THE MONTHLY ESSAYS

“One man’s recession began in February, on Friday the 13th. Another’s world came apart in March. The Ides of March were also cruel to a woman we’ll call Dusty. We’ll call her that because like most of the people in this story, she’d prefer to remain anonymous ...”

In “The Coming Storm”, John Birmingham talks to some of the advance guard in Australia’s growing number of unemployed. Combining astute political analysis with characteristic wit and sharp reportage, Birmingham reveals the human, Australian face of the global financial crisis as he investigates how we came to be out of work in a land of plenty.

“Despite 17 years of uninterrupted economic growth, we find ourselves at the start of the Great Recession in an awkward fiscal position best described as ‘skint’. It’s not entirely the fault of Wayne Swan dancing through the thoroughfares and shopping malls of suburban Australia tossing $900 cheques high into the air. His predecessors had something to do with it, writing plenty of their own that they knew future governments could not possibly honour.”

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“American patriotism does not celebrate a country that exists or has ever existed. It is a celebration of the idea of America: of possibility, what Barack Obama calls ‘America’s promise’. Where we may look upon America as the country of slavery and racial segregation, Americans see a country that overcame these things … This is a concept alien to those whose sense of patriotism has an older, more European flavour. The message of Australia’s staunchest patriots is that ours is a great country with a great history and no need for change.”

In “Patriot Acts”, Waleed Aly looks beyond the cheering and flag waving to provide a unique and compelling analysis of American patriotism, its history and complexity, and the lessons Australia can draw from it. “The secret to America’s unique brand of national identity,” Aly says, is that it “coheres principally around not a social culture but a political one”; it is this, he argues, that allows American patriotism to be embraced by even the most marginalised in US society.

“The demands America makes of its minorities are less trenchant than those preferred by anti-multiculturalists. Its demands are civic demands. If Australia has lately had a message for its migrants, it has been, ‘Fit in’. America’s message is, ‘Participate’. The two are worlds apart. The latter expresses a national identity that is dynamic and open, and that offers citizens a belief in their own freedom of conscience and the opportunity to contribute something new. The former expresses a national identity that is comparatively fixed, that makes its demands without inviting input and that, as a consequence, inspires little fidelity.”

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“In 1972, Judith Wright introduced Nugget Coombs to her daughter as the new love in her life. Wright was 57, Coombs was 66. When I think of how they found each other at this stage of their lives, I am reminded of a poem Wright wrote ten years before, called ‘Prayer’, a plea to the muse not to desert her as she aged. Its opening line addresses a more fundamental fear: ‘Let love not fall from me though I must grow old.’ In this respect, her prayer was answered.”

And in “In the Garden”, Fiona Capp reveals the captivating story of the 25-year secret love affair between two of Australia’s most well-known and well-loved public figures, “the famous poet-cum-activist” Judith Wright and “the distinguished yet down-to-earth statesman” ‘Nugget’ Coombs. Drawing on previously unpublished letters between the two, Capp presents a tender portrait of an extraordinary relationship suffused with art and ideas, mutual regard and deep love.

“The fall of the Labor government in 1975 left both of them disillusioned. It was Wright’s loyal opinion that ‘If Gough had carried out his promise, in the election campaign, to listen to your advice, we’d still be alive and kicking. Now wherever I look disaster looms. Poor fella my country, indeed.’ Yet what they had been through together cemented their love. Wright told Coombs that for all the political drama, she found herself mostly thinking of him.”

THE NATION REVIEWED

In the Monthly Comment, Robert Manne brings an original historical perspective to bear on the politics of the moment. In an incisive post-budget analysis of the federal government and its response to the current financial crisis, Manne compares James Scullin’s reaction to the Great Depression with Kevin Rudd’s handling of what’s now becoming known as the Great Recession. Manne argues that although the Rudd government has performed admirably so far, the political risks it is running must soon come home to roost.

“There is a contradiction at the heart of the Rudd government. On the one hand, it is extremely ambitious. On the other, it is extremely risk-averse. This is the kind of contradiction that it will eventually be forced to face. Almost everyone recognises that the government’s financial forecasts are heroic …”

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In “Haiku Hikers”, Linda Jaivin, a seasoned “creature of the Great Indoors”, sets off along the Northern Territory’s Larapinta Trail. In the company of a handful of fellow writers, Jaivin finds that while her body may complain a little, her imagination relishes the exercise.

“I imagine the piles of squarish dolomite boulders are the fossilised droppings of the wombat’s dinosaur ancestor ... River reds grow along long-gone creeks, roots seemingly tapped into memories of water. Ghost gums spring from sunset-red cliffs as though feeding on light alone. Yet every so often, under our feet we espy the miracle of rock imprinted with the ripples of an ancient sea. Raymond wonders if we’d like to compose haiku. Shane comes up with 'Us mob / Waves of stone / Surf’s up. Not.'”

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And in “Cold Comfort”, Nick Bryant visits the Western Australian towns of Ravensthorpe and Hopetoun, which are ghost towns in the making thanks to the sudden closure of a BHP mine.

“Many of the homes have ‘For Sale’ signs driven into the grass verges outside, but nobody wants to buy. Some of the homes are half-finished; there is no commercial sense in completing them. In this age of toxic assets, Hopetoun is ringed by toxic suburbs.”

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Plus, in “Hollywood Ending”, Leigh Sales spends Saturday evening at Top Video with the store’s stoical owner, Steve, whose fortunes have been steadily dwindling with the rise of payTV, high-speed internet and DVD box-set purchasing.

“’Video’s were once a big novelty,’ Steve explains, ‘We were the only source of entertainment besides movies. The saying back then was that people would rent commercials from you, the quality of TV was so bad.’”

ARTS & LETTERS

In “Credo”, Bill Henson offers an eloquent and lucid manifesto on art, its promises, its possibilities, and its essential role in the lives of individuals and society. Arguably this country’s foremost visual artist, Henson discusses the diverse influences on his own art: from paintings by Rembrandt and Watteau, Cy Twombly and Rothko, to the music of Mozart, the writings of Nabokov and Dante, as well as the films of Bergman and Visconti. What unites these influences – and, indeed, what unites all great art – he argues, is empathy, wonderment and love.

“All art is a journey which we wouldn’t take if we knew where we were going. Thomas Mann could suggest the immensity of the world and all its riches in the merest gesture as the words came to express it. But really – no one knows how you photograph (or capture in any other way) longing or loneliness or the face of love or fear. There are no recipes for art, but of course we know it when we see it, and it makes us who we are. It is the deepest of understanding between human beings that we have, and it can only come through love.”

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In “Goodbye to All That”, Tim Flannery considers the latest book from the environmentalist and climate-change expert James Lovelock. In The Vanishing Face of Gaia, Lovelock “issues an alarming warning” that describes the deadly path we have set ourselves upon by disturbing Earth’s regulatory system through the burning of fossil fuels. Lovelock’s predictions are sometimes at odds with prevailing scientific thought, but for this, says Flannery, there are clear – if equally alarming – reasons.

“A slew of recent scientific findings show that the key indicators of the climate system – including sea-level rise, temperature and CO2 concentration – are tracking the IPCC’s worst-case scenario, which they considered a remote possibility. While James Lovelock’s model does fit recent observations, it’s difficult to know what to make of this, for his model predicts only minor perturbations in the climate system before the arrival of the big catastrophe.”

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And in “Lost Women Found”, Robert Forster pays tribute to the remarkable music and unusual lives of three little-known singer–songwriters: Connie Converse, Sibylle Baier and Vashti Bunyan. Converse recorded folks songs alone in her New York apartment back in the ’50s; in the ’70s, Baier had a reel-to-reel machine in her Stuttgart living room; Bunyan wrote her first album while travelling from London to the Isle of Skye, by horse-drawn wagon, in the late ’60s (her second was released last year). The extraordinary music that each woman produced is only now beginning to achieve something of the recognition it deserves.

“It’s amazing how uncompromising the music of these three women is. Connie Converse and Sibylle Baier had nothing to lose: they were amateurs in front of a tape machine. Vashti Bunyan had a career. But the songs they wrote don’t shirk. This is confrontational music that’s soft, melodic and tender, and the truths these women are putting over have a power that many an artist screaming and growling over noise would be afraid to go near.”

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Plus, in “Here I Stand”, Peter Sutton reflects on the many facets of Noel Pearson’s thought as it appears in Up From the Mission, the Cape York leader’s comprehensive new collection of writing; and in “Two Stroke”, Luke Davies discusses two recent films dealing with relationships, mortality and grief: the French director Antonello Grimaldi’s gentle Quiet Chaos, and the Australian director Sarah Watt’s “beguilingly chaotic” My Year Without Sex.

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There’s also Jo Case on Andrea Goldsmith’s intriguing new novel of ideas, Reunion; Alexandra de Blas on Nicholas Stern’s plan for tackling climate change, A Blueprint for a Safer Planet; and Shane Maloney on the tumultuous time Peter Finch spent with Vivien Leigh.