An ancestral centenary

On this day in 1910 my grandparents on my mother's side were married. See the photo below. He looks a rather handsome devil and the ladies were clearly into big hats even then.



The couple were Joseph and Margaret and he was the eldest son of another Joseph. The Josephs are clearly hard to get away from. That my second name is Joseph and that my son is Joseph rather reinforces that impression. And my convict ancestor was Joseph too.

Maybe I should make a donation to the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. It is an Australian order, after all. And my son Joseph went to a school named after their founder.

Like father like son

Most of us manage to get on well with all sorts of people. It's a mark of maturity to do so. But it also sometimes helps to be among people to whom you are genetically related. Joe and I are a good example of that. People often remark how much of me they see in him. And it's behavior rather than looks that they are talking about. Luckily for him, he's got his mother's looks rather than mine.

And it does get amusing at times. When he did his first university course he went to lectures in the same building where I went for most of my lectures and probably in fact sat in a classroom that I had sat in 40 years before.

And driving home from university one night during that time he had his first car accident: Of roughly the same sort and in roughly the same spot where I had had my second car accident whilst also driving home from university. So he got amusement rather than criticism over that.

And today he drove up in his Toyota Corolla with a noticeable scratch along the rear of one side of it. Since I had bought him the car, one might have expected me to be peeved -- but not so. I pointed out that I had scratched my car in roughly the same way in roughly the same spot on the car. Resemblances can get a bit eerie at times.

June's birthday

Anne's sister June has just had a birthday and we foregathered to celebrate it on Sunday evening, starting at 5pm, rather to my surprise. Anne cooked up a big leg of lamb and we had it with the usual gravy, mint sauce, potatoes etc. It went down very well. I was on the wagon and Anne's sister Merle is teetotal but the others had white wine with the dinner.

Present were Anne and myself, June and Colin and Merle and Ralph. The discussion was lively and at one stage I even recited some Chaucer -- in Middle English, of course. That always leaves everyone rather stunned but I have to be in a certain mood to do it. Jovial company helps.

Baby Sahara in her walker

She clearly loves her walker. All kids do.

The do-gooders rail against them as "unsafe" and the like but don't the kid's feelings count for anything?

Both Joey and Davey fell down flights of stairs in their walkers but babies are pretty rubbery so they came to no harm. I think it shows that parents like to please their children if they give their kid a walker.

Where I grew up it was almost a rite of passage for teenagers and young men to fall off a motorbike and break a leg. I did so myself. But the fun of riding motorbikes was worth it. I see falling down stairs in a walker in a similar light.

But there are no stairs where Sahara lives so there will be no problems for her.

A great gentleman

With much sadness I report that a great gentleman passed away this morning. He was by occupation a sawmill worker but he was one of those natural gentlemen you often used to find in country Australia. My father was one too.

I am not sure how I would define a gentleman formally but an unassuming man who instinctively does his best to put other people at their ease would certainly score highly -- and Bill was one of those. He was the second husband of Anne's mother -- married after Anne's father died at a relatively young age.

Bill was 93 and slipped quietly away -- with the primary cause being cancer. He was much loved by those who knew him well and despite my having known him only a little, the quality of the man was always evident to me and I feel keenly how sad it is for the world and his family to have lost such a great gentleman

Requiescat in pace Reginald William Wilkinson

A birthday dinner

I hosted a small gathering to celebrate Jenny's birthday on Thursday. We dined at an Indian restaurant she likes near where she lives.

Present were Jenny, Nanna, Joe, Anne and myself. The dinner was good as always and I brought along a bottle of Seaview "champagne" for toasts.

Joe however didn't want to drink his champagne so Anne got it -- as she was the only one not driving and Nanna was on some medication. I used not to like champagne either so I was not surprised by Joe's reaction. He says that Scotch is his drink. I am mostly a Scotch drinker too.

Joe seemed in good spirits and that was probably in part due to the fact that his recent breakup with Samantha was amicable. I have mostly managed amicable breakups too.

Jenny told us a bit about her recent adventures down in Sydney when she went to see Paul and Sue off on their world trip aboard an ocean liner. We talked quite a lot about the dragon Japanese lady who runs "Wafu" -- Sydney's best Sushi restaurant -- where Jenny, Paul and Sue dined just before the departure. The lady is Yukako Ichikawa and she is famous for demanding that her customers eat up everything on their plates. As her food is so good, however, people are prepared to be bossed around a bit.

The "Nazi" Pope

I originally wrote the piece below for my DISSECTING LEFTISM blog, but as it was written with considerable personal feeling, I thought it might have some place here as well



I am not going to say one thing below that is original. But it always appalls me when people believe the opposite of the truth and I have to speak up about it.

Eugenio Pacelli was a small but determined man of great intelligence and high principle. He became Pope Pius XII in 1939 and was Pope throughout WWII. He had been papal nuncio in Germany for many years prior to that and came to speak perfect German -- a remarkable achievement for an Italian who had all his education in Italy. During his time in Germany he saw of course the rise of Nazism and regularly condemned it in no uncertain terms.

In 1937 he wrote on behalf of Pius XI the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge ("With burning sorrow") -- a condemnation of Nazi persecution of non-Nazis. Encyclicals are usually written in Latin so writing this encyclical in German showed how determined the church was to speak up on behalf of all those being oppressed by the Nazis.

The tiny minority of Pacelli's critics who have some knowledge of history sometimes point to the fact that in his role as nuncio, Pacelli was responsible for a Konkordat with the German Federal government that was signed in 1933. Pacelli's job was to arrange concordats (agreements) with various governments that would safeguard the independence of church schools, allow the preaching of Catholic doctrine etc. And he did in fact achieve many such agreements, an agreement with the Southern German (and very Catholic) State of Bayern (Bavaria) being one of the earliest. German Laender, were, like American States today, substantially independent and had their own legal and school systems etc.

Pacelli had been trying for some time to get such an agreement with the Federal German government but had always been knocked back. When Hitler came to power, however, he was keen to legitimate himself so he changed the prior Federal stance and signed up. At that stage Hitler was simply the newly-elected German Kanzler (Prime Minister) and there was of course no knowledge of his future deeds. So how was Pacelli at fault about that? It may be noted that when Mit brennender Sorge was issued Hitler broke his agreements in the Konkordat and persecuted Catholic clergy. So the arrangement of a Konkordat was a wise precaution, even if it was a precaution that ultimately failed.

Pacelli did however learn from what happened when Mit brennender Sorge was issued. When war broke out, Pacelli fell largely silent. He saw that he would probably bring down further persecution of the church by adding to his existing criticisms of Nazism. Instead he concentrated on deeds rather than words. The Vatican became a lifeline for endangered Jews. It supplied money to get them out of Germany and false ID documents saying that they were Christians. And note that this was at a time when the church regarded the Jews as enemies. In the theology of the time, the Jews had killed the Catholics' God and that was one hell of a bad way to start a friendship.

And when the Germans came to Italy itself, Pacelli rose to even greater efforts. He exempted monasteries and nunneries from their normal rules so that they could take in and hide Jews that the Nazis were pursuing. Even his own summer residence at Castel Gandolfo was said at one time to be hiding 3,000 Jews, though nobody knows the exact number.

And this is the man whom many Leftists refer to as "Hitler's Pope"! So why the lie? Why is this exceptionally fine man "controversial"?

Easy: Soviet disinformation. As we all know, the church utterly opposed "Godless" Communism and the Soviets rightly perceived the Vatican as an important enemy. So the Soviets and their fellow travellers in the West put about this abominable lie that Pacelli was antisemitic and sympathetic to the Nazis. And it suits the anti-Christian stance of modern-day Leftists to believe it too.

So it grieves me greatly that this true man of God is taken for the opposite of what he was. The world needs more men like Eugenio Pacelli -- perhaps now more than ever. Even I as an atheist salute him.

There is an interesting story here about how one man finally broke through the lies and found out the truth about Pacelli.

Leftists and the armed forces

I originally wrote the comments below for my DISSECTING LEFTISM blog but I think they have some place here too

I have long argued that the difference between Left and Right can only be understood psychologically rather than ideologically. Leftists run on pure emotion. Conservatives have emotions too but they are governed by reason as well.

Leftists will use ANY argument that suits their emotional needs of the moment. They have certain recurrent themes in their arguments -- such as "poverty" being the cause of all ills -- but such themes are little more than verbal tics. They are not a serious attempt to explain anything.

A rather hilarious proof of that is that Leftists for quite a while after 9/11/2001 explained Muslim antagonism to America as being caused by poverty -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire! The Leftist mouths uttering such nonsense were clearly not engaged in any serious way with thought or any sincere effort to understand.

And one of the things that Leftist emotions will never engage with is the army. Leftists just can't understand why anybody would LIKE being in the army and Leftist governments will always cut back military funding if they can plausibly do so. Australia's Leftist government has done so this week, even though there are frequent calls on the Australian army for overseas deployments to various theatres of conflict, Iraq and Afghanistan included.

Yet lots of people DO like being in the army, including women. In my far-off military days the corps with the longest waiting list was the WRAACS (Women's Royal Australian Army Corps). Each corps has a certain "establishment" -- meaning that the corps can only enlist as many people as they are allocated by the defence bureaucrats. So a popular corps will often have a waiting list of people waiting for a vacancy in the establishment. And LOTS of women wanted to get into the WRAACS.

And that continues to this day. Even exceptionally attractive women often love the army. G.I. Jill won a beauty contest as Miss Utah but still was keen to get back to military duties. And Miss England (aka "Combat Barbie") at the moment is keen to get back into army uniform too. And my most recent bride spent 9 years in the army and you can see what she looks like here (scroll down).

And who could be more privileged than a member of the British Royal family? But it IS a military family and Prince Harry in particular is well known for his devotion to the army and his keenness for active service. He even once said of his very attractive girlfriend, Chelsy, that he loves Chelsy but the army comes first! I doubt that any Leftist mind could comprehend that! I can, though.


Left to right above: Prince Charles, Chelsy Davy, Prince Harry. Photo from earlier this month

And in the most minor of ways, my own totally undistinguished military career shows a little of that spirit too. In the Vietnam era I was at a university in Brisbane where there were vast anti-Vietnam rallies. So I joined a local army reserve unit. While most of my fellow students were marching around with placards, I was trying my best to acquire some military skills. And I enjoyed it immensely.

After completing my first degree, however, I moved down to Sydney and naturally assumed that I would join the Sydney reserve unit of my corps. But they were "up to establishment"! They had no vacancy for me. So did I just say "too bad!". No way! I went on full-time duties with the regular army instead! The regular unit of my corps had vacancies even if the reserve unit did not!

I can't imagine that any Leftist would understand that. Personally, I think they are inadequate people who are simply too cowardly for the army. They will of course think that I am simply stupid but as I have a Ph.D. and 200+ academic publications that explanation would be as silly as their "poverty" explanation.

A history night

Paul and Sue are off on another big world trip shortly so we had a small get-together at my place to discuss history and politics before they went away. They want to know as much as possible about the many places they will visit worldwide and Paul in particular wanted to fill in his knowledge of the history and politics of the places they will visit.

That is of course a very large order so we mostly talked about current British and Australian politics but also about how the world got Hitler. I gave a broad outline of how Hitler rose to power and what the secret of his success among Germans was.

I pointed out that Hitler had many predecessors as a Leftist nationalist, noting particularly Napoleon, Napoleon III and Mussolini and that the combination of nationalism ("we are great") and socialism ("we will look after you") has powerful appeal.

But I cover that all in great depth here of course

Surprises for Paul were where the word "Nazi" came from and the fact that the Nazi Hakenkreuz was NOT a Swastika. I showed Paul what a real Asian Swastika looked like, and assured him he would see thousands of them in India.

Sue very kindly took on the job of feeding us as well as taking part in the discussions. Her Cuban sandwiches were a great hit and the apple and rhubarb crumble she followed it with was a most pleasant surprise. Maybe she knew I am a great fan of rhubarb. There is a picture if it below:



We washed it all down with a bottle of Seaview champagne. Sue even opened the champagne for us. What a woman!

Mothers' Day today

My mother is deceased but Jenny, the mother of my son Joe, is certainly not. All four of her children wanted to visit her today and with partners etc., there were about 10 of us in all. So Jenny put on a BBQ lunch for us all at her place and we had a good and harmonious time with lots of laughs and recollections of times past. There was much talk of babies with one present and one on the way.

The lunch included some very good Boerewors and satay sticks as well as the usual chops and sausages. Despite his current stockmarket woes, Paul was his usual ebullient self but Joe seemed rather quiet. I figured that he had some problems on his mind. I think that your teens and early 20s is a time for problems but we all work them out eventually.

Baby Sahara at 5 months

She can sit up now. Last time I saw her, I was surprised at how chubby she was -- but Anne tells me that she should be chubby at that age. And Anne is a former mothercraft nurse so she should know.

A concert of "Royal" music

That mostly meant Handel of course. It was held in St John's cathedral tonight and all the brass that Handel uses sure sounded good in the great stone cavern of a neo-Gothic cathedral. We had both the Fireworks and the Water music. Plus a rousing rendition of "Zadok the Priest", complete with enthusiastic cries of "God save the King". It did my old Royalist heart good.

It was given by the Camerata of St. John, who have an unfortunate addiction to talking about the music before they play it. Music should speak for itself in my opinion. You get it or you don't and talking about it won't alter that.

We also had Elgar's "Land of Hope and Glory" both as a program item and as an encore. Looks like patriotism is not dead yet among those of us of British origins.

One program item had me puzzed: "Old 100%" by Vaughan Williams. But as soon as I recognized what it was I got the joke. It was a powerful setting of the popular hymn "All people that on Earth do dwell".

Update:

I should have mentioned that we went to the local Sushi train for dinner before the concert. And they had some excellent offerings that Anne had not seen before so I put some of them on her plate and she was most pleased. A Japanese dinner and a Handel concert to follow comes pretty close to the high life in my humble world

A Bible study

Paul has had NO religious education whatever and recently expressed some regret at the hole that left in his knowledge and understanding of the world. So I volunteered to explain the basics of Christianity to him.

We met at my place over a curry dinner with Joe and Susan present also.

It was amazing what Paul did NOT know. He did not know that the Pope was the head of the Catholic church, for instance. He was however very keen to learn and we covered a lot of ground.

I am afraid that, as an unbeliever, I pointed out to him many of the Christian beliefs that have no basis in the Bible: Christmas, Easter, the Trinity, Sunday observance, that Christ died on a cross, belief in an immortal soul etc. I have of course covered all those points in great detail on my Scripture blog

But at least he now knows something about those topics, even if from a skeptical viewpoint.

A small personal reflection of no importance

In chapter 30 of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, Mr Pickwick falls into a pond and is hauled out with some difficulty. We then read:

"Dear old thing, said Arabella. Let me wrap my shawl around you"

That is surely a fairly mundane comment but I remember my late mother regarding it with great scorn. Why? I do not know. It would have been in an excerpt contained in one of my school reading books that she read it and I was too young to question her at that time.

She was a woman of little education but considerable knowledge so did she know that "Arabella" is almost exclusively an English upper class name? I doubt it.

I suspect that she just identified it (correctly) as English upper class speech and disliked that. Who knows?

It's perhaps a sad thing but I rememember almost nothing that either of my parents ever said to me. The strongest influence on my youthful self was undoubtedly the New Testament. And compared to those powerful words, my parents were the palest of pale shadows in the background

Update

I should have asked a woman what my mother most likely meant. I told the story above to Anne and she pointed out what I now see as the most likely explanation: A shawl is usually a fairly diaphanous thing so wrapping it around a dripping wet person would achieve nothing. Hence my mother's scorn.

ANZAC DAY

Today is the most solemn day of the year in Australia. It is the day we remember our war dead. Australians have died in many wars and there can be few families not affected to some degree by the deaths resulting. I had a much loved uncle die in WWII.

Wherever British or American forces were fighting, there have generally been Australians fighting alongside them -- in two world wars and many smaller wars both before and after that.

And Simon of course is deployed in Afghanistan at the moment. I had news of him today from Tracey. He is OK but finds it no picnic to be wearing body armour in high Afghan daytime temperatures at the moment.

Our flag above

I am afraid that I am very remiss at Anzac day observances. I think I have been to the dawn services only twice in my life. Getting out of bed at 4 in the morning was easy once but is so no longer. Most Australians just watch the marches on TV but I now don't often do that either. I have however myself worn my country's uniform so I don't think it can be dismissed as cheap talk when I say that I am with them in spirit.

But it was a great day anyway because the twins had a party to celebrate their birthday this afternoon. And the news that Von is pregnant was the best thing of all.

I talked mainly to Paul, Joe and Ken as usual. And I really got into some excellent sandwiches that Maureen made.

We had three babies present -- from Olivia, Susan and Lena -- Lena being an old friend of the twins

St George's Day

Friday 23rd is of course St. George's day -- England's national day. So as I am mainly of English descent, I thought it appropriate to mark the day -- which I did. I had the St George cross flying from my flagpole all day yesterday and at very short notice I arranged a small commemorative dinner last night. Only Paul, Susan and Jenny could come because of the short notice.

We started the evening by standing and singing "God save the Queen" (the English national anthem) followed by a toast to the Queen and a toast to "St. George and merrie England". Then we sat down to a meal of England's favourite food: curry.

We washed the curry down with some good Australian "champagne" and a very pleasant evening was had by all. The chat over dinner was very wide-ranging and at one stage I even read a couple of choice excerpts from the 39 "Articles of Religion" from the 1662 "Book of Common Prayer" of the Church of England. None of us are religious but we still enjoyed the power of those historic words.

A sendoff and the flu

I arranged a sendoff for Simon at the "Bollywood" last night in connection with his imminent deployment to Afghanistan but was unable to be there myself due to illness.

I was in the grip of the first day of the flu, which meant that I could hardly talk but was doing a lot of coughing and had a very runny nose. It would have been most unkind of me to risk giving that to others even if I felt up to it.

But it was family do where everyone knew one-another well so I hear that a good time was had by all. Photos forthcoming maybe

The main thing is that Simon had a good sendoff and that everyone had a chance to wish him a safe return

UPDATE:

Von sent me some great photos of the event. Below is a group shot with Simon (in blue shirt) with his lovely wife Tracey in the middle. Anne is not there as she left early to bring me some medicine.

Sunday afternoon tea at Paul's

Paul celebrates his 34th birthday soon so he and Susan put on a celebratory afternoon tea at their place.

There was a goodly turnout and the ladies all brought plates of their specialty so the table was a sight to behold. Pictures coming, I believe. I ate mainly sausage rolls -- which was a bit mad in the presence of so many other good things. There was a very good Pavlova too -- with chocolate layers. I ended up eating enough to feel very tired so went home early to sleep it off.

Joe was very abstemious -- trying only a few things. He knows that he has to keep an eye on his weight if he is not to balloon out in the way that his genetics threaten. Paul is a good influence in that way, though. He has really slimmed down.

It was good to see two babies present. Babies have been missing from family gathering for far too long.

I had a bit of a chat with Simon about his forthcoming deployment to Afghanistan. He vows to stay on base for his whole deployment -- which is wise in someone who has that opportunity and a family to come back to. He will be in an air-traffic control tower most of the time so that should be pretty well protected.

Update:

The festive table -- with Joe and Samantha in the background

An ophthalmological encounter

I bet you can't spell that hard word in my heading. Look aside and write it down now and see how you go.

Did you get two letters 'h' in it? It's tricky.

Anyway, last Monday (15th) I had the cataracted lens in my right eye replaced by a plastic one: An "interocular lens implant". So if you now call me "Old Mr. Plastic Eye", I can't object. Vision in that eye had got so blurry that I was squinting a lot to block it out.

The procedure went "very, very well" according to the ophthalmic surgeon, so rapid healing will hopefully ensue. The private clinic I went to could not imaginably be better, I think. Private medicine in Australia is very, very good -- as good as public medicine is bad. Yet my private health insurer is covering 100% of the charges from the clinic and from the anesthetist but I have to pay something towards the fees of the surgeon.

I was in and out quite rapidly and experienced only minimal pain and discomfort. I got the dressings off the morning after and my eye was pretty red and watery that day. It is now Wednesday evening as I write this and most of the redness and watering is now gone. My eyes are normally a bit bloodshot these days so the eye in fact looks normal. And the vision in my transformed eye was remarkably good from the moment the dressings came off. I no longer squint!

The ophthalmologist -- Kleinschmidt of Porter Eye Care -- went to a lot of trouble to make sure he had a lens that would be just right for me and he seems to have done a first class job of that.

The only odd thing was that he started operating at a Godforsaken hour in the morning. I had to be at the clinic before 7am. As I usually get up around 9am that was a bit of a wrench. Joe drove me in so that was a bit heroic from him too as he tends to be a late riser as well. The clinic is at Mt Gravatt where Joe lives so he at least had a short trip back to bed.

Paul picked me up after the procedure at about 9am and stayed with me for the rest of the day until Anne got home from work at about 5pm. It is apparently strongly recommended that you have someone with you for the whole of the day after a procedure. I was not very strongly affected by the sedatives they pumped into me so had only a short nap while Paul worked away on his laptop. Paul spent quite a lot of time looking at some computer problems I have so that was very useful.

Paul and I also had a lot of chats about family matters so I caught up on some news. Paul is very family-oriented so keeps tabs on what is going on.

All that is now outstanding is for the incision to heal through which the new lens was implanted but all signs are that that is proceeding apace. I always heal well so I expected no problems there, barring accidents.

A sandwich dinner and a new photo

On Saturday Anne, Susan, Paul and I had a specially convened sandwich dinner at Paul's place. The concept was to practice the sandwich-making skills that both ladies have learnt recently. We had Reuben sandwiches, Philadelphia cheesesteak sandwiches, Cuban sandwiches and Hungarian open sandwiches with Liptauer. Anne makes her own Liptauer as you cannot buy it in any Brisbane shop.

The ladies did us proud with products which were just about as good as could be and Paul got so carried away that he overate and got a stomach-ache out of it. Definitely a compliment to the food!

I had never had a Cuban sandwich before. Susan worked out how to do one through eating them in NYC while she and Paul were there recently. They were undoubtedly a great sandwich concept but very complex to make. Susan did a great job on them, though.

And below is baby Sahara now 3 months old and looking great

Old cars

Last Sunday was supposed to be a static display put on by a group of car clubs at Wynnum. But it was cancelled at the last moment due to rain. Three of us more determined souls still turned up anyway: I arrived in the Humber, another guy arrived in a Sunbeam Talbot and a third man brought his beautiful old '30s Singer along.

The Singer owner had acquired it in a dilapidated state after it had been converted into a truck so the beautiful vehicle we saw on Sunday was the product of an immense amount of work. Because so much of the original bodywork had been lost, he restored it as a tourer. And that really got to me. When I was about 4, I was given a ride in the back of a tourer and I have wanted one ever since. And if you don't know what a tourer is, you haven't lived. It has no modern equivalent.

Anyway, I survived the heartburn and had a good talk with the owner. It really was a beautiful car.

Anne and I then moved to a nearby park and had a picnic lunch/brunch. Anne had made some Liptauer for the occasion and I brought a thermos so we had a very good brunch by the sea.