Part of the Twycross Collection is on exhibition at the Gallery and was the subject of a very enjoyable lecture by Dr John Twycross in which he gave a potted history of his family and the collection.
Mr John Twycross was a wealthy Melbourne wool merchant who collected fine art during the 19th century and the collection has stayed in the family until present day. The collection has now been gifted to Museum Victoria by his great grandson Dr Will Twycross of Mansfield and I was privileged to be present when he gave a very enjoyable lecture of its history. The exhibition on display includes vases, sculpture, carvings, paintings, and some porcelain and lacquer boxes. Also included is a large wall print of the original Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton from which some of the items on exhibition were purchased. The centerpiece of the exhibition are 3 authentic 19th century Japanese woodblocks. These are exceptional examples of Japanese woodblocks that were so influential in the development of late 19th century early 20th century European Art. It is recommended that everyone who can should attend the Gallery and inspect this exhibition. In his lecture Dr Wills lecture covered many subjects associated with the exhibition and was happy to digress on to peripheral history that was occurring when his great grandfather as alive. We learned that the word Japan means in Japanese "shiny black lacquer". The Japanese do not call themselves Japanese. We learned that after the Great Exhibition closed in Melbourne the outbuildings were demolished and the wood was used to build Victorian Railway Stations. Dr Will Twycross obviously has a great knowledge of Colonial Victorian history and it was an enjoyable privilege to listen to his lecture. If Dr Will Twycross agrees to give another lecture I would urge people to attend. The Benalla Ensign has a more comprehensive report of the Exhibition. PostScript:During the war the prisoners in Singapore were forbidden on the pain of severe punishment to use the word Japan or refer to the people as being Japanese. The correct word for the country was Nippon and the people were Nipponese. The Australians quickly shortened the term to nips. The Nipponese considered the word Japan to be derogatory term. Weary Dunlop would have been able to tell you of this.
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I am always surprised when human beings show no compassion for animals. When I see humans who appear to have no feeling for animals I always ask myself - do they not believe that animals feel the same as we do? It is hard not to reach the conclusion that most people don't believe that animals feel the same things as humans do. Why don't humans accept that all animals are connected? After all we all come from the same common ancestor. We share the same genes. Its not Rocket Science to conclude we all have the same feelings. I picked this magpie up from the side of the road. Our grandchildren gave her the name of Charlie. This was before we knew she was a girl but Charlie can be a girls name. She had come out of the nest prematurely. She was standing alone and had that waiting to die look about her. Her left leg was twisted back underneath where her claws normally were and she was walking on the stump at her ankle. She made no attempt to evade me when I picked her up. It must have been cramped in the nest and her left foot got twisted underneath her. I brought her home and Jenny suggested I make her a moon boot to straighten out her ankle. This made her stand with her claws out flat rather than standing on the stump of her leg. We took the moon boot off after a few days and although her left foot was not strong she did stand on her foot with her toes and claws out flat. She has continued to improve and she can now clasp with her left claw. She is improving as she is grows. She had doubled in size. She has integrated slightly with a family of magpies who live close by to the point where they treat her with indifference rather than hostility. She fly's off and sleeps in a tree every night. She likes flying and sometimes seems to show off when she zooms around the house. She follows Alexander around talking to him like he's her brother which of course he is. She talks more to him than to me - I'm just her parent. But she does allow me to pick her up. She bites anyone else who tries with her beak. She is constantly curious about everything that is on the ground. Yesterday she pecked into a spiders web on the bottom of our bedroom window and pulled out a full sized Red Back. She picks up insects very daintily in her beak. She seems to inspect them and then discard them if she is not sure. She did this with the Red Back. Not all insects are for eating.
I have deep feelings about abortion. You could say I don't like it.
In the mid 60's a film called Alfie was made staring Michael Caine. The film had quite an impact. Michael Caine became a star. He was very good in it. It almost seemed as if the film was about him. Of course he claimed it wasn't but he seemed to be speaking while winking one eye. The film followed the adventures of Alfie - if you could call them adventures. Alfie was an amoral, immoral, person who had no morals. He has relationships with many women. He two times everybody. He impregnates a girl who loves him and he abandons her and the baby. He impregnates a middle aged married woman and he arranges an abortion for her but doesn't pay for it himself. He takes up with a middle aged American woman but she deserts him for a younger man and he doesn't like it. He is an ego driven man who believes himself to be heroic. The film ends with a feeling of regret. His girlfriend marries an ineffectual looking man who she doesn't love and this man becomes the father of Alfies child. Alfie basically has nothing. He has lost his son. He only has himself to blame but of course he doesn't blame himself. It was very entertaining film and well worth seeing. After I saw the film I read the book.The book had much the same feeling as the film. It was Alfie explaining his view of the world. Always finding a way to justify his actions. It is an easy book to read. You virtually fly through it. It does have reflections on certain human conditions - amongst other things it has an incident when it gives an explanation of homosexual desire. Towards the end of the book there is a well written piece of writing that is shocking. It describes the abortion of the middle aged married woman that Alfie arranges. This was a backroom abortion and no doubt was an extremely true description of what actually happens. It shocks Alfie and shows that he does have a moral centre. It also shocked me - the reader - and made me think about what abortion really was. It had a profound effect on me. A passage in a popular novel caused me to think deeply and produced a change in me. Up to that time I don't think I had an opinion about abortion. After that I have always had an opinion. Of course I have kept it to myself. That is of course up til now. The book describes how Alfie arranges for a Doctor to perform the abortion and Alfie thinks it will be a clinical quick excercise. He will not be much involved. He is surprised to find that the Doctor makes him wait with the woman until she aborts the fetus. Alfie has to wait - the Doctor refuses to be there and will not wait. The Doctor has simply set up up the process to induce the abortion. Finally when its all over Alfie discovers that the aborted fetus is a perfectly formed infant. The perfectly formed infant sums up the crux of the moral issue that is abortion. There are many arguments in favour of abortion. The main one being that a woman should have control over her own body. A woman should be able to do anything she wants. Its her body. Why should her life be inconvenienced by an unwanted baby? Why should we be having any debate over just when does life begin? Why is it an issue when its just an unformed fetus? Surely all pregnancies affect a woman's health in one way or anothrer? Surely the woman's health should always be the paramount issue. Why should it not be her decision and only be her decision whether she has a baby or not. Abortions should be available to anyone. It should be every woman's right to have an abortion. In the past abortions were against the law. In the early 60's certain Police benefited from this and took bribes from abortion clinics. In the late 60's a Court ruling made it legal if it was judged that the woman's health was threatened. There were some Doctors who performed abortions more or less openly hoping to push the authorities into prosecuting them and make it a public issue. In a short while all abortions were seen to be covered by the court ruling specifying the health of the woman. Later legislation clearing up the law has made abortion more or less commonplace. Anecdotal evidence now indicates that all woman in unusual circumstances and all woman over a certain age are at least offered the opportunity to have an abortion or are openly advised to have an abortion. I think our society has the wrong attitude towards abortion. In simple terms - why do we think its OK? Is it because we have become so selfish in our attitudes that nothing is more important than our feelings? Is it because we do not believe we should be made to do something when we don't want to? Is it because our lives are so taken up with our own sense of importance and anything that inconveniences that life is not to be allowed? Why don't we resile from abortion as we resile from other shameful practices? Why do we not consider it to be an evil act? Why don't we consider all life to be precious and must be preserved at all costs? Why don't we treat it as an unspeakable abomination to be avoided at all costs? I believe that Pro Life / Pro Choice are both crude choices. Both leave the decision to the woman. Should the decision to abort be the woman's alone and no one else's? And does the father have any rights to the fetus? Is the fetus judged to have any rights? The wider moral question is not considered. What is life? What is abortion. Whose life is it? I believe that society should start by considering that the sanctity of life to be not negotiable? When a woman says she should have control over her own body does she ever consider that the fetus is not her body - could she ever consider it to be someone else's body? In reality when a woman is pregnant the fetus is always someone else's body. It can never be her body. She is simply carrying the fetus until birth. Why isn't this self evident? I think we should remove the personal from the argument and consider it in the abstract. A woman has the privilege of carrying a life in the form of a fetus until birth. In abstract terms life is life and does not belong to any other individual except the individual whose life it is. No matter what the inconveniences involved - in abstract terms it is separate to the pregnancy. Recently on TV there was a documentary about Mohamed Ali. It opened with Eamon Andrews on black and white TV interviewing an American media figure who abused and denigrated Ali claiming he was a draft dodger, a traitor to his country, a coward, a disgrace to his race and worse. Etc. Etc. This senior media figure knew he was speaking with the approval and prejudice of the American People firmly behind him. The documentary then cut in dazzling colour to Ali being given the Medal of Freedom by President George W Bush at a glittering ceremony inside the Whitehouse. President George W Bush spoke as if he knew he had the American people firmly behind him. If he wasn't in awe of Ali he gave a pretty good impression of it. Who said that Americans do not understand irony. I have always been an admirer of Mohamed Ali. Because of the Vietnam War it is not easy to say who were the heroes from that time. There is no doubt that the people who were sent to Vietnam were brave. They did their duty. But the bigger question is - were the people who went to Vietnam heroes or were the people who refused to go the real heroes? As far as I am concerned the Vietnam War spoiled everything. I can claim in truth more than I have ever admitted that it affected my life in a permanent negative way. I am still affected by it. Why we do not condemn the people who sent us there is difficult to understand. Why are they not consumed with remorse? And who were the people who sent us there? - where they the Liberal Country Party Government who enthusiastically involved us in the war - or where they the people who voted overwhelmingly for them in the election of 1966 in which the issues were clear cut. I have never forgiven both. Either the political parties or the people who voted for them. I was working in the Wangaratta Branch of the National Bank when Cassius Clay fought Sonny Liston. I was the only staff member who supported Cassius. I think I did this in part because my father was so much against Cassius but also I felt Cassius seemed to be saying things sincerely held. He was not afraid to talk back to white figures of authority. I admired this. The branch manager went into the residential area at lunchtime to watch the fight on TV. He wandered out casually about half an hour later to announce that Liston did not come out for the seventh. He was extremely disappointed. He had previously mouthed crude racist platitudes hoping that Cassius would be maimed or killed. This Manager was a particularly brutal stupid racist but mind you he wasn't alone in his feelings. Pretty well everyone else in the branch agreed with him. I was silent. As usual in those days I kept my thoughts to myself. I felt that someone like me was not allowed to have thoughts. Let alone express them. If I did dare express a view more often than not people would say in a threatening way - "I don't like the way you think". I believed them. Muhammad Ali had always made public his opposition to the Vietnam War. He objected on moral grounds to this particular war. This was much my own situation. His catch phrase was - no Vietcong ever called me nigger. He also said - hell no I aint gonna go. He registered as a conscientious objector on the grounds that he was a Black Muslim Minister and appealed through the Court System for exemption. He submitted to more than three years of public approbation while the court system followed its procedures. He suffered a lot of mistreatment from the authorities but finally the Supreme Court had to agree that his situation was the same as Jehovah Witnesses and that he was not subject to being drafted. He was legally free to resume his boxing career. The authorities could not stop him even if they wanted to. What seems to be almost a lifetime later I phoned a sporting results phone number to get the result of the George Foreman title fight. I was delegated to do this by the other workers in the Office I worked in. No one else thought Mohamed could win and I was the only one barracking for him. I guess because of this they wanted me to be disappointed when I phoned for the result. This was before the days of the Sony Walkman but the telecom companies were beginning to offer special news on specific numbers. You could phone up the news and sports reports etc on special numbers. I listened and simply repeated the news that was spoken on the line - Mohamed Ali has regained the World Heavyweight Title in his bout with George Foreman. Pretty well everyone else in the office raised their eyebrows and blew air through their lips. My colleague sitting opposite me said - you are lying. I just shrugged and he immediately phoned the number himself to confirm I was having him on. But the number was engaged. I enjoyed telling him again. A further lifetime later I saw Mohamed Ali at the MCG. He was the guest of one of the Pratt children at a football final that Collingwood were not playing in. I made it my business to walk past the Corporate Box that the Ali Family were ensconced in during half time. I walked past a few times because I wanted to have a good look. They were having a meal. Mohamed's wife had large freckles on her cheeks that were not obvious in press photo's. Mohamed looked more healthy than he did in press photo's but the colour of his skin was lighter than what it appeared on TV. It was brown rather than black and was not a consistent colour. They were eating using their hands in what I thought maybe was the Islam Pakistani fashion I had seen in London. I did not know whether they were doing this because of their Muslim beliefs or because they had dispensed with forks for convenience. Mohammad did not look particularly disabled. He had no trouble eating. I could see that his wife was very fastidious in her concern for Mohammad - constantly replenishing his plate etc and watching if he needed anything. In my lifetime there has always been a question hanging over all societies throughout the world. The question is this - why do people with light skin believe that people with dark skin are inferior? Why do light skinned people dislike mixing with dark skinned people? Why have they gone to great lengths throughout history to keep the so called races separate? And why have they always tried to keep the dark skinned races under subjugation? Mohammad always cleverly exploited the fear and dislike that white people have regarding blacks. Cassius Clay converted to Islam and joined the Nation of Islam popularly called the Black Muslims after he became heavyweight champion. He changed his name to Mohammad Ali. This caused a lot of ill feeling. There was a serious campaign to have his title taken from him and to have him expelled from the Sport. Simply because he had converted to Islam. This was seen as some kind of heinous un-american act. His mentor in joining the Black Muslims was Malcolm X. The Black Muslims were formed and led by a man named Elijah Muhammad and despite not being a charismatic speaker Elijah Muhammad had been exceptionally successful and had attracted many into a particularly American form of Islam. He preached amongst other things that Blacks should keep themselves separate from whites and that the only explanation for whites behavior was that they must be devils. Malcolm X was a charismatic spokesman within The Nation Of Islam whose logic was hard to deny despite the many whites who attempted to denigrate him. He could argue any racist white person off the stage with ease. He never reverted to shallow racism himself. He always stuck to facts. Malcolm cut right through the illogical logic that was sprouted by white racists. If he had lived he should have gone on to a distinguished career in politics. He would have made a great President. He always gave me the impression he had great human wisdom. And he had inner strength. He broke with Elijah Muhammad after he found that Elijah Muhammad had impregnated several young women who were his secretaries. Some of which were pious young women Malcolm had brought to Elijah Muhammad to help with the cause of Islam. Malcolm saw this as a moral issue not suitable for a Muslim Leader and broke from Elijah Muhammad to set up an alternative wider based orthodox Islam. The followers of Elijah Muhammad then assassinated Malcolm X. Elijah Muhammad died shortly after this happened and his son took over the movement and changed The Nation of Islam to a more mainstream form of Islam similar to that espoused by Malcolm X. Muhammad Ali did not follow Malcolm X out of the nation of Islam but in later life he has spoken of his great regret at the treatment of Malcolm X. The Nation of Islam has since split into two factions with most following the son of Elijah Muhammad but some have formed their own faction to keep the extreme form of Black Islam alive. I seldom disagreed with Muhammad. I felt he was fighting for the right causes. Of course it could be argued that because of his public profile he had advantages that others did not have. This is true. It is also true that he was offered an easy way through his Military Service - he would have only had to submit to a few months propaganda work in uniform each year and stay silent. He rejected any deal and stood by his principles. He put himself firmly in the position of no compromise under any circumstance. This position gave strength and credence to others. As well as solace. Others who did not have his public profile resolved to fight on. And because of his high profile Muhammad's stand must have struck at the confidence of the authorities. Or so I thought. The most impressive and effective thing I ever saw him say was delivered from the steps of a University where he had been campaigning against racism. He asked those assembled to turn around and look at the privately owned buildings over the other side of the road. He pointed out how beautiful these buildings were. No one disagreed. He then asked if black people owned any of them. Of course no one answered. The truth was self evident. In my extended family there may have been people who were not racists but I did not know them. No one ever protested when they heard racist epithets spoken by other family members. Amongst my relatives I had an Aunt and Uncle who were well liked and respected by all. They knew lots of people and they did have some influence across the wider society. They were childless. They were considered to be well off. They were known to be kind and generous. I don't know anyone who didn't like them or ever spoke badly of them. They went overseas twice. Both by ocean liners. This was not a common occurrence and added to their stature. On their second trip they went through Canada and America on their way to London. They came home with many photo's and mementos of their trip. Except for New York. The tour they were on stayed several days in New York. I remarked that they had no mementos or photo's from New York. Even in rural Australia we had heard of New York as it was often in the news and it seemed strange that they had no record of being there. I asked them if they liked New York. "Worst place they had ever been to" said my Aunt severely. "Full of Black People. I was frightened the whole time and wanted to leave the day I got there. My skin crawled the whole time". "Far too many niggers" my Uncle chimed in with. "Couldn't take a slide without one of the buggers getting into the picture". "Did not take one photo the whole time I was there". My Aunt could hardly stop herself from gagging when she spoke. Others laughed along with my Uncle's comment in a good natured understanding way. It seemed to me that everyone understood and sympathised. But I did not understand. I did not laugh. I was instantly profoundly depressed. I knew this was wrong. This kind of thing cut at my heart. How could I ever make contact with these people? Why was I so different to them? I knew they would never change. And neither would I. Postscript:- When I was 24 I went to New York City. I only stayed a short time but I saw enough to like it. New York is full of energy and it is surprisingly beautiful. I was asked by the customs man who let me in if I was or ever had been a member of the communist party. I said no. I felt like asking him if he could tell me how I could join. But for obvious reasons I didn't. Do Americans understand irony? Best not to try it. And indeed like my aunt and uncle I found that at certain times during the day and in some areas you could be persuaded that New York was full of black people. But unlike my aunt and uncle I did not find this a problem. I liked it that there were so many black people. I always feel black Americans are more trustworthy than white Americans. They seem to me to know more about the world. I can say with certainty from my experience that Black New Yorker's are definitely nicer than white New Yorker's. White New Yorker's are on the whole rude - plain and simple. In the Black New York there were a lot of different types. A lot of extremely beautiful tall black women. A lot of well dressed athletic looking young men. The people looked more prosperous than I had imagined. A few stereotypes. Some Stepin Fetchit types in zoot suits and two toned shoes complete with voices and accents. A lot of normal looking people hurrying about not taking any notice of me. Families with children even. This was not the scenario as presented by my Aunt and Uncle. And not the scenario as presented by popular media. But admittedly it was very different to Australia. Even though I have a special talent for unexpectedly running into special celebrities I did not see Mohammad Ali. This time my talent deserted me. I did not see one celebrity - black or otherwise. |
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