December 1, 2008
Once upon a time in America
Politics
Getting elected in Zanesville, Ohio
Don Watson
By this author
November 5, 2008
After Katrina
Politics
Sixty-eight-year-old Lloyd Griffin sits on the verandah of his new house in New Orleans' once notorious Ninth Ward. The house is painted in startling deep orange with white trim, and the two-metre stilts on which it stands give Lloyd a view of the new …
December 5, 2007
Society of birds
Society
EE Cummings prayed that his heart would always be open to little birds. My family, the maternal side especially, has always shared some of his sentiment. It goes back to the clearing of the forest. As the trees went, the little birds came and dwelt in …
October 4, 2006
Iconography
nation_reviewed
Imagine for a moment that George Orwell was right when he said that words have precise and specific meanings and we should do our best to stick to them when we speak or write. Orwell argued that "slovenly" language made it harder to think clearly, and …
August 2, 2006
Situation ethics
nation_reviewed
When Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed on 7 June, US military officials first said that he was dead when they found him, which is no less than one would expect after two 500-pound bombs landed on the house he was in. Two days later, however, the same officials …
June 7, 2006
Comment
nation_reviewed
Back in the early ’90s I could find out about East Timor just by going shopping. The struggling supermarket across the road was run by an East Timorese man and his wife and teenage children. He had fought in the resistance to the invasion and remained …
May 4, 2005
Comment
nation_reviewed
Early in the new year I entered a hairdressing salon in the main street of the Victorian Wimmera town of Horsham (not “Hers and Sirs” but the one next to it, if ever you’re looking). At 9.30 in the morning the place was empty, and in no time the …