Thanks, Doug, also Sheila and Patrick.
About broadcasting of Parliament, Australia also began this ages ago,
and nowadays it’s also on TV!
Last time I was in a Melbourne doctor’s waiting room, the sick and injured were watching Question Time, enough to sicken and injure in itself…
Max in Seattle
On Aug 5, 2015, at 11:25, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Nicely caught, Max.He knew a thing or two, still worth thinking today, I’d say (but hoisters to Parliament [is there such a staton?]today?).
>
> Doug
> On Aug 5, 2015, at 10:27 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Stan Cooper
>>
>> Next door when I was thirteen
>> Stan was the blind man in his shed
>> weaving baskets on his own.
>>
>> Suntanned back and chest, wiry arms,
>> he did his best for rows of beans,
>> potatoes, tomatoes - Look at these!
>>
>> turning them in horny fingers,
>> feeling for blight. Ripe! juicy!
>> Those damn white butterflies!
>>
>> He’d tap tap his way to the bus
>> twice a week maybe, visiting
>> mates at the Blind Institute;
>>
>> on the way back drank beer
>> in some dim pub or other -
>> everywhere was dim, he told me -
>>
>> fuelling a two-voice barney that night
>> with his sharp-eyed sharp-tongued wife.
>> He’d back off, to his dark shed, its roof
>>
>> strewn with spread sheaves of wicker-canes
>> delivered for him to moisten
>> and soften up there till weaving-time.
>>
>> The same van took away good baskets,
>> sources of pride but not much income.
>> His little brown bakelite radio
>>
>> wired to a shed-top aerial
>> was tuned loud to Parliament
>> in Wellington, good for him
>>
>> to abuse the Tories, grumble
>> at Labour’s ineffectiveness.
>> Don’t they remember the Thirties?!
>>
>> How can they trust the banks?!
>> Don’t they dare touch Social
>> Security! The Pacific’s just
>>
>> a pond now for the U.S. Navy.
>> They’ll want the Antarctic next.
>> Untravelled, unread, un-sighted,
>>
>> Stan had wide horizons, taught me
>> a thing or two - offered me weaving
>> lessons. Thanks, Stan, no thanks -
>>
>> his swearing (‘bloody bitch’) irked Mum.
>> I didn’t fancy horny work hands
>> or all the Parliamentary barneys.
>>
>> I’d go back to my books, Latin
>> for Today, New Zealand Our Country -
>> nothing there about banks.
>>
>> [Owairaka 1950; Seattle 2015]
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
>
> Done in by creation itself.
>
> I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too.
> The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books?
> We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming?
>
> Robert Kroetsch.
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