OH PLEASE, someone tell me that these last three days of school will go quickly...
this term just HAS to be over soon...



On a completely unrelated point, there is a man outside my window (presumably hired by the international ladies of mystery ) in a fluorescent yellow shirt with one of those machines that blows leaves from one place to another. It achieves so little and yet it makes so much noise.
Man, if ever there were an activity that would bring on existential angst it would have to be this. It's reminiscent of poor ole Sisyphus, doomed by Zeus to a crappy punishment in Tartarus. Poor chap had to eternally push an enormous boulder uphill, only for the jolly rock to roll back down when he got near the top. He’d then have to start all over again, pushing it back up the hill…



Oh the wonders (and the absurdity) of modern technology...




So, I'm putting together a list of ten books my excellent Year 12s should read in the year after they finish school. I guess I'm thinking of it as part of their ongoing moral, spiritual, intellectual, existential and emotional education. Here's what I have, please feel free to cast your minds back to those good ole days and make suggestions for changes:

1. Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
2. Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoevsky
3. A Terrible Beauty by Peter Watson
4. The Great World by David Malouf
5. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
6. The Outsider by Albert Camus
7. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
8. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
9. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
10. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

I look forward to your thoughts!

Ok, first you have to read this article by NT Wright.

Then you have to tell me what you think!

This year, it's all about this guy... 191010 BOBBY

Rachel’s Mini MEme

It's been a while since I've posted, it took a tag from Rach to get me back online! I got tagged, click here to see Rach’s answers to the (self-devised?) meme where it all began…

I suspect that Rach may be a bit more cultured than I, but we’ll give it a go…

A Piece of Art that you Love

I love Renoir’s “Bather With Long Hair” and “Nude Amid Landscape”. I remember being totally mesmerized by them when they were at the art gallery in Sydney a few years ago. I have little post cards of them but they are just nowhere near as good as the real thing – those paintings are so beautiful!

I also love Amedeo Modigliani’s “Gypsy Woman with Child” (above), I love all of his angular faces and this one is quite poignant.

A Line in a Song or Line of Poetry that Reaches Your Core

“Reaches my core” is something I’m not really up to on a Monday afternoon in Week 9 but I guess I have found myself identifying with nine lines about Eliot’s good ole Prufrock in recent months with my whole “I’m not the super hero I thought I was” epiphany!

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

An Experience in Nature that was Really Special and/or Spiritual

12 years old, a caravan park next to the beach in Bateau Bay, riding my bike with my best friend, Nikki, while on a family holiday over the Easter long weekend. The sight of the beach (or at least I think it was the sight of the beach, this was fifteen years ago now!) prompted our first conversation about our faith and what we were reading in the bible. I remember that one of us, can’t remember which now, had been reading Revelation 21 and 22 and we were pretty excited. I think we may have even prayed together, the first time we’d done that without someone else prompting us to, though I may have embellished that part. Nik occasionally reads my blog so she might be able to comment and verify…

The Movie that Changed the Way you saw the World

It wasn’t a movie, it was two novels, though both of them have had movies made of them and I haven’t seen either of them! They were Charlotte Bronte’s "Jane Eyre" and Margaret Atwood’s "The Handmaid’s Tale" and they helped me to understand what it meant to be a woman who experienced the benefits of the suffragette and feminist movements.

A Piece of Music That Makes You Cry

Ready for something truly tragic? Destiny’s Child’s “Stand Up For Love”. One of my Year 12 students who knows everything (no sarcasm intended) described it like this:
“Suspended fourths resolving to a protracted perfect cadence with vocal lines bridging the harmonic gap is a manipulative musical tool. Almost every national anthem/ patriotic song contains this device. (The Star Spangled Banner contains FOUR of them!) It's just a shameless way of tugging the heart- strings with permutations of sound waves. Talk about corny! You can practically make a country go to war with a minimum of eighteen notes. How convenient.”

ok, that's the end of the Mini MEme, thanks Rach!

In Idol news - Bobby is amazing, yes??

So today Mrs Booker gathered her Tea Ladies around to discuss Alain de Botton’s “Status Anxiety” over some good afternoon food. As someone who struggles to read non-fiction I was pleasantly surprised by its readability – nice spacious layout, some helpful diagrams and lots of pictures! (yeah, after that you have a right to be questioning my ability to review books…)

Here are two bits that I really liked in case you don’t have time to read it:
“This successful industry of England, with its plethoric wealth… which of us has it enriched? … We have sumptuous garnitures for our life, but have forgotten to live in the middle of them. Many men eat finer cookery, drink dearer liquors, but in the heart of them, what increase of blessedness is there? Are they better, beautifuller, stronger, braver? Are they even what they call “happier”? Do they look with satisfaction on more things and human faces in this God’s Earth; do more things and human faces look with satisfaction on them? Not so… We have profoundly forgotten everywhere that cash-payment is not the sole relation of human beings.” Thomas Carlyle Midas 1843.

“Whereas a city’s other buildings serviced earthly needs – housing and feeding the body, allowing it to rest, contributing machines and implements to assist it – the unique function of cathedrals was to empty the mind of egoistic projects and lead it towards God and his love. City dwellers engaged in worldly tasks could, during the course of a day, on seeing the outline of these giant structures, remind themselves of a vision of life which challenged the authority of ordinary ambitions. A cathedral like that of Chartres, whose spires soar 105 metres into the sky, the height of a thirty-four-floor skyscraper, was understood to be the home of the dispossessed, a symbol of the wonders they would enjoy in the next life. However ramshackle their physical dwellings might be, the cathedral was where they belonged at heart. Its beauties reflected their inner worth; its stained-glass windows and ceilings made vivid the glory of Jesus’ message to them.”

It’s an interesting book because of the five causes of and five solutions for status anxiety that de Botton suggests. He regards lovelessness, snobbery, expectation, meritocracy and dependence as the five main causes and he suggests that solutions can be found in philosophy, art, politics, Christianity and bohemia. Despite the fact that he’s a secular author so far as I can tell, his book contains a powerful recommendation of Christianity as a world view and way of life.

One of the things that we discussed this afternoon was the reality that, as Christians, we’re aware of other ways to find confirmation of our worth than through the purchase of houses, the amassing of wealth or the gaining of promotion after promotion etc. What we wondered, though, was whether the voices that support part-time work, that tell people that working from home is good, that suggest that children are more than obstacles to career development etc are loud enough for the people who really need to hear them. We suspected that the answer would probably be no. Perhaps then, as de Botton seems to have noticed, the church is a powerful counter cultural agent and Christians have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to live our lives in full view of those around us in a way that challenges society and affirms all the things that society denies us – time to think, time for family, time for friends, time to build community, caring for those in need, developing our social consciences, regarding our money as God’s rather than our own and spending it accordingly. Yikes! That’s quite an opportunity/responsibility…

Funny that I’m currently watching Intolerable Cruelty…





Anyway, to switch topics completely, I feel betrayed by Dwight Yorke…







and I want Chris G and Ricky to get through the wild card stage!