Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Tennis, Father F, The Shire with a dash of other things

tennis 2

I was going to continue my new ways of working series tonight, but I played tennis with my girls instead!

The photo shows Clare and Helen at the Eastcourts courts. We try to play tennis every Tuesday, but the combination of bad weather and other commitments has made this hard recently. So tonight, just a short meander on personal and other issues before I go to bed.

I don't know about you, but while I know that I need more exercise, I find it hard to do. I'm not good at exercising alone. So tonight I made arrangements at the courts to add Friday social tennis to the often missed Tuesdays with the girls. That way I also get to meet new people, and I like that!

  The matter of Father F that I covered in Four Corners, the Armidale Express and Father F drags on and on. That post is by far the highest traffic post of all my recent posts.

In case you hadn't worked it out, I know Father F and indeed was in email contact with him and even had dinner with him in Armidale two years ago. Ken Parish had a very honest personal piece on Club Troppo, Me and the Catholic Church: A Roger and two Franks. I promised in a comment to write a companion piece, but I find it all very complicated and not just because of my own experiences.

Bob Brown who was a primary school friend and in the same class at Armidale Demonstration School  suffered a very bad experience there. We had two teachers in the period Bob was there. One was one of the greatest teachers of my life, the other I disliked. I don't actually want to find out who the bad teacher was.

On  a happier note, this is a photo of youngest, Clare, at a recent function. She has arranged for someone to edit one of her manuscript novels.

It's a terrible thing to be in rivalry with one's daughter! In this case, the question is who will get the first book out. And how. This is where What do you want to know about e-publishing? comes in. I want to set up my publishing systems!

My post on the latest Ten TV show, What did you think of The Shire?, drew some tart comments from kvd and Neil. This has been another high traffic post, although still some distance behind Father F. The acerbic comments that I picked up on Twitter were reflected in today's main stream media coverage. The initial ratings for Ten were not bad but not brilliant. Still, the channel has got the coverage it wants. 

The next graphic comes from Young Writers via Clare. I think that it's pretty right. If you want to be a writer, you have to write.

It's getting late and I really need to go to bed.  So just a few final comments.

Winton's Can democracies adapt? actually deals with a pretty fundamental problem. If you can't make mistakes, how can you advance? And how can you do things if everything has to be evaluated first in terms of risk?

And, finally, Lorenzo in Debt, doom and despair has some pretty interesting graphs. Mind you, I think that I disagree with his conclusions on the Australian debt graph. But that's another issue.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jim, thanks for pointing to Ken Parrish's piece on Troppo, which I don't usually read, but probably now should, for the clarity of thought alone.

It is a very difficult subject, and I've had no direct personal experience with the 'darker' side of any of the churches, so perhaps should not offer any opinion - except to say, as principle, that any abuse of any sort should be spoken about clearly by those with any direct knowledge.

I honestly believe that most people are intelligent enough to distinguish between the particular offender and the organisation he/she may operate within. And in that belief, I think it is fair to say the open and full investigation of any particular individual does not diminish or weaken the institution - in my mind anyway.

Of course there's the other side of it; the need to ensure that any 'justice' which is done is not overly influenced by these sorts of discussions. That I do agree with. It is a hard thing, and only you can sort out your own feelings. I wish you well in making a decision to comment further or not; not even sure what my own response would be.

kvd

Anonymous said...

Actually that's a cop-out. If I had direct specific knowledge of any offence of that nature I would submit it to the appropriate authorities. Otherwise I think I would be silent, hoping that justice would be done to all parties.

kvd

Jim Belshaw said...

Having read more comment streams than I would care to on this issue, I'm not sure that it's true that most people distinguish between institution and fault. I understand your last point.