daylesford

In addition to trying to save the world (see post below), we also visited the rural town of Daylesford. Located in the medium-altitude foothills of the Great Dividing Range, the town is only 114 km (70 miles) north west of the Melbourne. As most of that distance is through largely-uninhabited land, it seems like a distant isle of civilization. I am yet again reminded of how unpopulated this continent really is.

This former booming goldmining centre now has a population of only 2000, despite having famed mineral water springs, two beautiful lakes right in town, hills with views of the surrounding farmland, lovely Victorian architecture, and excellent restaurants. There is reputedly an active queer community, though we saw little evidence of this. Daylesford reminded me a bit of Main St. in Northampton, with a distinct overtone of Colorado thrown in. There are many abandoned buildings around town, and property goes cheap (check out this tempting one!), but this emptiness doesn’t diminish the spirit of the town: a combination of new-agey and old-timey, with a handful of realistic modern farmers thrown in. It felt a lot more like home than anywhere else I've been here.

After enjoying some of the delicious food on offer, wandering around the converted abbey on top of the hill, talking with the super-friendly unpretentious people around town, and enjoying the uninterrupted views, it was hard to come back to the city. Luckily, Petra’s cousin Matt lives not far from Daylesford, so we’ll have chances to go back.

it's getting hot in here

I’m back at World Vision (fundraising) after a full and fulfilling weekend of family, food, fitness, and fracas-raising fun. I’ve been revelling in the company of my wonderful parents, who are visiting for a full four weeks! As my Mum always says, “fabulous!”

On Saturday we participated in environmental rally and human sign event that my uncle encouraged us to attend. Organised by a coalition of over 60 environmental groups from all over the state of Victoria, the demonstration was designed to highlight the immediacy of global warming’s threats.

Erika, my parents, my aunt Sue, and I joined the 3,000+ crowd of every imaginable type of Australian in the centre of the CBD (Central Business District) early in the afternoon for remarkably interesting, intelligent, rousing speeches. The attire of the attendees added a humorous element: we had all been asked to wear red, so the oddest clothing appeared throughout the crowd, from ill-fitting raincoats to crocheted shawls.

My family and I decided to march with the Yarra Valley Environmental Action Group because they were friendly, happened to be standing nearby, and because the Yarra Valley region is renowned for its wineries and we were hoping for freebies. It would be a true tragedy if these local vineyards became casualties of global warming.

The march brought us all to the Alexandra Gardens for the demonstration’s main event. Directed by volunteer eco-crowd marshals (including my uncle), we in the crowd organised ourselves into a 140 meter sign spelling out “Climate Emergency.” We are the lower right-hand point of the N.

The event was a success: it was on every major TV news channel, made The Age (Australia’s major newspaper), and ran the gamut of online news sources. Hopefully the message got across. More than anywhere else I’ve been, the difficulty in Melbourne is not in convincing people that climate change is a problem but in communicating the true speed and urgency with which we need to respond. Equally difficult is inciting change on the scale that we actually need it. We need to drastically change our behaviours faster, but none of the big decision makers seem willing to take the lead. Our leaders move only at glacial speed – a metaphor which leads to an interesting lexical paradox: the slower we respond, the swifter “glacial speed” becomes.

barak obama

I have an unusual perspective on the US presidential race, being on the other side of the world. I am living in a country where people take hope for granted.

I hadn’t realized how scared all of us are in the US until I’d been here a few weeks, and it began to feel like I was being cured of some long-lasting illness. And I mean real physical cures: my stomach unknotted, the headaches that I took for granted went away, my back stopped hurting, I had more energy, I slept better.

People here in Australia are, on the remarkable whole, not very stressed. It’s amazing. It’s so natural and obvious and right that it’s hard to write about. It’s like writing about unpolluted air. Not much to say about it other than it tastes good and you can see farther. Most people here are just happy, confident, and at ease. It’s almost disturbing.

Why is there such a difference between living in these two countries? I’m sure there are hundreds of factors, but a lot of it seems to come down to the excellent social services provided by the Australian government: excellent health care, including mental health care; excellent schools; assistance for caring for the elderly and for people with disabilities; clean, efficient, and prevalent public transportation; first-home-buying grant; job placement services; unemployment benefits you can actually live on; and much more. If you have all of that at your back, what is there to be deeply stressed about?

Seeing all of these superb services, provided by a country that has significantly less economic and natural resources than the US, gives me great hope. People of the US, we don’t have to be so unhappy, so fearful, so cynical, so distrusting, so unsupported all the time: It doesn’t have to be that way!

And Barack Obama understands that things can be better. That’s why I’m voting for him. I don’t think he’s some sort of political saviour, as some suggest, but he is bringing an important and powerful message at a crucial time: hope and change. He is reminding us that the US can be so much more than it is right now, and that we can work together to make it so. That we, as citizens, have both the ability and the responsibility to take charge of our country. That we are not powerless, but instead that we, ourselves, hold great power. He is telling us “yes,” he is speaking with love, which feels like breathing again after so many years of hatred and “no.”

I know that this is what everyone talks about: his message of change. “What about his policies? What about the issues?” you might ask. Well, he’s pretty good on the issues: I like a lot, but not all, of his proposed policies (see below for more info). But to me, what’s more important is the bedrock on which he intends to build those policies: a focus on the people of the US, especially those most in need. You can’t effect drastic policy change without changing the fundamental concepts of governance on which they stand. Obama is proposing a paradigm shift that excites me: the policies can follow, and will necessarily be more just because of their improved context.

One excellent example of this is Obama’s refusal to accept big-business, lobbyist, and governmental funding for his campaign. He does not want to be beholden to any organizations whose mission he does not support. This shows a sincere effort in the right direction: toward empowering and serving the people of the United States.

I encourage you to donate to Obama’s campaign now, and move America one step closer to being a country we can be proud of again.


For more information:

For a well-researched comparison of the two candidates on some big political issues, check out the Boston Globe.

To see how the race is going, check out the continually-updated button on the right-hand sidebar, and visit this excellent graph.

Obama's One Nation speech:


Emmy-award-winning Yes We Can music video by will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas, narrated by Obama's New Hampshire primary speech:


For another excellent will.i.am Obama video, visit here.

one semeser down!

I have finished for the semester! YAY! I'm FREE!

Thanks to those of you who proofread drafts. My papers were definately better for it.

If anyone is curious to read my term papers, strange as they are, just let me know and I'll email you a pdf of the paper(s) of your choice. On the menu are three options:

1) Developing the Integrity of Conscientious Dissent. Strongly flavoured, with a slightly nutty, patriotic, Thoreauian overtone.

2) In Defence of Irrational Reasons: Endorsement and its lack in agency. Slightly dry, with a fruity, pointless aftertaste.

3) Twice as Green: Poverty Relief through Knowledge Production through Carbon Offsets. Earthy, anthropological, highly situated within the unusual sub-discipline the History and Philosophy of Science.

I'm off to the City Library now to check out a stack of braincandy and buy a really big piece of pie (there's an excellent bar/cafe IN the library--how I love this city!). Hooray!

the sweet sunny south(ern hemisphere)

It’s well and truly midwinter. The few decorative European import trees have dropped a few brownish leaves, the temperature has plummeted to a frigid 50s-70s during the day and 40s at night, and it’s drizzled a bit. Today is 55 degrees and sunny. This is dire weather, let me tell you. Hand-rubbing hunched-shoulder bundled (‘rugged up’) people at the university clutching their steamy cappuccinos discuss how hard it is to get up from the warmth of their beds in the face of such a chill. I kid you not. Walking outside requires some combination of scarves, hats, gloves, multiple sweaters for most residents. The radiators at the uni are cranked up, plus space heaters have appeared, and the preferred seats during class are those right next to the heaters. When I show up in a t-shirt and jeans and ask if I can open a window (who can hold a class in a sauna?), they think I’m off my rocker. I think I’ll keep the fact that we haven’t turned on the heat at our apartment to myself.

And I'm happy to say: two papers down, one to go! I'll be rejoining the living in four days.

term papers

In case you were wondering why the blog silence, I'm writing my term papers. I have three subjects this semester, so that's three 5,000 word term papers*: one for Moral Psychology, which I'm writing on integrity and conscientious dissent; one for Value Theory, which I'm writing on the role of endorsement in an account of agency; and one for Ecology and Environmentalism, which I'm writing on the views of nature enacted through a particular carbon offset program. Anyone feel like helping by looking over drafts in the next few weeks?

*I know, 5,000 words is pretty short. That's the problem. For instance: the rough draft of my Moral Psychology paper was 12,000 words, and I've only managed to cut it down to 7,500 so far. Philosophy professors like challenging their students by giving a really short word limit, and then forcing the students to condense their arguments on these really huge topics until they are practically black holes of rationality. While I appreciate tight rationale as much as anyone, I think this short-length practice leads to more inaccessible, dichotomous, argumentative, rigid, and unrealistic thought than is necessary. How can you reflect the messy realities of life in ten pages or less? I had to cut my entire section on oppression from the Moral Psychology paper, which pained me. And I'll have to leave out an explanation of how carbon offsets work from my Ecology and Environmentalism paper, making what I write understandable only to someone who's already familiar with the process. But that's all a discussion for another time.

sky wars

Have I mentioned that there are wild parrots everywhere? Lorikeets, galahs, and cockatoos are the most common. While the bright pink doe-eyed galas do strike a chord with my inner 4-year-old girl, the mischievous “cockies” have quickly become my favorite.

I’m proud to say I can now identify its call in ‘the wild.’ Not hard, as it’s similar in volume and tone to a three-year-old child sneaking up to you while you’re napping and delightedly yelling “blah!” as loud as s/he can. For instance, I was walking peacefully along Flinders St in the center of Melbourne early in the morning a few days ago when I was shocked to have my eardrums just about blasted out with a gleeful “GRAWK!” about two feet from my head. “Cockatoo,” my ringing naturalist’s ears proudly identified. Glancing around to find the offender, I spied a yellow-crested head peeking around the corner of the awning nearby. When it saw that I’d spotted it, it bobbed and burbled, went to the next awning that I was to walk under, and waited. Deciding to play along, I walked under it, and was gifted with another gleeful “GRAWK!” from a very proud bird. We kept this up for a while, it sometimes swinging upside down on the edge of the awning to check on my progress. When we reached the end of the awnings, it flapped to the decorative 1900s Art Nouveau metal façade above, cocked its head, peered at me sideways, and then delicately began tearing the metal off the building.

These destructive and prankster tendencies have not enamored the city officials to the birds. In addition to their age-old campaign to gnaw the bark off of all city plantings, the big cockatoo fad these days is chewing the expensive little light bulbs that cover the iconic Melbourne Arts Centre spire. While a few have lauded the birds for joining the fight against global warming, the city has not seen this campaign in a positive light, and have brought in the Green Berets of the bird world: Bibi the peregrine falcon and Zorro the giant wedge-tailed eagle. They are supposedly tethered to the top of the spire to discourage, not eat, the cockatoos. However, from our excellent 9th-floor vantage point, Petra and I noticed a sudden and unusual pigeon diaspora yesterday morning. What looked like the entire winged population of central Melbourne was beating a swift northwesterly retreat. Not long after, a falcon (complete with loose jesses and tether) zoomed by. I imagine that pigeons would be much easier prey than feisty cockatoos to a suddenly-freed falcon.

No reports of feathered casualties in the papers this morning, but I think I may go check on my awning friend. Hopefully s/he’s still around to continue the campaign against decorative metal bits.

we're aunts!

We have nephews! Erika’s brother Reed and his wife Sue are now the proud but tired parents of twin boys: Matthew Ronald Nonken (on the right) and Thomas Chanel Nonken (on the left), born Tuesday evening in North Carolina. Matthew is 4 lbs 13 oz and Thomas is 7 lbs 1 oz: everyone's still at the hospital, as little Matthew is getting some tlc for low blood sugar, but all reports are good.

c is for delicious

One of my favorite books when I was a kid was The Search for Delicious, in which the hero undertakes a series of exacting challenges in order to make his contribution to the king’s dictionary. The book concludes that delicious is cold water when you’re very thirsty. While I ultimately concur, the next in line would have to be a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie comprised of butter, eggs, flour, sugar, chocolate bits, vanilla extract, and ineffable perfection. I have been questing through the Greater Melbourne area in search of that cookie for three months now, and have finally, this evening, come the closest yet to recreating perfection. My assistant in this successful endeavor has been Ms. Betty Crocker, whose cookie mix, despite having been made in Australia with Australian ingredients, results in a semblance of godly American cookie-tude.

The missing backstory here is that Australian cookies… suck. No way to beat about the bush on this one. All Australian baked wheat-based confections* somehow end up tasting a bit past their expiration date even if I make them myself. This covers everything from the Ms. Fields cookie stalls at the malls to restaurant desserts to refrigerated grocery-store dough to the ingredients themselves. We think the problem is in the butter, and maybe the flour too. I can’t understand it. They always result in cookies that are too hard and crumbly, and/or taste slightly rotten. I was getting desperate, and considering petitioning the UN to airlift frozen Tollhouse slice-and-bake to our roof deck.

Enter Ms. Crocker, via an unlikely convenience store in St. Kilda after this evening’s French class. (cue angelic choir.) Though the aftertaste is slightly unusual and they’re a bit too sweet (I know!), they are the closest I’ve found my Mum’s. I miss my Mum and her cookies. There’s no place like home, and no cookies like my Mum’s. No, really, my Mum’s cookies are better than your mom’s. I dare you. Send me cookies to prove me wrong. Please. :)















*With the highly debatable exception of Tim-Tams, and recognizing the unquestionable superiority of Mint Slices (like a Thin Mint with a peppermint patty on top)
Oh, and my cousin Claire's pumpkin cake, which isn't a cookie but is incomparably delicious

let me tell you a story: Utah Phillips, 1935-2008

Utah Phillips died on May 26th. I just heard. My sister was listening to public radio, and they read his obituary. She called me. He’s a great hero of mine. He was a cantankerous old guy, an Army deserter turned alcoholic bum turned pacifist anarchist, who wrote rather awful folk songs. This man taught me so much (only a slice of which I'll have room to mention here )and I never met him.

I remember when I first heard his voice, though. We (my twin sister and I, and probably some friends too, though I can’t remember now) were at yet another Ani DiFranco concert in 1995. We were 14 years old. The first half of the concert was on fire—we were all ready to jump out of our skins with pumped-up tearing guitar and feminism. Then the lights came up for the intermission, and we were all at a loss. They turned up the intermission music, something mellow to keep us in line, and it slowly started to seep in through the ringing in my ears. It was compelling. It was a riff with a story, and the more I listened, it was a story with a riff. It was telling the story of our country, the part we never hear, of the Korean war and freight trains and labor strikes, of the poetry of bums and of Catholic anarchists and opera. But standing there in the smoky sweaty hyped auditorium, I couldn’t quite hear well enough to put the pieces together—I just knew I wanted to hear more.
(listen)

Those stories came out the next year on the best recording I'll ever own, The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere, an album with Ani’s music supporting Utah’s guitar plucking and rambling histories, and was followed up four years later with Fellow Workers. That first collaboration really changed me. It was musically strange, still is, fiddles and turntables, but the music keeps you going, makes you remember that though the words are talking about the 30s, the 60s, that it really is as relevant as it strikes you, and that though it’s an old guy rambling on, that it’s ok to get riled up. Having that musical support and encouragement allowed me to listen.

Utah Phillips is usually described as a folk musician. But he wasn’t a very good singer, never claimed to be, didn’t actually sing many songs during his concerts. “Folk music is boring. ‘Wack fall the di-do, oh blow ye winds, hi-ho,’ hell, that’s boring.” Though he did write a good many songs, he was at his core a storyteller. His stories were irreverent, funny, respectful, and full of a deep understanding of our place in history, on just whose shoulders we stand today.

“Time is an enormous long river, and I am standing in it, just as you are standing in it. My elders were the tributaries. And everything they thought, and every struggle they went through, and everything they gave their lives to, and every song they created, and every poem that they laid down, flows down to me. And if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to see, and if I take the time to reach out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs, I can reach down into that river, and take out what I need to get through this world. Bridges, from my time to your time, as my elders from their time to my time. And we will put into the river, and we let it go, and it flows away from us and away from us until it no longer has our name, our identity; it has its own utility, its own use, and people will take what they need and make it part of their lives.”

It was through his stories I first learned of the history not taught, of the American labor movement, the strikes and speeches and murders and heroes that fought with innovation and courage to give us fair wages and hours. The history of Mother Jones and Ammon Hennessey, of the Pennsylvania coal miners and the Lawrence MA textile workers, of Marian Anderson and war deserters. The history of the folk. And through him and our shared hero, Mark Twain, I learned to love my country despite its government.

This was no passive history, no past America. Utah was an agitator to the end, reframing the political pieces we are handed, reminding us of our power, trying to get us to speak up and act out. He refused to see the world the way those in power want us to see it, and refused to let them dictate his life. This wasn’t reactionary, defensive anarchy: this was about defining who we are for ourselves, as individuals and in communities. At 14, this whole concept was revelatory to me, and continues to inspire me in everything I do.

“No matter how new age you get, old age gonna kick your ass.”
Utah suffered from heart problems for years. It had recently sapped his energy so much that he couldn’t play the guitar any more, and he got out of breath just recording his radio broadcasts. He didn’t give up on life, but his heart eventually gave out. He died as best any of us could ask: in bed at home, with spring breezes coming in through the window, asleep, next to his wife.

What Utah said of his elders is better than any words I could say of him: "But they lived those extraordinary lives that can never be lived again. And in the living of them, they gave me a history that is more profound, more beautiful, more powerful, more passionate, and ultimately more useful, than the best damn history book I ever read.”

For more information:
Utah’s life story

Utah’s note to friends on his birthday, two weeks ago