Yesterday Ann told me that she had had computer problems. Her PC was stuck on a white screen when booted up, with an endlessly spinning ball the only sign of a pulse within. I hadn't heard of the white screen problem before but upon investigation, found that it was amongst those that had a deadly classification. I mean, it was one of those that carried the moniker, screen of death. There are, apparently, white and blue screens of death and perhaps even a black one, though there does not appear to be a hierarchy of death-dealing amongst them.

What was even more interesting was her solution. Dusting. She claims that a Thai language site she went to suggested dusting parts of the computer and to this end she removed some screws and commenced cleaning inside. I am guessing from her description that this meant removing the battery pack and perhaps the lid of the RAM storage unit, but in any event, whatever she did worked and her PC was restored to rude good health. I can find no such advice at any English language site, where the preferred solution is no less terrifying, to wit, booting up in safe mode and carrying out all manner of complex operations. I have done things like this before, but I have always felt like a man with no medical qualifications operating on a hapless patient.

I was never one for tinkering under the bonnet, though once a friend and I pulled parts from the motor of a wrecked Ford Cortina. I remember wondering at the time how we might put them back again if we had to. The car was going for scrap, so we never did. My friend became a mechanic, I became an English teacher. Together, we could probably just about have read the repair manual.

The failure of humans to move collectively and decisively to curb greenhouse emissions in an attempt to moderate global warming is astonishing. The science is in and it continues to come in, a mass of data that points in one direction. There are no serious challenges to it, notwithstanding the nonsense from some politicians (who should know better) and a small but vocal group of deniers. The consequences of inaction are deadly serious, ranging from a massive disruption to economies and lifestyles to a complete collapse of civilisation as we know it.

Yet these same nay-sayers are happy to use all the fruits of applied science with nary a quibble. They drive cars, use mobile phones, watch TV, use the internet, turn on a light switch, cool things in refrigerators - you get the picture - every aspect of modernity is somehow mediated by the application of science, which comes from the efforts of scientists. This is an extreme and dangerous form of cherry-picking. It is double-think, or not thinking at all. That a 16 year old girl needed to stand in front of a room of world leaders and tell them the unvarnished truth is sufficient to ring alarm bells. Greta Thunberg pointed out the bleeding obvious to folks who are supposed to be leading the planet to a better future.

One theory about potentially advanced civilisations in the cosmos is that they must pass through 'great filters' in order to survive. The splitting of the atom would almost certainly qualify as one such filter, one that is still unresolved on our planet. Despoiling the environment, changing the environment in fundamental ways, may be other filters that we are now coming up against. I hope that we can take on these challenges honestly and diligently, but the problem of knuckleheads remains. Is there a critical mass of the stupid and the stubborn beyond which action becomes almost impossible?

One brave soul.

The autumn basho of the Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo has finished with a very unorthodox run to the line. The final tie-breaking bout was between two sekiwake rikishi, Mitakeumi and Takakeisho. Both have won the title before and unimpeded through the absence of the two yokuzuna, found themselves at 11-3 before proceeedings began yesterday. At the tie-break (12-3 apiece) Mitakeumi overcame the wrecking-ball that is his opponent's tachiai to force him from the ring soon after the bout began.

It was a very interesting tourney all round. There were some curious decisions by the gyoji, a lot of false starts (matta) and excellent performances from some rank and filers, notably Okinoumi and Tsurugisho. Sadly, Georgian Tochinoshin has been demoted to sekiwake, where he will need ten wins in the next meet to regain his ozeki status.

Can't wait. I really enjoy sumo. An acquired taste yes, but once acquired, then one is smitten.

Tom's English class are studying a poetry unit at the moment. It happens to be a rather difficult unit, comprising sonnets and odes and the like. Readers of this blog (surely just you!-ed.) will know that I love poetry but I think its early introduction at this level may leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth for many students. Tom confesses to hating it already, which is a blow indeed.

The whole of Year 8 have an assessment in which they must visually present a poem in the style of those being studied. Knowing that Tom was unlikely to rise to the challenge of finding a poem, I composed a sonnet yesterday. I had been wandering up from Thai Town on Tuesday in the rain when I noticed more and more broken umbrellas in bins and in the gutter. The rain had brought them out and the wind and had done them in. This is my first sonnet so I hope you will excuse its amateur faults.

Sonnet

When icy rains come after sunny skies,
Then brollies of all kinds are in the air.
But when in whipping winds the pennants fly,
A thousand shattered frames lie in despair.
They cluster in the bins along the street,
They fall from grace in gushing gutters there
And whether eye or foot or hand they meet,
The message is ‘we are beyond repair!’

Yet once they snuggled gladly in the hand,
Or found a place in bag or case or tray.
They were the dripping leaders of the band,
Fond spindly masters of a liquid day.
Now like discarded skeletons they lie,
Closer to the grave than to the sky.

The autumn tourney of the Grand Sumo has reached the half-way mark in Tokyo with a number of surprises already. The basho began without ozeki Takazasu and yokozuna Hakuho withdrew with an injury shortly after the commencement. Georgian ozeki Tochinoshin is clearly carrying an injury and seems uncompetitive at the moment. If he fails to win 8 out of 15 matches, he will face demotion to sekiwake, again. (And in late-breaking news just in from Tokyo, the remaining yokozuna Kakuryu has just withdrawn from the rest of the tournament. He had suffered three defeats in a row, so something was up with his body, evidently.)

Size obviously matters to a large extent in sumo, but two much smaller rikishi are challenging this notion, at least at the present. Both Enho and Ishiura are giving away dozens of kilos to their opponents every match and yet they both have winning records at the time of writing. Speed, skill and cunning seem to be their stocks-in-trade and audiences delight in their victories. If you stand Enho at 98kg up against the heaviest rikishi, Ichinojo, at a (slimmed down) 224kg, you have some idea of what the little people are up against. Yet compete they do.

Yesterday one of the bouts ended dramatically with the gyoji (referee) nowhere to be seen. The poor fellow had taken a tumble at a critical moment, falling from the dohyo into the first row of the audience. He emerged somewhat dishevelled, the bout having ended. Never mind, there is a reserve gyoji at the ready and at least five other judges(shimpan) at ringside! If the match is ever in dispute, they all emerge for a mono-ii (discussion), something which happens more often than you might imagine.

Enho and Ishiura

The baptism of fire that was promised me when I took the announcer's chair for the first time has proved to be a scorifying one. That, at least, is how I felt after I had done the first presentation of The Australian at 2RPH. Mistakes are easy to make, for there are crucial timing issues at the beginning and end of the program. I did my third shift yesterday (though on a different newspaper) and it went passably well.

Announcers at 2RPH are also program producers, so manipulating the studio board and computer are combined with choosing news articles for the readers, keeping an eye on the clock and making sure the whole thing is coming together as planned. I guess I will get used to it but it will take time. And frankly, it is a little scary. I probably need more of these kinds of challenges.

Massive and unseasonable winds continued through the night, worse in many places nearer the coast where thousands are now without power. There are lots of fallen trees about too, including a large branch from a callistemon by the side of our house. It had been looking somewhat precarious for a while, but the wild gales overnight provided the final push. The rest of the tree is healthy and should survive the weather, I hope.

Wind has a habit of driving many creatures to distraction. I remember as a teacher when windy days often meant that kids in my classes would be mildly unhinged, much harder to settle. Today it's the turn of the neighbourhood birds, who are frantically bombing each other, swooping rapidly from branch to bush to roof, as if drunk on the sheer energy of each gust. Of course, it being spring, they may have other motives. Meanwhile, on the washing line, the clothes are performing a kind of Danse Macabre.


Afternoon On A Hill

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!


Edna St. Vincent Millay

The wind is up today and along the highway, bright red signs proscribe the lighting of any fires. Living in a national park on the driest continent in the world is a little like residing on top of the biggest tinder box known to, em, collectors of tinder boxes. But it would a mighty tinder box indeed. My point is, bushfires are a constant menace and have wreaked havoc in the Blue Mountains many times. Strong winds and higher temperatures are two of the most obvious ingredients for a conflagration to occur. Each town has its own fire-fighting service (RFS), but in the worst possible scenario, everything could go up in flames. Still, we are in better shape than those poor souls who live at the edge of an event horizon near a black hole.

On a less bleak note, my darling wife Ann passed her DKT (Driver Knowledge Test) for the state of NSW this morning with an 100% correct score. If you take a minute to think about the fact that she studied for the test in English (from a data base of 900 questions!) and sat the test in English, then you can imagine how proud of her I am. The next step is the actual driving test, planned for a few weeks from now. She has a Thai Drivers License but it can only be used in Australia for a finite period.

Most of the plums are now in bloom and the jasmine is not far behind. The air is full of birds clamouring for insects and bees are blindly intense amongst the tossing florets. Soon enough these whipping gusts will strip these fruit trees of their flowers, leaving little for the rosellas.


"I saw the sap stir in the wood,
The fire put out its leaves of flame;
Brilliant as summer flashed and fell
The rose intolerant, the flower.
The darkness stirred like dust on air,"


Rosemary Dobson, from The Fire.

"For He knows how we were made, He remembers that we are dust." Ps. 103:14

The idea of being nothing more than dust does not appeal to the modern mind. Are we not the crown of all creation, the most successful and advanced species the planet has ever known? Have we not become the very masters of nature, capable of not only explaining complex phenomena in the universe, but also having the capacity to leave our home world? Yes, and yes, and yes again, but...

The memory of the dust from which we have come - call it star dust if you wish - is essential to the balance we need to strike between our success as humans, such as it is, and our mortal frame. The entrances and exits from life are there for all to see, and while we have a preference for birth over the other, neither are options. From the first cry to the last breath is really a short interlude.

We are dust indeed and that's the wonder of it. What better retort to the growing hubris and narcissism of the times, what better grounding in the face of so much pointless clamour, than to know our true pedigree? And if God knows that too, remembers it, then that is a comfort beyond measure.

'Let you not say of me when I am old,
In pretty worship of my withered hands
Forgetting who I am, and how the sands
Of such a life as mine run red and gold
Even to the ultimate sifting dust,'

from Sonnet IX, St. Vincent Millay

If my body was a motor vehicle, then it would have been traded in some time ago. There are very few cars on the road that are of a 60 year vintage and those that are have usually been lovingly restored. For worn-out brakes, gammy suspension and a smoking engine, not to mention all manner of dings, read sore joints, clapped-out shoulders, a bad back and so on and so forth. The truth is, such a trade-in would soon be on the way to the wreckers yard.

But my mind is as nimble as ever and perhaps more adaptive and malleable than at any time in the past. Sure I forget things and I have more of those annoying tip-of-the-tongue moments, but my capacity for learning and critical thinking remains intact. This being Father's Day in Australia, I think I can take this one short bow at least.

It is also the first day of spring and the weather has turned, on cue, to warm and sunny, as if by Divine fiat. I did my walk this morning in a t-shirt for the first time in months, which is an energising feeling. Unencumbered, one wants to walk faster, if only the knees are willing! It is a glorious day for anything outside though. I cannot put it better than e.e. cummings.


in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and

the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee