I translated this mother's sad farewell and sent it to my Mamka. The universal love of mothers expressed ever so deeply ... The eulogy Claudette Clausen will read at the funeral of her only daughter, Klara. There is nothing as hard as burying your own child. It's not the way it's meant to be. It's not the natural order of things. It's just not right... The day has lost a special light
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Doing It For Love
Clair Scobie meets some talented Australians who know you can’t put a dollar value on success. They may be at the top of their field - in writing, sport, fashion and acting - but they wouldn’t want to be doing it for the money.
Despite the success Perth author Brett D’Arcy, along with most of his fellow authors, is struggling at the low-income end of town: “Last year at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, I remember being on the stage with three others and looking at the sole of the shoes of one of them, a successful Sydney writer. Just like my own shoe, it had a hole in it. Afterwards I said to him, ‘Do you stuff it with newspaper or what?’”
Life is tough at the top. According to a study commissioned by the Australia Council in 1000-2001 just 26% of Australian actors earn more than $50,000 that year. Authors routinely earn $10,000 a book. Passion, talent and genuine desire to make a difference inspire many but on the consumerist merry-go-round some of us ride, success is often equated with a fat pay cheque. “Society makes money a measurement for success. It is obvious thing to do,” says celebrated fashion designer Akira Isogawa. “How much you earn - to me is absurd if you measure success by that ... The Question I have: am I passionate about it? And if I’m not, even if money comes, I do not thin it is worthwhile.”
Actor Nicholas Hope, who last year turned into his years on a fringees of stardom - he won an AFI for Bubby - into an amusing memoir, Brushing the Top Tip of Fame. “I have dealt with the [financial strains] through high blood pressure ... Suddenly, I think, ‘I’m 45, I’ve lost the chance of building up a pension and I only have enough money for the next six months.”
Unpredictability goes with the territory. “Risk is part of the actor’s existence,” says Michael Gow, 49, whose 1986 award-winning play Away is studied as a set text in schools... Then, he points out “I may not have a BMW, but I’ve inspired a whole generation of schoolkids.” In Australia there is ‘one millionaire playwright - David Willimason - and a huge gap between him and the rest of us struggling for scraps’ “The whole thing of the struggling artist is becoming a more respectable idea,” says Nicholas Hope. “Australia has always liked the idea of the rebel, the battler.” Brett D’Arcy is less convinced. “People are embarrassed by the sort of remuneration writers get ... you take a vow of silence as well as a vow of poverty.” (Indeed, many renowned Australians approached for this story were reluctant to talk about it)
Media Dragon is of an opinion that if you cannot take it to the coffin what is the point of owning it? People might be smart enough to accumulate amazing quantity of power and riches, but they also must be dummies enough if in the process they end up with a soul so empty that charity becomes a foreign word in their world ...
• Not on line It won’t make you rich but ... [credits: Complete strangers often approach Mitch Albom and ask whether they can give him a hug. His presence can trigger grateful tears from middle-aged men, while Oprah simply adores him The Five People you Meet in Heaven ; Raising the dead: Brave voice of the silent witnesses. Koff belongs among these modern mercenaries of the human rights and humanitarian world. Like them, she exudes restlessness, a sense of pleasure in risk, a need for this kind of adrenalin, as well as an obvious enjoyment in the camaraderie of working friendships as colleagues, befriended in Rwanda, are encountered again in Bosnia and Croatia. Like them, she is drawn back, again and again, by a feeling that it is still possible in the world to do something worthwhile and by a belief that witnessing is all that keeps the world from sinking into barbarity. She is part of what Michael Ignatieff has called the "expanding moral imagination" of our times. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I don’t have a poker face ; Not only do these people want to make you rich, but they can do it in record-breaking time. And they will make it so easy that you won't even have to do any real work. Why Are There So Many People Eager To Make You, like me, Rich? ]
• · It is award time in America. In all the precincts of intellectual and cultural endeavor, the hubbub begins. One book fewer given to literature; A Post-Pulitzer Coogler
• · · Chicago-based Jessa Crispin launched her literary webzine and daily blog hoping publishers would send free books. Three years on, she is a minor celebrity. We asked her to keep a diary Strange meetings ; The agony and the ecstasy of a reading life Guardian Unlimited Books' top 10 literary blogs ; Bookslut
• · · · I went on a date a while back and met one of the founding members of the "for Dummies" series. His thoughts on publishing were simple. Figure out a way to get rid of the writer. Money, money, money: Big thieving monkeys always hang the little thieving dummies!!! Always!!! ;
• · · · · Sandra Lee: THE State Government is gearing up to celebrate 150 years of responsible government in 2006 by shelling out almost $2 million in grants for a string of back-slapping congratulatory books on the politics, politicians and those who cover them. In 2002 Premier Bob Carr set up a bipartisan trust charged with dishing out money to a series of authors commissioned to produce riveting titles including A History of Politics of the 1850s ($50,000 grant) and the Book on Premiers of NSW 1856 to 2005 ($60,000). Other projects included $27,500 to a political journalist to write The History of the NSW Press Gallery (potential readership, 25), and another on the sporting prowess of politicians throughout the years. Seriously! Interestingly, one committee member who signed off on the project is the newly trim deputy Opposition leader Barry O'Farrell, who once endured the cheeky nickname, Fatty O'Barrell. Your money hard at work. Literary follies of our pollies; First he was on radio hamming it up and promising a law to ban people from wishing others a belated Happy New Year. This week the funster Premier played actor (is there any difference?) at the official opening of the Sydney Film School. During a mock Oscars ceremony, Carr was awarded a green zucchini for his film, "Million Dollar Maybe" (geddit?). Ever the showman, he brandished the award in good grace, a la Clint Eastwood at the recent and real Golden Globe Awards. Is Premier Bob Carr auditioning for life outside of politics?
• · · · · · There's an affliction called mirror-face which strikes many women. When we catch sight of ourselves in a reflective surface, the following instinctively happens: we suck in our cheeks, tilt our jaws upwards and sideways, and bug our eyes out in what's supposed to be a startled-fawn expression. I could write a thesis on the reasons for this phenomenon, but in short, I believe we assume mirror-face so our external image matches our fragile internal one.First Daughter ; It's often said that motherhood is a thankless task, but being the mother of a writer is much, much worse than that Granta 88: Mothers
