I HOPE my regular readers will not be disappointed to know that although I have managed to have nine children, and am now the hands-on grandmother of three, I have never read a baby book. In fact, I used to wonder why my American friends with grumpy babies kept mentioning Spock. Perhaps they were propping themselves up late at night in front of old episodes of Star Trek? Personally, I went for the gripe water; for the baby, that is.
THIS week news of an important report was published in L’Osservatore Romano which, if you will excuse the painful pun, should have been a godsend to eager environmentalists. After all these people are great doomsayers and the contents of the report was the stuff of science fiction horror stories.
THE other night a friend who works in a rather grim part of the world called around; at least it is grim in the sense that not everyone has enough to eat or can read or write, and the women still carry water on their heads after being sold into marriage at age 12 or thereabouts. But the scenery is great.
NEW York City’s education supremo Joel Klein isn’t one to mince words.
THE night before the US election last week, I rang my American cousins in Buffalo and Niagara Falls. I combined my annual Christmas call with a bit of research about their voting intentions. I had a pretty good idea who they were likely to vote for. They are all registered Democrats and they grew up in houses with photographs of the Kennedy brothers next to the obligatory one of John XXIII, John Paul II never quite having cut it in Italian kitchen religious art. I was right.
CONSCIENTIOUS objection is supposed to be a democratic right. It is enshrined in international covenants and is at the core of what makes us a democracy. So it is pretty disturbing when that right is eroded, as it has been in Victoria.
IN the past decade there has been a huge push by policymakers of both ideological complexions to get more women into the workforce.
THE Olympics are on again and we are having the usual discussion about the value we are getting for taxpayers’ dollars spent on elite sports.
LATE in 2006, just before Kevin Rudd’s ascendancy, I was asked to address an ALP policy forum in Sydney. It was in the form of a debate and the person I debated was that rather formidable relic of ideological feminism, Susan Ryan.
THE day I gave birth to my eighth child, I came the closest I have to death.
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