and what of Our Common Future, eh, science?

On inspirational readings - on a different level, but the transcript of the Chief Executive of CSIRO, Megan Clark's speech to the National Press Club, 30 September.
Inspiring for anyone pondering our human struggle, I think. Sets out some challenges for us all & how to use scientific ideas to have a crack. Full of interesting posers, too.
One of my favourites is the realisation that in the next 50 years, we (humans on earth) will need to produce as much food as has been consumed over our entire human history to date.
As she says; "That means in the working life of my children, more grain than ever produced since the Egyptians, more fish than eaten to date, more milk than from all the cows that have ever been milked on every frosty morning humankind has ever known."
jeepers.
http://www.csiro.au/science/Megan-Clark-Press-Club-Address.html

That book it has me - The Secret Scripture

by Sebastian Barry. It's dynamite.
sharing a good story. can i do this? sharing. borrow it. buy it.
cheerio.

"My father's happiness. It was a precious gift in itself, as perhaps
my mother's anxiety was a perpetual spanner thrown
into her works. For my mother never made miniature legends
of her life, and was singularly without stories, though I am sure
there were things there to tell as good as my father's.

It is funny, but it strikes me that a person without anecdotes
that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more
likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following
them. Of course this is the fate of most souls, reducing
entire lives, no matter how vivid and wonderful, to those sad
black names on withering family trees, with half a date dangling
after and a question mark.

My father's happiness not only redeemed him, but drove
him to stories, and keeps him even now alive in me, like a second
more patient and more pleasing soul within my poor soul.

Perhaps his happiness was curiously unfounded. But cannot
a man make himself as happy as he can in the strange long
reaches of a life? I think it is legitimate. After all the world is
indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man
we might be continuously happy in it."

And I'm walking round bumping into things you said...

And the daylight stretches again beyond 7pm and with it stretches my wonder that of course the world continues apace at this hour, when all is regularly drawn & blinded & darkened in the house of two little uns.
Getting out & about from time-to-time has brought the realization anew. Spilling out with mates into Errol Street for a Fringe Festival comedy show on a Tuesday night. Riding in the daylight to a north Carlton pub for some scheduled & much sought after conviviality on a Wednesday night. We made it. Another winter down.

Riding to the G in the dark & the rain, racing the clock. Floodlights looming over Fitzroy all the way. Arriving. Chaining up the bike. Finding Gate 3, scanning the ticket & running up the escalator in footy shorts & gore-tex coat. Could the Woods do it? Heart pounding with effort & expectation, rounding the bend and onto Level 2 as the crowd all shuffle up out of their seats for the anthem. Hide away up the back, swap the wet shorts for dry jeans & take a seat just as the siren sounds. A rollicking first half of missed opportunities. We will get them again? Jimmy Bartel teaching me about the setting of screens and only then becoming aware of a whole new game within a game to an extent I’d never seen before to set up Ablett on his own. And the dancing, prancing second half, soured by cocky Geelong supporters around me to the point that I even left early (to beat the (bike) traffic).

But this spring has a special fizz, don’t you think? Can you feel it? There’s a spark of something floating on the wind. Or maybe it’s a loose willy-willy that flicks up the dust and makes anything seem possible? The skies are brighter. Bigger. All is fresh and new and again.

Here we’re debating house plans & looking forward to a 4th birthday and also to a little family getaway. CJ will be running 10km leg of the Melbourne Marathon on Sunday & will then pop up to the Gold Coast for a work conference. Nice! SJ is coming up to 4 now & has been seen ringing imaginary friends (on an old disconnected phone handset) quite a bit lately. KT is 2½ and took it upon herself to cast aside the Age of Nappies last week. These kids are growing and growing and revealing more of themselves seemingly every day.

And me? I’ve been in the business of watching & observing & relishing my Slow Talker status around these parts.
My (fractured) coccyx gives me less pain than previously, though it still aches to sit. Sometimes a sharp pain, rather than an ache. This experience has taught me new lessons about Australia’s health system, overturning some idealistic naïve ideas. It turns out that without private health insurance, a public patient cannot simply offer to pay for a consultation with a private specialist. This had been my understanding. But no. The private specialist in his/her private rooms opts instead to not even allow an appointment. No private health insurance = very limited access to private system.
This situation has meant I will not be seen by my first-choice specialist in Melbourne, though thankfully my referring doctor was able to find a private specialist prepared to consult with me.

But I’m back on the bike at least once/week now, taking in Edinburgh Gardens, the MCG and the Yarra on the trip to work. And still working a 3 day-week. Clocked up 1 year at the Bureau of Meteorology this week. I’ve found it very supportive and interesting and challenging and fun.

Books? I enjoyed the many characters & life stages of those characters in The Good Parents (Joan London), found The Boat (Nam Le) interesting rather than riveting & had trouble with The Spare Room (Helen Garner). Yesterday I stopped reading The Time We Have Taken (Steven Carroll) as I couldn’t get past the continually sighing internal debates of every character but today have found a cracker in The Secret Scripture (Sebastian Barry). All hail the Brunswick library.

And it seems just now that I’m finding inspirational people everywhere I look. Really helping my perspective & meanderings & wanderings around this world. So what are the ethics of finishing off the last 50 pieces of someone else’s 500-piece jigsaw puzzle project? Can routine and the presence of order help to rekindle the feeling of independence and of lost self? Life is scary, but courage is knowing your own role and your own values. How do you measure the success of your life? What’s the best way to make a difference to this world? Where can we do the most good? What is happiness?
Conversations over lunch, at the pub, over email to Darwin. Conversations with the people with whom we share this life.
Happy spring.
It’s happening.