Report from a besieged city (Melbourne)
Today 12 February, Melbourne and all the citizens of Victoria have been thrown, with eleven hours notice, again into a futile, fickle lockdown that is not founded in evidence of…
Tag: coronavirus
The year of fear: 2020 in review
The year of fear 2020 has been the year of the Great Fear. This Fear has locked us down in safety. This Fear has opened the gate to soft totalitarianism.…
Fragments from my diaries – the year in review
Throughout the year I have kept a diary in a an A5 black notebook of 200 pages or so. I have followed this practice for quite some years now, and…
Viral Meltdown – Year in Review
As part of my The Kaeleidoscope of 2020: Year in Review post I have updated with my reflections on the pandemic and lockdowns in this section, Viral Meltdown Viral Meltdown…
The kaleidoscope of 2020: year in review
A tradition that I have embraced on this blog over the last few years has been to write year in review posts in December. In 2019 I reflected on walking…
From here to immunity: charting COVID from pandemic to endemic
2020 has proven a testing year for the culture and capacity of governments around the world. Many governments have failed. Governments far away and close to home have failed. The…
Captain Ahab and Lockdown in Melbourne
Historians (and I am one) will search for cultural archetypes that explain the strange delusions of power that have inflicted a captivity on the citizens of Melbourne and Victoria. In…
Poem: Breathless
Today I am posting another poem from The Sleep Machine. Breathless Could it be the new coronavirus?Or just the old common cold? Should I get tested or resistThe reckless screams…
Poem: Curfew, Melbourne 2020
Curfew, Melbourne 2020 Unimaginable city, locked down in its dark tomb,Its streets masked for an uncommon cold. Now all movement and strangeness stopped at 8 pm.Some turn in in fear;…
A very modern Charge of the Light Brigade
The Crimean War of 1853 to 1856 is now a forgotten and neglected conflict of the century of peace in the nineteenth century. Yet it was a surprisingly fertile conflict…
Poem: the way out machine
The way out machine I enclose my breath in a maskIn the distance we keep for fearPump hope into my lungs And begin to dreamOf the way out machineThat will…
Public Health Rulez, OK?
The psychology of power is enigmatic and poisonous, and it infects more than just the ruthless and the mercenary. Principled men and women of medicine succumb, even at their moment…
