Politics is a way of ruling in divided societies without undue violence…politics is not just a necessary evil; it is a realistic good.

Here is Ezra's reaction to the news that eminent political theorist Bernard Crick had died. Although he was a good age, Ez couldn’t help but be saddened by the news.

You see, unlike Henry – naturally attracted to the political firebrands like Robespierre or Trotsky – Ezra is a conciliator, thus naturally Crick was his kind of guy. Essentially a moderniser rather than a radical, Crick’s notion of political reform appeals to Ezra’s astute sense of balance and responsibility.

Like myself, Ezra was attracted to Crick primary through his masterful In Defence of Politics (1962). At a time of ideological tumult, the book reasserted the importance of politics and the nobility of the political vocation to an age that seemed either apolitical or anti-political in character.

For Crick, the ideologically driven leader – think Castro, Mugabe or Chavez – practises a form of anti-politics, in which the goal is the mobilisation of the populace towards a common end – even if it means killing someone to liberate them.

Mao, it is said, believed that “Power grows from the barrel of a gun". Such a view – in Crick's estimation – is thoroughly anti-political, because the speaker assumes an almost divine right to ignore or overcome any burden of ethical responsibility to his constituency with recourse to violence.

The beauty of A Defence of Politics lies in its argument that politics could exist only in societies in which the facts of diversity of opinions and interests were accepted as permanent and legitimate.

This was not a fashionable view in the 1960s, and his acknowledgement that politics – by its nature – is inevitably messy and complex, compels some tolerance of differing truths and recognition that government is best conducted amid the open canvassing of rival interests.

Thus, for Crick, Ezra and Me (Henry is holding out), the political process is not tied to any particular doctrine. Genuine political doctrines, rather, are the attempt to find particular and workable solutions to this perpetual and shifty problem of conciliation.

Conciliation, you see, is the essence of politics.

That’s what Crick understood and that’s why we’ll miss him.

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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