Category Archive: WRITING & LITERATURE
Social Justice Fallacies
(By Thomas Sowell, 2023) Described by economic historian Niall Ferguson as a tour de force, Social Justice Fallacies arrives, like Spiderman, just in time, the imminent end of Peak Woke (aka Peak Stupid). Wikipedia defines Social Justice thus (footnote omitted): “Social justice is justice in relation to the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals’ rights are recognized and protected. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive their due from society. In the current movements for social…
Continue Reading →Childhood
(By Shannon Burns – 2022) Having forgotten virtually all of my childhood (relentlessly happy I imagine, thus unfit to record), I tend to spurn memoirs of early years, having confined myself to undoubted classics, such as Gorky’s My Childhood, Speak, Memory, and Unreliable Memoirs. Childhood is a worthy addition to those classics and also stands as a bemused, relentless, almost angry monument to the power of compartmentalization (selective forgetting), and particularly, the redemptive and palliative power of great literature (Burns shares with others a love of The Brothers Karamazov). “We read to know we are not alone” (attributed to C.S. Lewis)…
Continue Reading →Henry ‘Chips’ Channon Diaries Volume 1
(1918 – 1938) (Edited by Simon Heffer) In the elusive search for historical truth, contemporary records such as diaries, even unreliable ones, can be valuable. Private diaries in particular, as they can break free of censorship, even self-censorship to a degree. Furthermore, insider diaries can give great insight into the mores of the times. Classic examples include Pepys, Boswell, Francis Kilvert, Anne Frank and Alan Clark. Henry “Chips” Channon (the nickname came when he roomed at Christ Church College, Oxford with a friend nicknamed “Fish”) was born in 1897 in Chicago, son of a wealthy family; served with the Red…
Continue Reading →Apart from Beatrice
Dante Society (SA), Adelaide, 7 July 2024 The afternoon was an homage to ‘The Eternal Feminine,’ and Beatrice hardly got a mention. The Honourable Jing Lee MLC (below, centre) gave a pleasant ‘welcome to all countries’ in emphasis of the upside of multiculturalism, and then we heard from a number of authors from the Ascolta Women Inc. Collective (a creative writing workshop formed in 2020 under the shadow of Covid), to launch their latest anthology, Stories from La Terra, and they read out a few excerpts. Gaspara Stampa (1523-1554) (see main image in B/W) had an unhappy love affair with…
Continue Reading →Scatterbrain
By E. H. Visiak (1878-1972) He goes wool-gathering ‘neath the stars; He hath a screw loose: Scatterbrain. He hath a window loose that jars Open to heaven, and falls shut again.
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