As PASTOR of a two-church parish, my husband had to drive
every Sunday morning about six kilometers from the 9:30 service at one church to the 11
o'clock at the other. He would often find the parking lot of the second church full, and
be forced to park down the road and race to the church on foot. The problem was finally
solved when he selected a parking spot near the side door of the church, where he posted a
sign: YOU PARK - YOU PREACH.
“It’s a terrible feeling, being despised. From the moment I set foot in Hickory, I felt the suspicion, distrust, and outright hostility of most of the people I met. Even my new sister-in-law regarded me with disdain.”
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Tanaka Yasuo's 1981 novel, Somehow, Crystal, just out from Kurodahan Press.
I review far too few books that I read before I started the site but I actually have read this one before -- the German translation, some twenty-five years ago. It's not a great book, but of enough interest that it was certainly worth covering (if not necessarily revisiting ...) -- and I fear it won't get all that much coverage otherwise (though surely The Japan Times will at least get to it). Indeed, it's notable enough -- for several reasons -- that if the English translation had been available I would have mentioned it in my The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction.
If you need further convincing/tempting: Sayonara, Gangsters-author Takahashi Gen'ichirō wrote the Introduction to this -- and he concludes it by suggesting:
Kevin Roberts has working with a small crew of imaginative, transformational folks for a few years now and they’ve just completed and sharpened their offer – so welcome to RELUCTANTLY BRAVE.
(I recently taped a podcast with their Creative Head which you can see here.)
The Braves offer three services:
1. Coaching brave leaders to imagine possibilities and catalyse others,
2. Catalysing brave teams to work inclusively, imaginatively and purposefully,
3. Building brave brands that are purposeful, authentic and compelling.
Give them a yell if you’re interested. Contact James on +44-7779-035 988 or james@reluctantlybrave.com.
Old school v new school: Inside the tensions between the AFP and Dutton's ministry
BY JOHN COYNE
TaxGirl's Ode to Dr. Seuss | The Summa
Emma Seppälä and
Christina Bradley, via the Harvard Business Review
It’s essential that
leaders develop the ability to regulate their emotions, but perhaps not in the
way you might think.
“It’s a terrible feeling, being despised. From the moment I set foot in Hickory, I felt the suspicion, distrust, and outright hostility of most of the people I met. Even my new sister-in-law regarded me with disdain.”
The Stolen Marriage
By Diane Chamberlain
By Diane Chamberlain
It’s 1943 and Tess DeMello’s world is centered on getting her nurses license and marrying the love of her life but Vincent has left Baltimore for a temporary physician assignment in Chicago. She realizes that this is for his career and is patiently waiting and dreaming of the day when they can work side-by-side but the weeks turn to months. When her best friend suggests that they go to Washington, D.C. little does Tess know that this trip will change the course of her carefully laid-out plans. . .
MIKE PEZZULLO: What drives the Home Affairs Minister — and how has he earned the title of Australia’s most powerful public servant?
MIKE PEZZULLO: What drives the Home Affairs Minister — and how has he earned the title of Australia’s most powerful public servant?
Ayodeji Awosika, via
Medium
We all have the capacity
to engage them but, given the level of mental discipline required, too few
people care to (and that’s why these make it to ‘superpower’ status).ELENA COLLINSON. Anthony Albanese and the People’s Republic of China: an overview (Australia-China Relati ons Institute, UTS)
Following the Australian Labor Party’s (ALP) federal election defeat on May 18 2019, Bill Shorten stepped down as leader of the party. Anthony Albanese, a long-term ALP frontbencher, became the ALP’s leader-elect on May 27 after an uncontested leadership ballot, and was formally endorsed as …Continue reading
The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Tanaka Yasuo's 1981 novel, Somehow, Crystal, just out from Kurodahan Press.
I review far too few books that I read before I started the site but I actually have read this one before -- the German translation, some twenty-five years ago. It's not a great book, but of enough interest that it was certainly worth covering (if not necessarily revisiting ...) -- and I fear it won't get all that much coverage otherwise (though surely The Japan Times will at least get to it). Indeed, it's notable enough -- for several reasons -- that if the English translation had been available I would have mentioned it in my The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction.
If you need further convincing/tempting: Sayonara, Gangsters-author Takahashi Gen'ichirō wrote the Introduction to this -- and he concludes it by suggesting:
There has never been anther novel like this, nor is there likely to be on in the future. I can think of no other novel that so deeply and thoroughly confronts capitalist society. If Marx were still alive, his follow-up to Das Kapital would surely have been a novel like Somehow, Crystal.That last sentence is some tag-line; I hope some booksellers use it .....
fascism
On Late Night Live Phillip Adams discusses politics and cabaret with Robyn Archer. She takes us into Berlin in the 1930s – the Berlin of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. She sees how our present conditions echo those that led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic, when the economic catastrophe of the 1930s produced a disenfranchised middle class and left unemployed and uneducated young men waiting for someone to come up and say “I can give you jobs and growth”. She reminds us that “it only takes one incredibly persuasive aggressive speaker to convince people that his answer is theanswer and then you’re in trouble, because there are no simple answers to the incredibly complex questions that people were facing in those days and that we face now”.
How the freedom agenda fell apart
Writing in Foreign Affairs, Larry Diamond describes how the democratic flowering on the late twentieth century gave way to the rise of authoritarianism and illiberal populism in this century. He mentions “the disconnect between the United States’ admirable efforts to assist democracy, on the one hand, and its diplomatic statements, state visits, and aid flows that often send the opposite message, on the other” (a disconnect that goes back to Cold War days.) He cites Malcolm Turnbull’s observation that technologically-advanced countries are now using “sharp power” – essentially information warfare – to manipulate opinion and to increase their political influence. (Diamond presents a US Weltanschauung, but his emphasis on the US cleaning up its own democracy surely has relevance for other countries that are on the path to authoritarian populism, such as Australia.)
Fashion behind the wall
Some readers of Pearls and Irritations may be disappointed that John Menadue does not include a fashion section.
In a concession to socialist nostalgia, Deutsche Welle presents a pictorial extract from the DDR’s fashion magazine “Sibylle” – Mode für the werktätige Frau (Fashion for the working woman).
Our loss of civil liberties: the raids are just the latest instalment
Writing in Open Forum Johan Lidberg of Monash University reminds us that governments have been eroding our civil liberties ever since the terrorist attacks on America in September 2001. While many have been writing on this issue in the wake of the police raids, Lidberg and his colleague Denis Muller warned about this trend in their 2018 book In the name of security – Secrecy, surveillance and journalism.
Trust in media
Caroline Fisher and her team at the University of Canberra have produced the Australian edition of the 2019 Digital News Report. Among other findings it reveals that many Australians (62 per cent of respondents) avoid news sources, and that urban dwellers are more engaged with news sources than rural dwellers. Many Australians are concerned about fake news and seek verification of news, but that concern is not uniform: it is most marked among those with education and among younger and older people, but less so among the middle-aged.
The ABC’s Eleanor Hall has an interview with Caroline Fisher on The World Today website.
The full report, covering 38 countries, is available from the Digital News Report website. Its summary report on Australia reveals the importance of the ABC as our news source. (Murdoch’s print media are a long way behind.)
“We collect samples once a week, and on the Sea Dog, our floating laboratory we test and analyze for E.Coli bacteria. The results are posted every Friday on SwimGuide, a downloadable app (get it!) so that the public can see where it’s safe to swim, paddle, or otherwise recreate on the water…”
“We collect samples once a week, and on the Sea Dog, our floating laboratory we test and analyze for E.Coli bacteria. The results are posted every Friday on SwimGuide, a downloadable app (get it!) so that the public can see where it’s safe to swim, paddle, or otherwise recreate on the water…”
Inside Story
Expecting the major parties to call a truce in the battle of escalating lies is a big ask. But given the level of trust in
The Conversation
What
to do with our old paper medical files now that records are going
digital? As a recent Brisbane case demonstrates, not all files are
It is a joke. We can’t go on like this': fourth block of units abandoned in Sydney
Sydney Water fined, apologises for leaking millions of litres of sewage
Sydney
Water has been fined $269,500 for two overflow events in 2017 that led
to millions of litres of untreated sewage flowing into Botany Bay.
