I was reading an excellent article in a January 2019 edition of New Statesman about the moonshot in 1969. This was contextualised in a wider discussion about current efforts to go back to the lunar surface, an effort promoted by both national governments and private citizens.

That was not what caught my attention though. Some way into the piece ("The new race for space", P.Ball, pp.31-35) was a statement by the author that I really couldn't believe. Concerning the aftermath of the moon landing on 20th July, 1969, he wrote,

"Although around 120 million viewers in the US watched the landings, by 1970 polls showed that perhaps as few as one in 15 remembered Armstrong's name." (My italics)

Even if we more generously say that this figure was one in 10, this is still extraordinary. I do not know of a single person in my acquaintance who lived through this period who does know the name Neil Armstrong backwards and forwards and upside-down. I have never heard the question, "Who was the first man to step foot on the Moon?" ever answered incorrectly at a trivia night or on a game show. I had assumed that it was deeply embedded in shared cultural knowledge.

In response to this underwhelming poll, Armstrong, with some understatement, said, "I had hoped that the impact(of the Moon landing) would be more far-reaching than it had been."

Does this augur well for any manned trips to Mars? I am not so sure.

the turning comes on-
haunted by the unseen,
streets empty

When Englishman Laurence Binyon wrote "For the Fallen" in 1914, he could not have imagined that his work, or at least a fragment of it, would become a central part of the Anzac Day observance in Australia and New Zealand. He wrote it in response to the vast casualties suffered by the British Expeditionary Force, only recently arrived in France and Belgium. Those casualties would only increase as the Great War passed its expected end-by date of Christmas 1914, culminating in the massacres on the Somme in 1916.

"For the Fallen" is not a great poem in any literary sense (cf. Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon) but the verse extracted from it,

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

has become an ode of remembrance, not only on Anzac Day, but also on Armistice Day. Technically it includes the verses either side of it, but I have never heard them read in public.

Anzac day is one of the few days that this country takes seriously. But I worry that the deeper lessons are lost in a kind of sentimentality that does not lend itself to study and reflection. If you want to know about the real cost of war and sacrifice, then there are plenty of first-hand accounts such as diaries, letters and reportage that cuts straight to the chase. Historians have written exhaustively about it and there are many fine documentaries available.

Binyon was a multi-talented man whose poetry improved as he grew older. His poem about the London Blitz, "The Burning of the Leaves" is a case in point, a private reflection about the nature of darkness and light. Here he invokes the image of a statue of Apollo (who built a sanctuary on the spot where he slew the serpent) to comment on the ambiguity of human struggle, of life and death, destruction and revival.

IV

"Beautiful, wearied head
Leant back against the arm upthrown behind,
Why are your eyes closed? Is it that they fear
Sight of these vast horizons shuddering red
And drawing near and near?
God--like shape, would you be blind
Rather than see the young leaves dropping dead
All round you in foul blasts of scorching wind,
As if the world, O disinherited,
That your own spirit willed
Since upon earth laughter and grief began
Should only in final mockery rebuild
A palace for the proudest ruin, Man?"

More than ever, this Anzac Day,

Lest We Forget.

There are very few entries in any of my remaining high school homework diaries, suggesting perhaps that little homework was done. But there are a few notes pertaining to school life, so before I recycled them for good, I copied out anything that might be of interest. Which is very little indeed!

As per my previous blog, another album on my top ten influential albums from this formative period appears to have been motivated by yet another teacher at my school. I was in Year 8, once again, but the subject this time was English. I have to read between the lines a little, but I am guessing that the lyrics to at least one of the songs on the album were being used as content in a poetry lesson. I did the same thing myself when I was teaching English a decade later. For the record, the song was "Where do the children play?" by the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens. The album, of course, was Tea for the Tillerman.

You see, teachers can have an abiding influence long after you have quit their classroom!

I received a Facebook challenge the other day which I declined to take up (I never do) but which tweaked my interest nevertheless. The question was "What ten albums were the biggest influence on you by the age of twenty?"

It's a difficult question to answer for a number of reasons. For a start, ones teenage years are often turbulent and subject to dramatic changes in taste. At 14 I might have loved an artist whom I loathed at 19. It is not unusual for early interests in say, pop, top forty charts and the like, to tend to dominate the conversation in the beginning. And what about the single, the staple of all who could not afford the LP but who hankered for something to play, even at at 45rpm.

In my case I am under the extra burden of memory loss for the key period in question. So I went back through my LP collection (which had sadly been decimated by a recent flood in the garage) and began to piece together a kind of chronology of the times. I remembered better than I had thought I might, probably because music is and was a source of great joy for me. There were also some homework diary jottings that confirmed my opinions.

Let me begin by saying that my first immersion in popular music (apart from Sinatra et al.) was in late primary school. I had befriended a pop fanatic and he introduced me to Russell Morris and The Master's Apprentices, both Australian acts. He was an avid reader of Go-Set music magazine and we had long talks about the music scene. A cover from this publication is displayed below.

But what the question posed above is really asking is more specific and probably tends in the direction of albums bought or collected. That usually happened during the teenage years and was subject to ones parents supplying the money. Birthdays and Christmas were also occasions for scoring an LP or two.

So, to begin with the first of those great influences. My school diary from the time (Year 8) tells of a wondrous moment when our music teacher, tired of the struggle with Beethoven and Benjamin Britten, pulled an LP out of a lurid cover and put it on the school record player. The album was Hot August Night, the artist, Neil Diamond. I was sold, then and there.

Go-Set October 1969




One of my ten.

It is not uncommon to run into a 'life sucks and then you die' t-shirt or a bumper sticker with a similar sentiment. Invariably the wearer or driver is young and most look quite well off, sporting the latest logo-ed clothes or driving a reasonably late model car.

The same weary malaise is reflected in many online posts and yet the posters seem on the whole to be quite affluent. By the standards of every generation before them, stretching back thousands of years, they are rich beyond compare. They are spoilt for choice and quantity when it comes to food, shelter, clothes, entertainment, opportunity and good health and yet there is this discontent. How can it be?

When I was a young Christian, it was easy enough to spot the problem. There might be endless amounts of material stuff for everyone now but that was not enough without a spiritual dimension. I remember being involved in some street-theatre productions in which this was our central theme. The alienation of modern man, a theme I had borrowed from Sartre and the Absurdists, was also prominent in these short pieces. I am sure that many thought us pretentious.

As I grew older this truth remained a constant for me, never mind the cooling of my faith. Making meaning was a fundamental aspect of the human condition without which life would drift. Many people find meaning in religion, others in philosophy, some in their careers, or education or in their relationships with others. All are valid though some are more enduring than others.

But there are many pathways that will lead to a disillusioned soul. Once the lure of money and it's byproducts have worn off, then there remains the question of the purpose of life. Is it just to consume? To lead a unthinking, shallow existence? To join the me-first gang forever?

Of course, I exaggerate. It is possible to steer a middle course and balance the material and the spiritual. It is also worthwhile struggling with these questions throughout the different stages of life. Struggle sometimes leads to wisdom. And it often leads to a place of deep reflection which of itself, is calming and uplifting and even joyful.

I wish that kind of place on everyone.



Or does it?

Tang Dynasty poet Li Shangyin (813-859) was a middling level official and politician who also wrote beautiful verse. His poems tend to be more sensuous than Du Fu's but have a similar tendency to evoke a sense of longing and sorrow. His wu ti poems (an unnamed) are perhaps his most famous in the West, the first of which is probably my favourite. The poet's yearning is palpable but will never likely be requited.

To One Unnamed 1

You said you would come, but you did not, and you left me with no other trace
Than the moonlight on your tower at the fifth-watch bell.
I cry for you forever gone, I cannot waken yet,
I try to read your hurried note, I find the ink too pale.

Blue burns your candle in its kingfisher-feather lantern
And a sweet breath steals from your hibiscus-broidered curtain.
But far beyond my reach is the Enchanted Mountain,
And you are on the other side, ten thousand peaks away.

Speaking of predictions about the future, I would like to make a few of my own about the Year 2100 AD. In doing so I make a number of assumptions. Firstly, that computing power and technology will continue to advance, even if Moore's Law needs to be revised. Secondly, humanity has not destroyed itself in a nuclear war. Thirdly, that civilisation will be able to adapt to climate change, at least in the short term. The likelihood of other potential catastrophes, such as an asteroid strike or gamma ray burst, are too low to be counted in my assessment.

1. We will be energy sufficient without any need of fossil fuels.
2. Humans will be at least partially cyborg, mainly due to the replacement of worn-out organs and body parts. This could mean that life-expectancy will be radically increased.
3. There will be a space port and allied facilities set up on the Moon.
4. Mars will have had several waves of human settlement.
5. Plans to harvest more of the Sun's energy in space will be underway.
6. Self-driving cars will become obsolete and replaced by more instantaneous forms of automated transport.
7. Asteroid mining will be a thing.
8. Robots will be far more advanced and sent on journeys to explore the Solar System and beyond.
9. AI will be more advanced but still controversial.
10. Humans will no longer eat animals. All meat will be 'grown' in factories.

The First World War was a break with many things. It ended the period of optimism that pervaded the Victorian and Edwardian eras, smashing panglossian notions of progress. Gone was the long century of relative peace, two dynasties in Russia and Austria-Hungary and at least two empires. Old regimes were swept aside, political boundaries redrawn and revolution swept through Russia and threatened to spill over into central Europe.

If you had asked futurists to predict the Year 2000 before and after this conflict, there is a very good chance that their visions of the future would be very different. For a start, technology was rapidly accelerated by World War 1 as nations scrambled to develop knock-out weapons that would end the stalemate in the trenches. Case in point - there was no such thing as a tank in 1913, but by 1919 it was clear that this vehicle would be strategically important in the future. More than technology though was the world view I alluded to earlier - an optimism that was emaciated by conflict, replaced by a gloom and shock.

In the late 19th Century, a group of artists that included Jean-Marc Cote created illustrations that were intended to be used as postcards and on the boxes of cigarettes and cigars. The theme of their drawings was - what would the world be like in the Year 2000? It is hard to know how seriously they took their assignment - was Jules Verne consulted, for example. So in that sense their work might be looked at in the same way as we do when we unwrap a Fantale and read the about the lives of stars.

Some of their predictions were quite reasonable, others way off beam. But they were whimsical and interesting and innocent in a way that the world after 1918 could never be again. As is always the case, the pictures reflect the preoccupations of the time. Airplanes were becoming the rage. Levers of various kinds seemed popular. And people in the Year 2000 were bound to dress the same as those a century earlier, it seems! I especially like the last image, which predicts the mobile phone and social media epidemic rather well. Finally, I would note the danger of using a hydrogen-filled airship in a war zone at any time.

Anzac Day falls on the 25th April every year. It is, for many, the one day of the year. Alas, this year, the annual marches and commemorations have been cancelled, for reasons you can easily guess at. Sad for many, sadder still for those who derive greater meaning in their lives from precious recollection and participation. This poem is for them.


"Cancelled," he said and turned away.
The evening rush had gone,
The dregs of day collected
In the shared living room.
"What now?” to the air,
“What now?” to the empty space,
The wicker chair rattling
Asthmatic beneath him.
So things had shifted,
The known predictable world
A stash too full to comprehend-
A place less certain.
Not knowing where it ends
Is cruel as time snatches
At sight and skin,
The whorl of mind,
Spinning out to sea.
So to put away the medals,
To leave the shoes unshined
Was a kind of death,
An unravelling that slides
And slides into eternity.

I suppose that by now everyone is getting used to a changed schedule. No more the get-togethers, picnics, parties, outings or lunches in cafes. Less still the hugs, hand-shakes and kisses on the cheek. We now know enough about how a virus infects to create sound public health policy and I suspect, most people are reasonably happy to comply. If the alternative is sickness or death, then compliance is a bit of a no-brainer. Or is it?

Reports from people who were forced into quarantine in nice hotels show that not everyone agrees. A 6-star hotel reported people screaming their lungs out from the utter frustration of being in a luxury hotel room. Others reported that the meals were not up to scratch, with insufficient choices available. I think you can see where I am going with this, so let's drop the judgements for the moment.

If you can't spend a fortnight with yourself in such circumstances then a hard look might be required. Sure boredom is a problem, but what happened to the imagination, the time for refection, for taking stock, for going deep. No such time is better than when everything is thrown upside down. And when you land on a feathered quilt, well, there are few excuses.

While going through an old box in my garage the other day, I came across some unfinished letters from the mid-1970's. These sorts of finds are gold dust to me, especially given the way my memory appears to have developed a very specific hole about this period. One such missive comes from the depths of 1976, the year I did my HSC. It was written to a friend on the South Coast and describes my experiences with short-wave radio.

That year I had bought a Tandy Realistic SW radio (similar to the one below), ostensibly to listen in on broadcasts from far and wide. I had my HSC study to do, old cars to tinker with and yet another year of soccer, but somewhere in this busyness I found the time to tune into foreign broadcasts. I chose the Realistic radio not for its outstanding performance, but because Tandy was cheaper than its competitors.

In any event, the radio proved to be up to the task of taking me nightly to Beijing (Radio Peking), The Voice of America, the BBC and many other channels in languages I did not understand. Radio Peking was the standout, for this was the year both Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong died, followed by the wild events surrounding the succession, such as the arrest of the Gang of Four. The latter were pilloried relentlessly with the most outrageous crimes and misdeeds being levelled at them. They were bad dudes for sure, but they took the rap for many others, including Mao himself.

In amongst all the polemic were long readings of industrial production. How many million pairs of scissors were produced in Factory 4315 in Harbin? I was sure to find out on Radio Peking.

I don't know what happened to that radio. I left it at home when I moved out and I guess it found its way into the garbage one day when it stopped working. Shame.

When I trundled into the 2RPH studio the week before last, I could not have known it was to be my final show for the meantime. Sure, I understood that I had to run the gauntlet of almost four hours on public transport, then go through some quite bizarre preparation and presentation measures, but I still thought I would be back in a week's time.

As the announcer/producer for The Australian that day, I was required to sit no closer than two metres from my colleague as we prepared the paper for the show. Fair enough I suppose. Then, having cleansed the work spaces to the nth degree and replaced the mike covers, the show was broadcast from two studios. Let me explain.

Ordinarily, the presenter sits on the business side of the studio, the one with all the slides, buttons and monitors. The reader or readers sit opposite, but in the same room. A panel separates the two sides. On this occasion, my reader sat in a different studio, one adjacent. This was to avoid any chance of transmitting the virus. I could see her through a glass window but I could not pass notes or communicate directly, since we go out live to air. It was a challenge.

But I enjoy challenges. Alas, it may be the last for some time. The schedule has changed and only those who can come in on foot or by car may work.

Ships have often been a means of transmission for plague and pestilence. The Black Death travelled westwards by ship in the Mediterranean, infecting one port after another. The clipper Ticonderoga set out from Liverpool carrying Scottish migrants in 1852 but by the time it made Port Phillip Bay in Victoria, 200 were dead from pestilence. The likely cause was typhus.

Today we have our own special brand of plague ships, formally known as cruise ships. These vessels have been near the centre of the outbreak of Covid 19 since the Diamond Princess visited Japan a few weeks ago. Since then Australia has had it fair share of these behemoths with their deadly cargo, who in the old days might be better known as passengers. From coast to coast, the vast floating hotels are stranded, unable to dock, vilified by local authorities.

There was a time when going on a cruise had a kind of romantic and adventurous hold. This was when the ships were much smaller and the idea of a good book, a deckchair and a view of the ocean was sufficient. The were even portholes. Nowadays that charm has gone and the cruise companies cater to mass tourism. The Contagion of the Seas and her sister ships have taken a reputational battering recently from which they will likely recover. But many will probably never walk that gangway again.