The Last Living Link

*



Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder

Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

The Wasteland TS Elliot.



He met Simon at a meeting in Waterloo; and he looked at him and immediately thought of people long ago, of a nest of people who had seemed like they were the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega, the fulcrum of Sydney life, the most talented, most gifted, most adventurous people, souls who would make a difference not just to their generation but generations to come. They all lived together in the ground floor apartment of one of those grand old terraces fronting Moore Park Road, which was when Simon got to know them; Ian Farr, John Bygate, Russell Keithal, Lyn Hapgood; and other various hangers on. That was in the early eighties, when the decline had already set in.

He had already known all these people since the hey days of the 1970s; when Ian made it into the list of Australia's most promising composers, when John was great mates with perhaps Australia's then most famous composer Richard Meale and was well known in the city's cultural circles, when Russell was a famous up and coming, and very handsome young actor, and when Lyn was famous for being Lyn. Australia up until the 1970s had been largely a suburban place, and these filaments of genuine inner-city life were wonderfully exciting. It was in the late 1960s, hanging out with Harry Godolphin in the ramshackle houses that overlooked Woolloomoolloo, the floors cheap cane matting and the walls entrenched with the smell of bongs, that John Bygate first came up.

Harry wanted them to meet, he spoke of this wonderfully enigmatic, charismatic man whose good looks could stop traffic. It was a special day, the day they travelled up from Woolloomoolloo to Paddington and he was introduced, and instantly entranced. Bygate lived up to his advance mail, and was everything he had always wanted to be: handsome, apparently wealthy, gifted, an enormous record collection, all the latest books on his shelves, and, of course, fabulously out of it. They were the days when LSD was just hitting Sydney, as it had hit the rest of the western world, and everything was layered with an astonishing, glistening light. He made it his mission to get to know Bygate in his own right.

For a long time Bygate's house in Elizabeth Street Paddington, provided by a sugar daddy whose identity we were never allowed to know, became the centre of everything, the most exclusive, most wonderful place to be in the whole of Sydney. His handsome face. His wonderful clothes. His perfect taste. The turmoil of the times. Sylvia Platitude he scrawled on the wall during one acid ridden escapade, in reference to Sylvia Plath, the poet of the moment. Lyn lived there for a while, pushing her pram with little Brad in it, while she was escaping from "the chicken farmer", Geoffrey, a perfectly decent bloke who wanted to live the quiet life on a farm outside town. The last thing Lyn wanted was quiet. And she met up with Russell; and she didn't have to worry any more that life might be too quiet.

Just as John's house had been the centre of everything in the early 70s, so his own house in Paddington, donated freely by his friend Jenny, had been the centre of everything in the late 70s. By the time Simon came along in the early 80s, things had begun to fall apart for most of the crowd. Russell had fallen off the stage at the Opera House stoned on mandrax, wrecking a major performance, and didn't work again in the mainstream for years afterwards. Ian was doing live performances for theatre groups, but hadn't become the major Australian composer we had all expected. John was no longer the best paid rent boy in Sydney, but just another addict alcoholic on the slippery slope to nowhere.

The ever present flagons of white got cheaper. He was forced to abandon that beautiful house in Elizabeth Street, when the sugar daddy jacked up and he became the boyfriend of Garry, a hopeless junky of the very first order. And Lyn, well Lyn was along for the ride, but the circumstances weren't so fabulous any more. The crowded apartment in Moore Park Road, where they all congregated in the 1980s, was a significant step down. Simon, always humble, with no more ambition than to be a house painter, fell in with all these people, when the decay had already firmly set in. No doubt they sneered at him for his lack of artistic talent; his lack of an ideal that the world needed to change.

And then, of course, the deaths began to happen. Lyn died first, of an overdose. She was pregnant with her second child when it happened. The story went, her and Russell were living in the burbs somewhere way out, away from the chaos, getting their lives together, that one. Excited about the prospect of another child they decided to have just one more; before cleaning up their act, going on the straight and narrow for the sake of their coming child. And that was that. There couldn't have been a sadder funeral. Russell was heartbroken for years to come. Then John died, of a brain haemorrhage, after drinking and drugging himself into a strange, alcohol ridden existence in Adelaide, where it was still possible to live reasonably well on the dole and not have to work. Harry, who had introduced me to all these people, died of lung cancer. And Ian died only a few years ago, of stomach cancer.

None of them changed the world in the way we thought they would.

We went for coffee after the meeting and immediately began talking of all these wonderfully talented, enigmatic, intelligent, eccentric people we had known. They seemed like the centre of everything, the heart of Sydney, he said.

Why us, why did we survive? Simon asked.

He shook his head. I don't know, he said. Maybe we were more humble. We didn't think we were going to change the world. We didn't think we were the most gifted people on the planet. Maybe we had enough humility to sober up, I don't know, they really were a very clever bunch, they had everything. But we're the ones sitting here, having coffee. They're all dead, all except Russell.

Later, he gave him a lift to Elizabeth Street.

The last living link, Simon said as he got out of the car.
The last living link, he repeated back.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/Andrew Bolt – Saturday, August 23, 08 (12:03 am)

I doubt any shire in Australia has tried as hard as Mornington Peninsula’s to terrify ratepayers about global warming. The shire has even sent all residents a booklet, Climate change: What we are doing about it (no link), that warns that many of them could die from global warming over the next few decades:

Average annual temperature will rise by up to 3.5 degrees by 2070, placing greater stress on elderly residents and those living in older homes with inadequate insulation… The increased incidence of exteme heat days and heat waves, in conjuction with a growing and ageing population in the peninsula, has the potential to contribute to significant mortality in future decades...Potential imparts: Ability to affect entire population, especially elderly and infants; 27,000 elderly, 8000 infants and young people; Increased mortality and morbidity in vulnerable groups.

You don’t often come across scaremongering so brazen - or so wildly and irresponsibily exaggerated. Let me try to reassure the poor residents. Let’s note, for a start, that that global temperatures haven’t actually risen over the past decade. Let’s note also that by 2070, we’ll be so much richer that we can afford at the very minimum air-conditioners for everyone to save them from this allegedly apocalyptic heat.

But there is one more thing to consider.

I had to go to hospital on Thursday and found the waiting time for treatment had blown out to hours. Reason? Winters, not summers, and cold, rather than heat, is what makes us sickest and most fills our hospitals. And we should fear global cooling far more than global warming:

Some data? We are more likely to die in winter of temperature-related diseases:

Bi, P., Parton, K.A., Wang, J. and Donald, K. 2008. Temperature and direct effects on population health in Brisbane, 1986-1995. Journal of Environmental Health ...

Bi et al. report that “death rates were around 50-80 per 100,000 in June, July, and August [winter], while they were around 30-50 per 100,000 in the rest of the year, including the summer,” ... (T)he researchers further note that “it is understandable that more deaths would occur in winters in cold or temperate regions, but even in a subtropical region, as indicated in this study, a decrease in temperatures (in winters) may increase human mortality.”

We are more likely to die of heart failure in cold weather :

THE winter months bring more than colds and flu, according to research showing people are more likely to suffer heart failure in the chilly season. A team of researchers examined the seasonal differences in hospital admissions and deaths in 2961 patients with chronic heart failure in South Australia over the past decade, and found a striking trend.... ”(D)eaths in those diagnosed with heart failure were higher in winter and lowest in summer.”

A recent New Zealand study confirms it’s chilly days, not warm ones, that are deadliest to the old and very young:

From 1980–2000 around 1600 excess winter deaths occurred each year with winter mortality rates 18% higher than expected from non-winter rates. Patterns of EWM by age group showed the young and the elderly to be particularly vulnerable.

So global warming could actually cause fewer deaths from temperature-related illness:

In a review article published in the Southern Medical Journal, Keatinge and Donaldson (2004) of Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of London begin the main body of their text with a clear declaration of the relative dangers of heat and cold when it comes to human mortality: “cold-related deaths are far more numerous than heat-related deaths in the United States, Europe, and almost all countries outside the tropics, and almost all of them are due to common illnesses that are increased by cold."…

So what are the implications of global warming for human mortality? Keatinge and Donaldson state that “since heat-related deaths are generally much fewer than cold-related deaths” - and, we note, are comprised primarily of deaths that typically would have occurred a few weeks later even in the absence of excess heat - “the overall effect of global warming on health can be expected to be a beneficial one.” As an example, and even including the early heat-harvesting of naturally-expected deaths, they report that “the rise in temperature of 3.6°F expected over the next 50 years would increase heat-related deaths in Britain by about 2,000 but reduce cold-related deaths by about 20,000.”

And residents around Melbourne and such coastal areas actually have little to fear, according to a huge study Climate and mortality in Australia: retrospective study, 1979–1990, and predicted impacts in five major cities in 2030, that even had the alarmist CSIRO involved:

We conclude that the 5 largest Australian cities exhibit climate-attributable mortality in both summer and winter. Given the scenarios of regional warming during the next 3 decades, the expected changes in mortality due to direct climatic effects in these major coastal Australian cities are minor.

Bottom line: more Mornington Peninsula residents are likely to die of fright from their shire’s propaganda than are likely to die from global warming. Shame on the shire.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=5AC1C0D6-802A-23AD-4A8C-EE5A888DFE7E

Just days before former Vice President Al Gore’s scheduled visit to testify about global warming before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, a high profile climate debate between prominent scientists Wednesday evening ended with global warming skeptics being voted the clear winner by a tough New York City before an audience of hundreds of people.

Before the start of the nearly two hour debate the audience polled 57.3% to 29.9% in favor of believing that Global Warming was a “crisis”, but following the debate the numbers completely flipped to 46.2% to 42.2% in favor of the skeptical point of view. The audience also found humor at the expense of former Vice President Gore’s reportedly excessive home energy use.

After the stunning victory, one of the scientists on the side promoting the belief in a climate "crisis" appeared to concede defeat by noting his debate team was ‘pretty dull" and at "a sharp disadvantage" against the skeptics. ScientificAmerican.com’s blog agreed, saying the believers in a man-made climate catastrophe “seemed underarmed for the debate and, not surprising, it swung against them."

The New York City audience laughed as Gore became the butt of humor during the debate.

"What we see in this is an enormous danger for politicians in terms of their hypocrisy. I’m not going to say anything about Al Gore and his house. But it is a very serious point," quipped University of London emeritus professor Philip Stott to laughter from the audience.

The audience also applauded a call by novelist Michael Crichton to stop the hypocrisy of environmentalists and Hollywood liberals by enacting a ban on private jet travel.

"Let’s have the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), the Sierra Club and Greenpeace make it a rule that all of their members, cannot fly on private jets. They must get their houses off the [power] grid. They must live in the way that they’re telling everyone else to live. And if they won’t do that, why should we? And why should we take them seriously?" Crichton said to applause audience. (For more debate quotes see bottom of article)

The debate was sponsored by the Oxford-style debating group Intelligence Squared and featured such prominent man-made global warming skeptics as MIT scientist Richard Lindzen, the University of London emeritus professor of biogeography Philip Stott and Physician turned Novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton on one side.

The scientists arguing for a climate ‘crisis’ were NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, meteorologist Richard C.J. Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists. The event, which was moderated by New York Public Radio’s Brian Lehrer, debated the proposition: "Global warming is not a crisis.”

Skeptics Dramatically Convinced Audience

The skeptics achieved the vote victory despite facing an audience that had voted 57% in favor of the belief that mankind has created a climate "crisis" moments before the debate began.

But by the end of the debate, the audience dramatically reversed themselves and became convinced by the arguments presented by the skeptical scientists. At the conclusion, the audience voted for the views of the skeptics by a margin of 46.2% to 42.2%. Skeptical audience members grew from a pre-debate low of 29.9% to a post debate high of 46.2% -- a jump of nearly 17 percentage points. [Link to official audience voting results]



http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/monckton_warns_wong_youre_steering_labor_to_doom/
Andrew Bolt
Friday, August 01, 2008 at 09:16am


Christopher Monckton warns Climate Change Minister Penny Wong that the Rudd Government’s mad plans to cut “carbon pollution” is a disaster built on a fallacy:

If you introduce an emissions-trading scheme, when it transpires that the scheme and its associated economic damage had never been necessary - and it will, and sooner than you think - you and your party will be flung from office, perhaps forever.

This is Labor’s New Age Khemlani moment, in fact. The full email from Lord Monckton to Wong:

Dear Senator Wong,

Greetings from Scotland! One of your constituents, Mr. John Cribbes, has asked me to drop you a short email about emissions trading and “global warming”.

I have recently conducted some detailed research into the mathematics behind the conclusions of the UN climate panel on the single question that matters in the climate debate - by how much will the world warm in response to adding CO2 to the atmosphere?

My research, published in Physics and Society, a technical newsletter of the American Physical Society this month, demonstratres that the IPCC’s values for the three key parameters whose product is climate sensitivity are based on only four papers - not the 2,500 that are often mentioned.

Those four papers are unrepresentative of the literature, in which a low and harmless climate sensitivity is now the consensus. Therefore I should recommend extreme caution before any emissions-trading scheme is put in place. Such schemes will damage Australia’s competitiveness, perhaps fatally; they are prone to corruption in that they incentivize over-claiming by both parties to each trade and by the regulator; they are addressing a non-problem; and, even if the problem were real (as a few largely-politicized scientists persist in maintaining), adaptation as and if necessary would be orders of magnitude cheaper than emissions trading or any other attempt at mitigating the quantities of carbon dioxide that we are (harmlessly) adding to the atmosphere.

Therefore I strongly urge you to reconsider your support for this or any emissions-trading scheme. I have read the Australian Government’s paper on the proposed scheme, and the science in it is, alas, largely nonsense.

Politically, of course, the fatal damage that emissions trading will do to the Australian economy will greatly favour the enemies of the free West, which is why I, as an ally, have locus standi to approach you.

Climatically, your emissions-trading scheme will not make any significant difference. There are many other environmental problems that are real: I recommend that the Australian Government should tackle those.

As for the climate, it is a non-problem, and the correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing. Similar warnings are being sent to other legislators worldwide by those of us - now probably in the majority among the scientific community, not that one should do science by head-count - who have studied climate sensitivity and have found the UN’s analysis lamentably wanting.

The UN’s predictions are already being falsified by events: global temperatures have been falling for seven years, and not one of the climate models relied upon so heavily and so unwisely by the IPCC predicted that turn of events. If you introduce an emissions-trading scheme, when it transpires that the scheme and its associated economic damage had never been necessary - and it will, and sooner than you think - you and your party will be flung from office, perhaps forever. It is, therefore, in the long-term vested interest of your party to think again.

Chris Monckton


Outside Gunnedah, NSW, Australia.