Finishing Strands

Can't get the pictures to work, don't know why. Can't seem to get much to work at all. Still in the local library at Gunnedah. I need a laptop more than anything. Well almost more than anything, beyond decency, moraility, a retread of the head, a moral update and plastic surgery. Went and looked at a dog; this woman had 40 dogs on the outskirts of town. Well it would have been 39 if I had taken one called Timmie, which I liked but I'm not quite sure if I'm taking on a lot of work and it's the right thing to do. My backyard in Redfern is not exactly huge; and most of them were working dogs called Coollies, which throw virtually any colour. Timmie was a working dog that was hopeless; and for some reason I liked him. Have to finish this damn column, I don't know why I let myself get sucked into these things. All very well if it paid, but it doesn't. Holidays are coming to an end; it's Thursday and I have to be back at work on Sunday. 9.30am. The dream is over and reality comes crunching down. The news is full of the massacre in America, here nothing much happens, nothing much at all. I've bought some patches to stop smoking, again; if I had a penny for every fresh start I had made in life...

Here goes another try at Hunting in Packs: Not sure of the word count and can't get Word to work on this computer:

During the last year, in the cool depths of the media currents, a giant shoal of fish changed direction all at once, to the right, or was it the left, they veered sharply, as if controlled by one mind.

It's hard to believe that only a year ago to be green was entirely passe, painting the protagnoist as a deep scrub hippy who should have stayed in Nimbin.

But that, in this sped up world of high-speed multi-media communication and sweeping intellectual fads lasting barely nano-seconds, was an eternity ago.

Way back then, in the dark ages of 2006, there was no surer way to turn off a news editor than to label your issues environmental, yourself a greenie and to prattle on about the future of the planet. Press releases from Greenpeace, WWF, Landcare, the Greens and all the other worthy groups large and small were barely, or rarely, even glanced at as they made their way from the fax machine to the garbage bin; of even less interest than most of the dross that makes up the snow storm of press releases passing through the nation's news rooms on a daily basis.

How times have changed. Now it's a crime to leave your kitchen light on by accident, for to do so it to burn up fossil fuels unnecessarily and threaten the very future of the planet. Think of the lives, the species, the shorelines you could have personally protected, if only you hadn't left that light on while you went to work.

From the start global warming, or climate change, was a gift to politicians. It made them look and sound important. You knew when the Prime Minister John Howard, always one to sniff the political wind, started to talk about global warming that the tide had reached vote gathering proportions. Remember him declaring, as he went off to Vietnam a few months back, that in his meeting there with US President George Bush he would be discussing amongst other things serious issues such as climate change? Oh really? Was our PM really going to lecture the Americans on their excessive greenhouse gas emissions as they walked together through clipped gardens of their expensive hotels?

But that's not the point. All Howard and other politicians have had to do was to utter the words climate change to appear to be doing something about the single most vital issue facing the planet and its billions of inhabitants. Form a committee to discuss how best your government, department, association or kindergarten could best address climate change and by Golly, you were a hero.

For the media, too, it has been a gift; giving what were once fairly boring environmental stories a ring of importance which could guarantee them a run. Just as in the late 1980s every second story led with a green angle, driving voiceless farmers to despair, so, too, in 2007.

From the start global warming and its followers have shown serious signs of religious fervour. And indeed it was the perfect religion for the modern age. To be a good guy, to capture the high moral ground, to convert and become at one with a large and growing body of initiates, all you had to do was declare belief. It required no commitment, no training, no sacrifice or discomfort. A simple statement of belief; an expression of concern about the fate of the planet; and you could feel good about yourself. Just as the Reverend Al Gore could excuse the flaming lights around his mansion by passing the cost onto the poor through carbon credits; so practitioners of the new faith could serve penitence by turning their television off at the wall or by getting a different brand of petrol. It was easy, and perfect for the age.

It was in this atmosphere of heightened hysteria that Australia's Opposition leader Kevin Rudd could slam the Prime Minister John Howard as a climate change sceptic, and be treated seriously, as if being a sceptic was in itself an evil.

Nothing's working very well today. Going to have $5.00 silverside at the local Gunnedah pub and think about whether to get that dog.

I can't get the bloody column right and I can't get my thoughts straight. Had a long chat to the Tambar Springs Anglican priest yesterday; who's name is also John. In the end I confessed a moral lapse; as the sun set into the strangely deep silence of the bush; the occasional moaning of the cattle about all that can be heard. Some days nothing goes quite right; and this is one of them. At least the car hasn't broken down; and there's no wood to touch. Picking up Sam in Newcastle on the way back on Saturday; Henrietta is off at Hymack in the mountains around the Hawkesbury; now that really is strange country.