Today is a good day for reflecting. I was going to write a wildly sympathetic post to everyone in the US because you\u2019re in such a difficult position. Bushfires and a new president and\u2026 so many things. But then I read the Australian news and we have turned into bigot-central and I belong to one of the groups that the bigots enjoy attacking.<\/p>\n
I sometimes get angry. I sometimes rant. I often analyse what\u2019s going on. But today\u2026 today I think we all deserve a break.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to find you a couples of poems to give us all that moment of peace in a difficult world.<\/p>\n
The first is one of my favourites. I am Australian. No number of people telling me that Jews cannot be Australian can convince me otherwise. Modern Australian, but Australian. This is our iconic poem expressing this, read by the author: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=86TKK81EwJ4<\/a> Dorothea MacKellar lived from 1885 to 1968 . Her accent is very close to that of my father\u2019s first cousin, who was born in the late nineteenth century and died in the twenty-first. This is one of the reasons it\u2019s one of my heart-poems. I loved Linda very much, and still miss her, twenty years on.<\/p>\n If you read the last paragraph without due thought, you might think that I myself am nearing one hundred years of age. I am not. However, Australia has a particular sense of humour and\u2026 I am Australian. I am sorely tempted to give you a link to our latest lamb ad to justify everything I\u2019ve written in this paragraph. This is not the moment of quiet contemplation I had intended, nor a statement of national identity\u2026 but it is the annual lamb ad, which is of significant cultural importance. Each and every year I say this to someone. Here is the new advertisement, so that you can decide for yourself: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=75BAUXZyWw0<\/a><\/p>\n Clearly I am not going in the direction of quiet contemplation. It appears that what I really meant, was that we should take a break from bleakness in whatever way we need. I would love anyone reading this to share your favourite poems and your favourite advertisements (the funny ones). If you don\u2019t, I might have to find lamb ads from other years. I need more poetry and I need more silly ads. I\u2019d rather learn the ones you love than revisit ones I already know.<\/p>\n PS The lamb ads are an annual thing. And they\u2019re always, always funny and just a little thoughtful.<\/p>\n PPS Normally I share Paul Verlaine poems, because I love his work so very much. The thing is that Jewish Australians are being told that we don\u2019t belong here, so another type of beloved poem was appropriate. I am facing hate with poetry this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is a good day for reflecting. I was going to write a wildly sympathetic post to everyone in the US because you\u2019re in such a difficult position. Bushfires and a new president and\u2026 so many things. But then I read the Australian news and we have turned into bigot-central and I belong to one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[406,636,814],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-life","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3804,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3803\/revisions\/3804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}