was intended for students in their senior year at a Catholic high school somewhere in the United States in 1965.

It is an extraordinary list. The books on it are books which even the brightest university students would now struggle to read. 

It begins with  four books to be read "before September" - presumably the start of the school year.  There is a book by Thomas Merton and I know nothing about that. Then there is Harper Lee's  "To Kill a Mockingbird" (now banned in some places), Antoine de St Exupery's  "Night Flight" comes next, then Ivan Turgenev's "Father and Sons". 

I have read just two of those and only glanced at the Turgenev.

It goes on to other books. The first on the list is Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a young man". When I was about ten the Senior Cat was studying that as part of his university degree and I remember him reading me the part where Stephen's mother is washing his ears. It is not the sort of thing most ten year olds hear about I suppose. I did read the book later.

The rest of the list covers some interesting material.  It ranges from things like "Lord of the flies" and "The thirty-nine steps" to "War and Peace" and "Crime and Punishment".  I have read Lord of the Flies and The thirty-nine steps but gave up on the other two. 

In between there is Paton's "Cry, the beloved country" and Shute's "On the beach". They are interesting choices for their time and were probably considered controversial as well. Willa Cather appears too, as does F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Le Carre.

It is a mixed list but there is serious literature on it. It is an interesting list because I have just shown it to the only neighbour I know who does any reading for pleasure. He looked carefully at it and then said, "Well, I have heard of some of them but the only one I have read is Lord of the Flies. It was a set text in my last year at school." This neighbour is twenty-two years younger than I am. His children have not read any of these books. He thinks they will not even have heard of anything on it. The idea of them reading four books on it before the beginning of the school year made him laugh.  "Not a hope," he told me.

I know quite a number of teenagers in their final two years of school and I have to admit that not one of them would be likely to read anything on that list by choice. They might read one or two of the shorter and better known books if they were forced to do so but most of those books would not be read except under duress.

So, what are they reading? Is that the right question or should I be asking, "Are they reading at all?"  I know some of them are not reading now. Hopefully they will go back to books when Year 12 has ended and before university begins.