The Watermelon Blog Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy)
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
Heard Tony Abbott talking about childhood obesity and the role of schools this morning. He said 'schools used to have school nurses, whatever happened to them?' And he asked the question with the air of someone to whom the question had just occurred and he was puzzled as to what the answer might be. And indeed school nurses would be a very useful weapon against childhood obesity, as well as watching out for other health problems. But I can give Tony an answer to the question and an answer to the problem. The answer to the question is that school nurses went as part of the squeeze on public school finances that his government has made such a crusade of.
But not to worry Tony, if you are genuinely concerned, here is an answer. You know all that money you are giving to public schools to fund chaplains in schools (the only endeavour in which they are willing to help public schools match private ones) in order to ram religion down the throats of the young? Give it for nurses instead - much more useful. But I'll bet that answer was occuring to Tony, no fool whatever else he is, even as he asked the question. Don't you?
"You are a person of some interest,one comes to you and takes strange gain away." (Pound)
"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world." (Keats)
"nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights - or if a sparrow come before my window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (Keats)