“To laugh often and much,
to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children,
to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends,
to appreciate beauty,
to find the best in others,
to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said this week that our country needs to start “calling a spade a spade”.
And that means his department will no longer be using the term ‘asylum seekers’ to refer to those who try and come to Australia by boat, fleeing persecution in their home countries.
Instead, these people will be called ‘illegals’.
Well, Minister Morrison, we think we’ll join you in this “calling a spade a spade” caper and say this:
You sir, are wrong.
As we all know too well, it is not illegal to seek asylum in Australia. Australia is a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention and that means refugees have a right to enter our country without authorisation for the purpose of seeking asylum.
Our country’s signature on that document means that behaviour that would normally be ‘illegal’ is permitted. Permitted as in legal. As in, okay by us. As in, within the bounds of the law. As in, not ‘illegal’ at all.
But Mr Morrison hasn’t just got it wrong legally, but also morally.
The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
– Katherine Mansfield
born in Wellington, New Zealand, October 14, 1888
died: January 09, 1923
gender: female
website: http://www.katherinemansfield.com/
genre: Literature & Fiction, Short Stories
Katherine Mansfield is widely considered one of the best short story writers of her period. A number of her works, including “Miss Brill”, “Prelude”, “The Garden Party”, “The Doll’s House”, and later works such as “The Fly”, are frequently collected in short story anthologies. Mansfield also proved ahead of her time in her adoration of Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov, and incorporated some of his themes and techniques into her writing.
Katherine Mansfield was part of a “new dawn” in English literature with T S Elliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. She was associated with the brilliant group of writers who made the London of the period the centre of the literary world.
Nevertheless, Mansfield was a New Zealand writer – she could not have written as she did had she not gone to live in England and France, but she could not have done her best work if she had not had firm roots in her native land. She used her memories in her writing from the beginning, people, the places, even the colloquial speech of the country form the fabric of much of her best work.
Mnsfield’s stories were the first of significance in English to be written without a conventional plot. Supplanting the strictly structured plots of her predecessors in the genre (Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells), Mansfield concentrated on one moment, a crisis or a turning point, rather than on a sequence of events. The plot is secondary to mood and characters. The stories are innovative in many other ways. They feature simple things – a doll’s house or a charwoman. Her imagery, frequently from nature, flowers, wind and colours, set the scene with which readers can identify easily.
Themes too are universal: human isolation, the questioning of traditional roles of men and women in society, the conflict between love and disillusionment, idealism and reality, beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering and the inevitabilty of these paradoxes. Oblique narration (influenced by Chekhov but certainly developed by Mansfield) includes the use of symbolism – the doll’s house lamp, the fly, the pear tree – hinting at the hidden layers of meaning. Suggestion and implication replace direct detail.
It’s actually very difficult to make something both simple and good.
– Paul Simon
born in Newark Heights, New Jersey, The United States, October 13, 1941
“Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth… This is the real message of love.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, Teachings on Love
born in Thừa Thiên Huế , Viet Nam October 11, 1926
gender: male
website: http://www.plumvillage.org/
genre: Religion & Spirituality, Buddhism, Zen
influences: Zen Buddhism, Maman S. Mahayana
Thích Nhất Hạnh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet and peace activist who now lives in southwest France where he was in exile for many years.
Born Nguyễn Xuân Bảo, Thích Nhất Hạnh joined a Zen (Vietnamese: Thiền) monastery at the age of 16, and studied Buddhism as a novitiate. Upon his ordination as a monk in 1949, he assumed the Dharma name Thích Nhất Hạnh. Thích is an honorary family name used by all Vietnamese monks and nuns, meaning that they are part of the Shakya (Shakyamuni Buddha) clan.
He is often considered the most influential living figure in the lineage of Lâm Tế (Vietnamese Rinzai) Thiền, and perhaps also in Zen Buddhism as a whole.
His best-selling books include Happiness and Being Peace.
Ela –
This is just incredible. Thank you.
So far 25,000 of you have signed the petition asking Barry O’Farrell to fix the problem that has left me waiting six months for urgent stomach cancer surgery — and has left many others in the same position.
The Sydney Morning Herald have just published a story about what’s happening — including the huge amount of support coming in for the campaign. You can read the article online by clicking here — can you then share it with friends and family to help keep spreading the word?
Thanks again for all you’re doing.
It means so much to me and all our family.
Nicole.
Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.
– Thomas Keneally
born in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, October 07, 1935
Life and career
Born in Sydney, Keneally was educated at St Patrick’s College, Strathfield, where a writing prize was named after him. He entered St Patrick’s Seminary, Manly to train as a Catholic priest but left before his ordination. He worked as a Sydney schoolteacher before his success as a novelist, and he was a lecturer at the University of New England (1968–70). He has also written screenplays, memoirs and non-fiction books.
Keneally was known as “Mick” until 1964 but began using the name Thomas when he started publishing, after advice from his publisher to use what was really his first name. He is most famous for his Schindler’s Ark (1982) (later republished as Schindler’s List), which won the Booker Prize and is the basis of the film Schindler’s List. Many of his novels are reworkings of historical material, although modern in their psychology and style.
Keneally has also acted in a handful of films. He had a small role in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (based on his novel) and played Father Marshall in the Fred Schepisi movie, The Devil’s Playground (1976) (not to be confused with a similarly-titled documentary by Lucy Walker about the Amish rite of passage called rumspringa).
In 1983 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO). He is an Australian Living Treasure.
He is a strong advocate of the Australian republic, meaning the severing of all ties with the British monarchy, and published a book on the subject Our Republic in 1993. Several of his Republican essays appear on the web site of the Australian Republican Movement.
Keneally is a keen supporter of rugby league football, in particular the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles club of the NRL. He made an appearance in the 2007 rugby league drama film The Final Winter.
In March 2009, the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, gave an autographed copy of Keneally’s Lincoln biography to President Barack Obama as a state gift.
Most recently Thomas Keneally featured as a writer in the critically acclaimed Australian drama, “Our Sunburnt Country”.
Thomas Keneally’s nephew Ben is married to the former NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally.
When God had made the earth and sky,
The flowers and the trees.
He then made all the animals,
The fish, the birds and bees.
And when at last He’d finished,
Not one was quite the same.
He said, “I’ll walk this world of mine,
And give each one a name.”
And so He traveled far and wide
And everywhere He went,
A little creature followed Him
Until its strength was spent.
When all were named upon the earth
And in the sky and sea,
The little creature said, “Dear Lord,
There’s not one left for me.”
Kindly the Father said to him,
“I’ve left you to the end.
I’ve turned my own name back to front
And called you dog, my friend.”
~ Author Unknown ~
It isn’t ever delicate to live.
– Kay Ryan
born in San Jose, California, The United States, September 27, 1945
gender: female
genre: Poetry
Ryan’s tightly compressed, rhythmically dense poetry is often compared to that of Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore; however, Ryan’s often barbed wit and unique facility with “recombinant” rhyme has earned her the status of one of the great living American poets, and led to her appointment as U.S. Poet Laureate in 2008. She held the position for two terms, using the appointment to champion community colleges like the one in Marin County, California where she and her partner Carol Adair taught for over thirty years. In an interview with the Washington City Paper at the end of tenure, Ryan called herself a “whistle-blower” who “advocated for much underpraised and underfunded community colleges across the nation.”
Ryan’s surprising laureateship capped years of outsider-status in the poetry world. Her quizzical, philosophical, often mordant poetry is a product of years of thought. Ryan has said that her poems do not start with imagery or sound, but rather develop “the way an oyster does, with an aggravation.” Critic Meghan O’Rourke has written of her work: “Each poem twists around and back upon its argument like a river retracing its path; they are didactic in spirit, but a bedrock wit supports them.” “Sharks’ Teeth” displays that meandering approach to her subject matter, which, Ryan says, “gives my poems a coolness. I can touch things that are very hot because I’ve given them some distance.”
Kay Ryan is the recipient of several major awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She has received the Union League Poetry Prize and the Maurice English Poetry Award, as well as the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Since 2006 she has served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
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