Canberra is the National Capitol of Australia. I am sitting in the reading room of the splendid National Library. Today is my true birthday and not a day later were I in the US.
Already this has been a special day for me, my second day staying with my second daughter (my youngest child), Elizabeth, and her family. I have just come from morning coffer with her, in the cafe at the original Federal Parliament House, a low-slung, white painted, and stately building and now the National Museum. A little eerie, conversing with her about her soon-to-be-written essay in her study program on librarianship, as if surrounded by a cloud of long gone politicians!
The new Parliament Building is much more splendorous and cost a great deal more. I plan to tour it with Elizabeth next week.
The day is fine, somewhat cloudy and, despite the nearness of Winter, comfortably warm (about 60 deg F or 12 deg C). So here I am, starting out on a new posting for my blog (LifeAccording...this time). When my net book battery wanes, I will 'do' the newspaper room and then the latest exhibition (the Prayer Books of the House of Rothschild) After that, a walk beside Lake Burley Griffin and then lunch. How very pleasant!
Burley Griffin was the architect who won the world competition for the design of this city. What an excellent job he did of it! During the struggles leading up to Federation in 1901, the national capital was at times in Sydney and at other times in Melbourne, the capitals of the two earliest and more prominent States (New South Wales and Victoria). Finally, after very nearly the two states coming to blows, the site of the capital was settled between the two, a little out of the way.
In the 19th Century, the states (formed independently of each other) had little to do with each other, the distance between settlements being quite vast compared with the New England towns in the US. To go from my home city, Adelaide, to Sydney necessitated a risky sea voyage of more than a week or two. I did this, together with four other crew, in a 33 foot sailing boat in the early 1980s, taking 11 days of continuous sailing, including one very impressive storm, lasting two days. The southern coastline, being the Southern Ocean and at the edge of the Roaring Forties (winds), is littered with very many shipwrecks.
I very likely will write more about my time here over the next week or so.
Until then, au revoir!
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
ABSURDITY AT O'HARE
THEATRE OF THE ABSURD?
Blame it on the French. Seems this approach to typifying life began with them. On stage every thing is more than a little weird (clocks run backward and other strange effects come and go). It all looks and sounds as of a species of insanity.
Sometimes this sense of the absurd forces into the 'normal', when it really does assume a sense of the insane. Perhaps to doubt the 'normal' is upsetting...'Am I loosing my mind?'
Here I am in Chicago Airport, waiting for a plane to take me to las Vegas so that once there and half a night to run, another will take me to San Francisco. Does seem a little odd but, at times, airlines must suspend the simple approach in order to get everyone where they want to go, more of less.
After a day or so, I will board a flight to get to Sydney. Three days later, I will catch another flight to get to Adelaide. A week later, another flight will take me to Canberra. Bliss, oh bliss, I shall catch a train to return to Sydney...how normal that will be. Then it will all run backwards and, a month away, I will be back in Corning.
As Bill Clinton once confessed, I am doing this because I can. Does seem a profligate use of energy, not to mention many other resources. Is it not amazing that i can do such a thing? The rationale? I get to see family and friends I have not seen for more than two years. Hey...I am coming up to 78 years. who is to say that I will be able to do such in a year or two more?
According to its magazine, this one airline completes almost 6000 flights a day, to places all around the globe. Perhaps as many as six million people are in the air at any one time!
Wait for it...When I was a young fellow, this was not 'the normal'. Very few traveled internationally, Most who did went by sea (six weeks from Australia to England); only the very rich flew (big old flying boats, seats on which cost a mint). For most, the best chance to travel was to go off to war. The odd friend to two who sailed away would only do this once, on their return they would settle down, get married, have children, resuming the mundane.
Amazingly, since 1985, I must have flown across the Pacific thirty or so times, not to mention other trips. So, is this not absolute absurd?
In my grandfather's time, a person who emigrated rarely returned to the land of their birth. One said a final goodbye, shedding copious tears, then necessarily content to send and received letters to maintain contact with family and friends 'back home'
The absurdity to descends on me, sitting here in the airport, has a greater dimension; I wonder how to express it.
At base, flying is a wonderful thing. I should know, a thousand hours or so in gliders and small planes...I have been so fortunate and had experiences, some a little hair raising, that beggar description. There is a core of self-indulgence in this, but I would have it no other way.
But this business of huge airports, hordes crammed into tens of thousands of flying cylinders, the security rigmaroles, the noise, the inconvenience, the sheer in humanity of it...is certainly absurd.
Not the only absurdity by any means. We could continue onto motor cars...
How much more pleasant in the very fast train (of course (a long air trip if one lives in the US, or Australia). One buys the ticket, the train glides in on time, we find our seats, the train departs smoothly and noiselessly. Outside, the beautiful country side, or occasional picturesque town, flashes by.
Or even the noisy, smelly, steam trains of my childhood. Such panache, such wonder, such excitement, such wondrous noise!!!
Five overnight hours await me in Las Vegas; how about that for an absurd place?
With the wonders of the Internet, I sense the day may come when I will forgo all this and be content to see and hear loved ones.
But I will still travel...it forms the mind.
As the French have it, Les voyages forment la jeuness.
My take on this, travels keep one young.
Blame it on the French. Seems this approach to typifying life began with them. On stage every thing is more than a little weird (clocks run backward and other strange effects come and go). It all looks and sounds as of a species of insanity.
Sometimes this sense of the absurd forces into the 'normal', when it really does assume a sense of the insane. Perhaps to doubt the 'normal' is upsetting...'Am I loosing my mind?'
Here I am in Chicago Airport, waiting for a plane to take me to las Vegas so that once there and half a night to run, another will take me to San Francisco. Does seem a little odd but, at times, airlines must suspend the simple approach in order to get everyone where they want to go, more of less.
After a day or so, I will board a flight to get to Sydney. Three days later, I will catch another flight to get to Adelaide. A week later, another flight will take me to Canberra. Bliss, oh bliss, I shall catch a train to return to Sydney...how normal that will be. Then it will all run backwards and, a month away, I will be back in Corning.
As Bill Clinton once confessed, I am doing this because I can. Does seem a profligate use of energy, not to mention many other resources. Is it not amazing that i can do such a thing? The rationale? I get to see family and friends I have not seen for more than two years. Hey...I am coming up to 78 years. who is to say that I will be able to do such in a year or two more?
According to its magazine, this one airline completes almost 6000 flights a day, to places all around the globe. Perhaps as many as six million people are in the air at any one time!
Wait for it...When I was a young fellow, this was not 'the normal'. Very few traveled internationally, Most who did went by sea (six weeks from Australia to England); only the very rich flew (big old flying boats, seats on which cost a mint). For most, the best chance to travel was to go off to war. The odd friend to two who sailed away would only do this once, on their return they would settle down, get married, have children, resuming the mundane.
Amazingly, since 1985, I must have flown across the Pacific thirty or so times, not to mention other trips. So, is this not absolute absurd?
In my grandfather's time, a person who emigrated rarely returned to the land of their birth. One said a final goodbye, shedding copious tears, then necessarily content to send and received letters to maintain contact with family and friends 'back home'
The absurdity to descends on me, sitting here in the airport, has a greater dimension; I wonder how to express it.
At base, flying is a wonderful thing. I should know, a thousand hours or so in gliders and small planes...I have been so fortunate and had experiences, some a little hair raising, that beggar description. There is a core of self-indulgence in this, but I would have it no other way.
But this business of huge airports, hordes crammed into tens of thousands of flying cylinders, the security rigmaroles, the noise, the inconvenience, the sheer in humanity of it...is certainly absurd.
Not the only absurdity by any means. We could continue onto motor cars...
How much more pleasant in the very fast train (of course (a long air trip if one lives in the US, or Australia). One buys the ticket, the train glides in on time, we find our seats, the train departs smoothly and noiselessly. Outside, the beautiful country side, or occasional picturesque town, flashes by.
Or even the noisy, smelly, steam trains of my childhood. Such panache, such wonder, such excitement, such wondrous noise!!!
Five overnight hours await me in Las Vegas; how about that for an absurd place?
With the wonders of the Internet, I sense the day may come when I will forgo all this and be content to see and hear loved ones.
But I will still travel...it forms the mind.
As the French have it, Les voyages forment la jeuness.
My take on this, travels keep one young.
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