First Call

*

Lyrics to "Bondi beach"

From an old French
airfield,
Tan Son Nhat,
a kaki clad
Yank surfer
flew
four thousand miles
a mission of redemption
to New South Wales
into the water over rocks
the Aborigines
call
Bondi beach.

A mate’s long board
overhead,
dinged
water logged,
the Yank surfer
twisted
by ever strong winds
made his way
down
into the water over rocks
the Aborigines
call
Bondi beach.

Flat
on
his long board
arms
cutting
the surf,
the lone
silent rider
left in his wake, rice paddies
and triple canopy jungles,
kept head of rip currents
and deadly bull sharks
into the water over rocks
the Aborigines
call
Bondi beach.

For the seventh wave
he waited, the Yank
surfer
took off
all out
the twelve foot high
wave
crashed
over head,
sent the long board
flying
like an arrow,
driving him
deep
into the water over rocks
the Aborigines
cal
Bondi beach.

Bondi Beach, Copyright Mike Marcellino, 2008, 2009

http://notebookwriter.blogspot.com/2009/11/bondi-beach-song-of-australian-surf.html

It wasn't fair, but he could feel the prickling heat in the back lanes of Paddington, and stared at the back gate which had once been his back gate. He had kept chooks in the backyard toilet, there in the that house next to the Bellevue Hotel, and this day, more than 30 years after he had lived there, he looked again, as if placing flowers on a grave. These streets were his own private citadel. Each mawling cat, each familiar scene, was in itself a prayer, a hymn of forgiveness, gto a group of people who had long since scattered, and many of whom had died. The star characters had long since disappeared. John Bygate, the man who's story had made him the first money he had ever made out of writing, had once lived just up the road.

Before the rot set in. How wonderful they had been; their in the cool morning of the bar, the smell of beer, the stab of last night's cigarettes. Cruel to be kind, that's what it was, so why did we keep crawling over the same old ground, why did we keep revisiting sights which held no significance whatsoever to anyone but him. He wanted to pay his respects to the past; even to the person he had once been. I've done a few things, I've had a few experiences, the boy said, indicating he was no longer a virgin, and they had all laughed in the long summer sun, in those days when mandies, methaqualine hydrochloride, was common and the manddrax stagger fashionable. We had thought we were the centre of everything.

Our colourful clothes and outrageous behaviour picked us out, put us at the forefront, and while the slaving masses opened their doors each morning and went off to work in their suits, they rose when the bar opened and their bleary embraces, their grotty little passions and sticky, triumphant embraces, these had seemed to be the mere elements of their pioneering lifestyle. The individual was the political. Each toke was a strike against the systme. Each day that passed was a confront against conformity. Their days in the bar were the beginning of the revolution. I've never known anyone as thirsty as you, Ian had said, there one morning amongst the glistening leaves of Centennial Park.

But Ian was long dead, Bygate was long dead, Lynn, pushing a pram as she wobbled plastered up to the shops, was dead. And the other characters that had populated that time and place, Russell had gone on to be a successful actor and had recently been in A Streetcar Named Desire with Cate Blanchett, but all in all so many of those bodies on the floor of his loungeroom, those bodies he had picked his way across on the way to work or more nefarious activities, had gone. He was shocked at what had happened. That so many of these people had gone. That these working class terraces he had felt so at home amongst were now million dollar pieces of real estate. And he looked in at the ground houses; and he looked in at their comfortable interiors and thought: I so much want a part of the world.

If only I had been sensible. If only I hadn't pissed it up against a wall. But these thoughts, so human and so unproductive, flittered through as if they were part of an armour of someone long gone, to be pitied not applauded, that so much talent could be so wasted. They had been, like Cocteau, the centre of their own universe; and the intricacies and parables, the gossp and the adventures, all marked a time when the world was turning on its access; and they were honoured to be passengers. There on the giant highway, on the whirling wheel, there in the summer air which passed dense and congealed over their suburb and their lives; there in the cool interior of the pub and the gentle exchange of greetings with the manager. We were the elite. We were the inner sanctum. Nothing could be better than this.

Thirty years later and it had all come to nothing. His private citadel was nothing but a web of streets in an over crowded city. None of their dreams had come true. Richard Meale had died, just like any other mortal. Bygate's brain haemorrage had come only after years of declining misery and increasing incohearance. A failure inside and out. The creature that hid behind the screens nothing but an artiface. Thirty years later and he felt like pushing the gate open, as if the house was still his home, as if he had been sensible and bought it at the #30,000 they had sold it off for then, not the million dollars it would cost now. The rooster crowed once more across the dreaming suburb. Yet another group of people were knocking on the door, ready for the party that was always going on at his house. He could hear their pointless, intimate chatter, those woinderful sun kissed moments when the world had seemed eternal. And he threw his cigarette butt on the ground, wishing he didn't still smoke, even if it was only a few each day; and way, way away he turned, not caring if he never saw this back gate again. He could never own the world; even the past; in the way he so desperately wanted.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/22/2799436.htm

The Indian community in Brisbane says it fears two bashings last night were copycat crimes triggered by a spate of attacks on students in Melbourne and Sydney.

Two Indian men were bashed on the city's south side in separate incidents, but police say there is no evidence to suggest they were racially targeted.

One Indian man was attacked at a phone box near Macgregor State High School, police said.

They say he was making a phone call to his home in India when he was punched twice in the head. His cigarettes and his wallet were then stolen.

Police say the other incident involved an Indian taxi driver with two drunk passengers, who punched him repeatedly in the head over a fare dispute.

"Generally the clearest indicator [of the motivation for an attack] are comments made by the offenders to the individuals," Acting Commissioner Kathy Rynders said.

"Both complainants in these matters have said there were no comments in relation to their ethnicity by the offenders during last night's attack."

But the taxi driver who was attacked last night, Sandeep Goyam, is now considering returning to India.

"I don't think I will be much longer in this country," he said.

Police have already charged two men over the attack on Mr Goyam, but the assaults have shaken the Indian community in Brisbane.

The Queensland president of the Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin, Umesh Chandra, says locals fear the assaults in Brisbane were triggered by the spate of attacks on Indians in Melbourne and Sydney.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nation/stories/DN-obamasyear_20nat.ART.State.Edition1.4bf65b5.html

President Barack Obama begins the second year of his presidency much like he started the first: with a long list of things to do.

President Barack Obama visited Iraq in April. The future of his strategy may depend on March elections there.

The overhaul of health care remains a goal. One in 10 Americans is out of work. The federal budget deficit has exploded. The country is engaged in two wars – and must help Haiti after a catastrophic earthquake.

Unlike a year ago, however, the president can't rely on the good wishes of the American people or a splintered Republican Party to win policy battles. Today, Obama is much less popular than when he took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009.

And he probably will be even less popular in a year.

"This is as good as it gets," said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. "That's why he's pushed so hard and will continue to do so this year, while he's got the votes."

It's hard to imagine any president facing a first year with more complicated challenges than Obama. The result? A record of some achievement mixed with falling public support and a resurgent Republican opposition.

A recent study by Congressional Quarterly, for example, concluded that Obama enjoyed unprecedented success with Congress in 2009 – winning almost 97 percent of the votes in which he took a position, better than Lyndon Johnson or Ronald Reagan.

Narrow victories

"He's been a pretty impressive first-year president," said Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas.

But Obama's victories have been extraordinarily narrow. Republicans almost universally opposed the nearly $800 billion stimulus package. Divisive energy legislation remains trapped in the Senate. And his biggest goal – health care legislation – passed the House and Senate, in different forms, by the slimmest of margins.

http://www.escambray.cu/Eng/world/obama100120334

A year after the inauguration of US President Barack Obama, his approval rating among Americans dropped to 50 percent.
Obama: Broken Promises, Low Popularity

Obama´s approval rating among Americans dropped to 50 percent.

With 12 points less than when he assumed his post on January 20, 2009, the head of the Oval Office is among one of the first worst judged US presidents during their first 12 months in office, according to a poll by CBS network.

Indicators point that among the last nine presidents of that country only Ronald Reagan is below him with 49 percent after a year in office.

There are no celebrations in the White House on Wednesday. Spokesman Roberts Gibbs just said in a press briefing that "the main priority is to continue working hard on directing the economy and creating jobs."

The anniversary takes place after the poll in Massachusetts, where the Democrat party lost on Tuesday the Senate seat of late Senator Edward Kennedy.

Republican candidate Scott Brown won with 51.9 percent of the votes in comparison to the 47.1 percent of his Democrat rival Martha Coakley, according to a report in The New York Times daily.

With this defeat, the Democratic party ceded the absolute majority in the upper house, so from now on, Obama's initiatives as the health reform are in danger, because the party cannot now count on one of the 60 seats it had from the 100 the Senate has.

Sydney, NSW, Australia 2009.