They Compromise They Die

"In many ways, people - including us - simply are what they are. We are our height, our hairlines, our backgrounds. We are our colouring, our race, our sex. Much about us cannot and should not ever be changed. To take all of Nature's gifts and then bewail the downside is ungrateful as well as foolish."

Larsen & Hegarty


Back to work tomorrow. Not looking forward to it; but I've taken a fair bit of time off this year - at least a couple of months - and better settle back down. Most all of it was owed to me; but all the same, I better pull my head in. Times are conducent with compromise; and at the end of the Canberra trip; that's what I saw, deep and total compromise; not just fraternising with the enemy; liaison, but almost Stockholm syndrome. The failure of the Howard government to reform family law and child support, unfashionable causes though they might be outside the group think which has taken over Australia; is one of their most profound and long reaching failures.

"I've lived long enough to hate them all," I say when people ask me about my politics; and that is pretty well true. As a child of the seventies my politics were soft left if anything; we were politicised by the Vietnam war and grew up distrusting conservatives. But the manifest excesses of the left; revealed in this country particularly if you're a separated dad; meant for a brief time I thought the conservatives might have the answer. How disappointed I was. As if Iraq wasn't enough; his two-faced dishonesty and mistreatment of separated dads has nailed it for me; I couldn't care less if the Prime Minister John Howard stayed or went. The only thing that's certain is the other guy will be even worse; and I'm almost old enough not to care. Indeed, I wish I didn't care.

This picture above is of the Coca Cola sign in Sydney, which is central to the city and was a central image in my adolescence. I remember buying bottles of grog and getting utterly pissed in the area all around here; so that it's huge red flanks became part of my swirling consciousness as I headed towards the gutter, physically, metaphorically. The blinding hangovers and the alcoholic sadness that were to cripple me in later years weren't there yet; and it's drama, sacrificing oneself on the Cross, seemed all part of the drama of life and the drama of Sydney. I might not have loved the sign, but it was there as a potent image of the village, the place, where confused young adolescents still head; where the crims adjust back to the real world in halfway houses; where the girls hawk their trade and where darkness and desolation, our evil twins, were our constant companions. "He should be at home with his mother", a stranger said, passing my 15-year-old self as the sign loomed behind me and I swilled from a half-empty scotch bottle. Forty years later, literally, and I live out my days in silent respect; hoping for relief; plotting paths to a peaceful resolution; planning, God forbid, a quieter life travelling the country and the world. Once my own kids get through High School.


THE BIGGER STORY:


By ALICIA A. CALDWELL Associated Press Writer
HUNTINGTON, Utah Aug 13, 2007 (AP)

Another attempt to sink a video camera deep inside a coal mine where six miners have been trapped since a collapse a week ago yielded no signs of life, officials said Monday, frustrating crews trying to find the men.

The camera was paired with better lighting, but still only saw about 15 feet when it was lowered into the mine overnight, said Al Davis, who oversees Western operations for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. The images that came back included a distorted conveyor belt and an intact roof.
Top U.S. stories

It was the latest disheartening news for rescuers and relatives of the missing men. A video camera lowered into the collapsed mine Sunday revealed equipment, but no sign of the miners. On Monday, crews were planning to drill a third hole in the hopes of finding them, but cautioned that the effort could take up to six days.

"I've accepted all possibilites," said an exhausted Cody Allred, the 32-year-old son of missing miner Kerry Allred.

It is still unclear what caused the mine to collapse. Bob Murray, head of Murray Energy Corp. and co-owner of the mine, has insisted it was caused by an earthquake but seismologists say there was no earthquake and that readings on seismometers actually came from the collapse.

One of the four miners who escaped alive said Sunday he didn't feel or hear a thing as the mountain shook and caved in, trapping six of his colleagues.