Yesterday was the hottest recorded winter's day in Australia at many locations around the country. Sure, we are only a few days away from the beginning of Spring, but the signs are ominous. Taken together with all the other weather-related occurrences around the world, and their often tragic attending consequences, the picture of a changing climate seems almost irrefutable.

There are still people arguing against the notion that human-induced climate change is real, but both the science and the facts on the ground in real-time argue otherwise. I think it is almost a pointless exercise to debate folks who would deny the nose on their own faces, which is essentially what they are doing, so I don't.

I wish that it weren't so, but wishing is not the same as believing that it isn't.

I had my second dose of 'photodynamic therapy' yesterday to deal with some minor cancer spots on my head. I hadn't heard of the treatment before a doctor suggested it as an alternative to an excision, so I thought I'd give it a crack.

It's a little fiddly and a tad messy and quite expensive (this being a dermatologist, not a GP). A special cream is applied to the affected areas, the patient (for it was me!) waits for three hours for the substance to do its work, then the area is inundated with the rays from a special lamp. Mild pain in the form of red hot stabbing needles ensues, then the area is bandaged and one is sent on their way.

I am not sure how it will turn out, but it seems better than cutting and stitching, though not entirely as effective. But we will see. I found the doctor, nurses and staff to be very good - kind and reassuring and competent.

And I am confident too that I was not secretly dosed with gamma rays!

We awoke this morning with the outside wrapped up in wild winds and the house creaking like an old barn. August is traditionally a time of wind though I suspect the peak gusts today are much stronger than the average,

Earlier I walked the garden, retrieving shoes, cushions and tarps that had been dislodged overnight. I collected a fair bundle of fallen branches and watched as wary birds attempted flight, and then thought again. Their more experienced brethren stayed put, anchored to sturdier branches, awaiting a subsidence in the emphatic chaos.

I invariably return to Ted Hughes masterful 'Wind' on such occasions, the 'winds stampeding the fields under the window', the 'blade-light...flexing like the lens of a mad eye.'

And yes, 'the skyline (is) a grimace/At any second to bang and vanish with a flap.' It is just so.

 Scripture warns us about pride. Traditionally, it is seen as the most deadly or lethal of sins. Proverbs 16:18 says, 'Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.'

There is nothing wrong with healthy pride - being quietly satisfied with the job you are doing, happy at the achievements of your children, having self-respect and balanced self-esteem - you know what I mean. It is its opposite, of the poisonous variety, that so exercised the minds of the church fathers. This includes vanity, conceit and arrogance.

You might say, 'well I am none of those things.' But is far more subtle and insidious than you might think. I take umbrage at a remark I hear on the train. Pride! I know better than that that person. Someone gets a promotion ahead of me. Pride! I am a better candidate than that person. You see some folks acting badly on a reality TV show and laugh smugly. Pride again! I would never act like that. I am a better person. Comparisons of one sort or another invariably have pride at their root.

Thinking about this topic on a walk this morning, I realised that so many of my faults and foibles, things I want to get past or fix up, are tied in with pridefulness at one level or another. It is really a toughie, almost inscribed on the human condition. I need to be on my guard, fully surrendered, prayerful.

But it is hard.

I think I have mentioned before that I sing in choir. I have been singing in SATB groups now for over 30 years, interrupted only by the time spent in Japan as a teacher. It is fair to say that making the decision to first join a choir, Crowd Around, in 1992, was a seminal one that has reverberated to this day.

It was my membership of Crowd Around that lead, by the by, to getting a job in Japan and meeting my first wife. It also informed other music projects, such as being in a band, recording a CD, doing the cafe thing as a singer, to name but a few. It really has been influential in my life.

Tomorrow night we perform again at the Blackheath Choir Festival, one of the best festivals in the state. It is quite an honour and the standard is high. I don't get the same thrill as once I did (having done so many performances over the years) but I do look forward to it, nevertheless.

Moo Choir take the stage at 8.40pm tomorrow night and if you google the festival, you'll get all the information you need.

a strange flower

for birds and butterflies

the autumn sky

It isn't autumn of course. We are at the very end of winter, though a cold snap or two may come, and both trees and birds are truly confident of its imminent onset. The front window plum has begun to blossom and a plethora of birds of all stripes are piping up, swooping and chasing each other. Now and then their exuberance causes them to fly into a glass pane!

Out local magpies are back (from whence I do not know) and are eyeing us with the kind of familiarity that speaks to a generation or two, or three, having lived here and done all the hard yards.

Matsuo Basho's haiku above is such a gem. Fancy the sky being 'a strange flower' for birds and butterflies! A bit of creative genius from a master of the form.

Degrees in the Arts are very important. Perhaps I have a bias, with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in arts subjects. I also have a long history as an English teacher, as well as a literary radio program for 2RPH. So I suppose my bias is huge indeed.

A few years ago the Australian Government vastly increased fees for arts courses, favouring 'jobs-ready' offerings instead. I am all in favour of cheaper science or engineering degrees, but the turn against arts subjects is a very retrograde step and much to be deplored.

Firstly, it presupposes that tertiary education is all about getting a job once graduated. I have always opposed this notion. There are pathways at university that do more readily lead to jobs because of their very specific nature within the framework of a modern economy, whilst there are other studies which, while they may lead to future employment, serve other, much broader purposes.

Such as gaining critical thinking skills, developing the capacity to gather, consider, critically analyse and respond to whatever is going on. To challenge, where needed, dominant paradigms, suggest reforms, hold institutions and governments to account, in a manner that is logical and reasonable.

Secondly, the arts develop and mature the personality, allowing us to see into the lives of others, develop compassion and empathy and deeper understanding of the human condition. They should, in theory, make us into better people and better citizens. They help us to 'get' wisdom.

This utilitarian push will reach an end-point someday, hopefully not too late for a generation. I urge governments to be fair to the arts and to treat them as serious, worthwhile studies.

It is easy to look at the news over a relatively short period of time and think that everything is going to hell. Despite centuries of what many characterise as the march of progress, despite the more enlightened view we have in the West of the differences between people, there is a nagging doubt that very little has changed.

I mean in human nature, which remains in the thrall of ancient drives and perceptions that rise to the surface in both small and large circumstances. Crimes against children, against women, against others are not decreasing. In fact they are more commonplace and often just plain inexplicable.

Some like to point to mental illness (also rising) but are quick to ignore the harsh reality of human evil. It is real, it exists, it is on the march. It's not fashionable to talk of evil as a present reality, much as sin is seen as being outmoded too. We pathologize pretty much everything, this an attempt to give a rational explanation, but miss the clear danger of what is and was there all the time.

Alas science is not equipped to deal with what is actually a metaphysical problem. We could do worse than humble ourselves in the presence of an all-merciful God and pray for insight. The alternative (more of the same) is looking increasingly grim.

We have a problem with birds flying into a particular window. Clearly they can see the other side but not that there is a glass pane in between. It is mainly lorikeets that run this gauntlet. Today, a crimson variety smacked hard against the glass as it made its way from front to back garden. 

Usually I monitor the bird for about 30 minutes, by which time it has regained its bearings and is ready to take flight. Today, the crimson lorikeet sat for a good two hours and I thought that it may have damaged either a wing of its spine. I was on the phone to WIRES when it suddenly took flight, to my great relief.

The window now has a temporary opaque obstruction erected in the centre of the pane that should do the trick until I can find something a little more artistic to put there. I hate to see native creatures in pain or distress and I hope that any future impacts can be avoided. The fix is ungainly but that is better than the alternative. After all, we are here as stewards, not conquerors.

My dear mum has been ailing for some time now. Doctors seem to be in agreement that her body at 95 years is and will continue to be in a constant state of deterioration and that little can be done. Rehabilitation is pointless and may actually make matters worse. The miracle is that she has made it so far and continues to wake up every day. Her life now is very difficult, dependent on carers, medicines and a stoic determination to stay alive.

I guess that this is one of the reasons I searched for and found one of her favourite recordings - one that I've heard played dozens of time. Antonio Carlos Jobim's 'The Composer of Desafinado, Plays', a near legendary Verve recording from the early 1960's, was an accompaniment to many of my teenage years. Mum would put it on the record player whenever she was in a gloomy mood, most often due to an ongoing unhappy marriage. Latin music and Frank Sinatra were the bookends to that time.

I located a CD copy of the album online and ordered it today. It's a Japanese pressing so the purchase dove tails two great loves together. Sure, I can play the same album on Spotify anytime, but I'd like to be able to take it to 2RPH and play it there now and then. It will be a tribute of sorts, even if I am the only one who knows why.

 If she is known for nothing else, Dorothea Mackellar will be forever known in Australia for her poem, 'My Country' It's likely that a large swath of the population are familiar with the second verse (often thought to be the opening stanza) which begins 'I love a sunburnt country.' It is still the meat of national days, advertising people and may still even get a guernsey in primary schools and high schools. It is also one of those pieces of writing which seeps into a nation's consciousness, forever to be somewhere in the background.

Mackellar is sometimes portrayed as a one-poem poet, a foolish misrepresentation at best. There is no  doubt that she wrote in a pre-modern tradition, though there is nothing wrong with that. I am sure that Ezra Pound would find her verse appalling, but it is still appealing in the same way that any poet from the period is. And she also had the distinction of not being a fascist.

I was surprised to find her first published poem in Harper's Monthly Magazine, dating from July 1903. It was written in response to the death of her brother Keith in the Boer War. Considering she was only 15 at the time, I thinks it's a little gem, bespeaking a considerable yet nascent talent emerging.

When it Comes

How would I like to die, to die?

Without a cry,

In a hard fought-fight where blows are dealt

And the death-strokes less than a girl's kiss felt -

So would I die.

So would I like to die, but where?

In the open plain, in the open air.

Where the red blood soaks through the thirsty grass,

And the wild things tread my grave as they pass -

There would I die.

When would I like to die? At night,

A moonless night.

The still-white star-shine overhead,

And underneath the still-white dead.

There would I die.

I think she is certainly worth a second look.