Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
Nuclear landscapes
The United States has conducted 1,054 nuclear weapon tests, of which 219 have been atmospheric. The US Army conducted the first test on 16 July 1945 as part of the Manhattan Project in what is now the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto desert. The test site was declared a National Historic Landmark district in 1965...
Fire on the mountain
And on rainy nights, when cloud hangs low over Kaputar’s peak, the mountain hosts a slimy synchronised dance of sorts. Fat pink slugs, some longer than a human hand, slide out from the earth – sometimes just a few, sometimes in their hundreds. From deep in the damp – no one quite knows where – they glide up rock faces and tree trunks in shocking shades of bubblegum and flamingo, sashimi and blood plum...
Sun queens
Cassie keeps forgetting she’s driving stick. We are on the I-80, and Cassie has her foot on the clutch while I shift the gears, and there is a good chance we’ll stall at 120 miles an hour. The I-80 is a highway for tourists and poor people, because if you’ve really got somewhere to be then plane flights are cheaper than ever these days.
Somewhere over the rainbow
The sentiment of sharing the same boat is optimistic, but it glosses over the impact of inequalities in the amount of money and time spent on learning – such as those between rural and urban and between public and private schools – as well as the influence that parents’ levels of education have.
Postcards from a liminal zone
Health professionals and educators have long appreciated the benefits of personalising and sharing experiences to allow people to work through what might be traumatic – to make sense of it, to understand it and to appreciate what really matters to them.
Why do you want to make things?
Graffiti artists are known to feel more certain about their identity after creating work; they become more receptive to other perspectives, activities and opportunities. They’re not as worried that these other behaviours will obscure their identity – an identity that is now stable and enduring
Pass it on
It was part of my assignments that I had to collect stories from the elders and then illustrate them and so on. I could draw and paint, and I taught everybody how to paint. And now they’ve taken the limelight from me, the young ones! I was doing it on purpose to get others to come up and stand on their own two feet, to start doing this.
Character
Character matters in all facets of our lives, but seldom is it more consequential than in politics and political leadership. Even before the rise of Donald Trump, there was a widespread consensus in American politics that presidential character was just as important as intellect, organisational and policy capacity, media and presentational skills, and a vision for the nation’s future.
Connection
Amid the posturing and tumult shone three moments of clarity that highlighted the gulf between cynical efforts to divide Australians and the leadership needed to bind the nation together at a time of unprecedented uncertainty and challenge. Each revealed the potential to rediscover and reconnect with the ‘holding centre’ that has defined Australian politics...
Consequences
Secrecy, a lack of accountability and lack of restraint breed incompetence and failure, creating a vicious cycle both for institutions and the public’s faith in them. And yet these are the hallmarks of how executive governance is now practised by populist leaders, including in the UK and Australia.
Power, populism and principles
As someone with lived experience of a regime so consumed by its determination to cling to power, a regime unconcerned about and unmoored from principle or a raison d’être beyond its own survival, I've found the past three years chilling and shocking in equal measure.
Who are ‘we’?
Then, in late May, S suggested something new. Next time, might we consider the Uluru Statement from the Heart? Immediate enthusiasm – and, unusually on my part, some nerves at the prospect of giving voice to a text.
