Musings, mutterings and bright lights

Above: the home page of Write Away. As a teacher of English you also teach writing: they go hand in hand at all levels. The same for other teachers of language: literacy and its underling, writing, are at the core. In my case, I taught some high school English but for most of my career I taught adult migrants. Writing can be as simple as form filling and as complex as a job application, a short story, a difficult letter,  or the recounting of some experience. From basic notes to literature.  I encouraged writing of all kinds with my advanced students on a wide range of topics. Such student writing resulted in a print magazine called Write Away. Subtitled "a showcase of writing by Australian adult migrants" it went to print in 3 editions. A small group participated across AMES. We did the design, layout, collating,  and the offset printing for the first two issues. Desktop Publishing (DTP) was emerging in the 1980s and I was keen to master it. I still treasure...

Strengths and Weaknesses One’s strengths and weaknesses are at the heart of any self-analysis but they are more often at the centre of self-denial and just muddling on. We don’t reflect on these traits very often ignoring Socrates’ famous maxim, Know Thyself. This is better than Kid Thyself. Self-deception is a bad form to wake up to. A healthy life requires a clear focus on this life balance or edict: be mindful of your strengths and weaknesses. Don’t obsess about your strengths, or be coy, or in denial, about your weaknesses. When a job interview is approaching people may revisit this topic as it’s often high up on the list of possible questions. It gives roundness to your personality and suitability for the advertised position.  This may be related to technical skills required by the position and therefore weaknesses become a barrier that is not negotiable. But the questions may be probing soft skills such as personality, motivations, teamwork, organization ability, a...

The migrant wave and we fellow travellers I want to go back to the days when multiculturalism was on the rise and valued in Australia, and I and my friends and colleagues in the Adult Migrant English Service (AMES) were on the frontline of this progressive period in Australian history. Changes to this outlook are a setback: migration policy was then bipartisan and not the ham-fisted mudslinging of current politics, particularly the heavy hand of right wing nationalism grasping for a return to monocultural 1950s.Today xenophobia and racism, largely from Pauline Hanson's One Nation, a contradiction in terms as exclusion is the name of the game, are on the rise and groups like Reclaim Australia darken the skies above us. Being from an Italian migrant family I grew up in both a bilingual and multicultural environment in the post-war days when Australia needed population growth and a Good Neighbour Council existed to assist new arrivals. At a primary school age I can recall accompa...

Vincent Tilsley 3 June 1932 - 29 September 2013 I’ve had the good fortune of meeting some amazing people in my life and high on the list is Vincent Tilsley, outstanding British playwright, author and Jungian therapist, to which I might also add, legendary alcoholic. His opus can be googled and seen on IMDB, and on a Facebook page maintained by his daughter, Joanna. See https://www.facebook.com/VincentFTilsley For interviews with Vincent as the scriptwriter of The Prisoner, a cult drama series in the 60s, see  https://tinyurl.com/yangj8kn    Vincent was invited to the University of Western Australia by the Politics Department in 1974 as he had co-created a successful TV series, the Guardians, about a military takeover of Britain. He was notable for a long list of other successful TV productions ranging from adaptations of Dickens and Jane Austin, popular series such as The Prisoner, Z Cars, The Forsyte Saga and Dr Finley’s Case, and the...

Spain and the possible succession of Catalonia is making news that threatens to destabilise Europe. This is troubling and unwelcome: Brexit is bad enough and a Spexit positively frightening. This brings to mind my only trip to Spain in June 1976, 6 months after the death of General Franco, the scourge of Spanish democracy. Although the Caudillo was dead, and buried in the controversial Valley of the Fallen, his ghost remained active in the form of his followers, known as the bunker, at the head of which was Prime Minister, Carlos Arias Navarro appointed to the position by Franco. All the while, Spaniards were unclear about the role that King Juan Carlos would play in their precariously balanced political system. Spain was at the crossroads; more strict state rule or the first democratic elections since the defeat of the Second Spanish Republic in 1939. In the final years of Franco's reign, I was studying literature at university, and I loved the work of Hemingway, Orwell...