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Politics 2017 Finale: The Bin Fire Edition
December 23, 2017 Uncategorizedoecomuse
So much to take credit for, so little effort! A Royal Commission instigated by a Labor Prime Minister; a Yes campaign in which the work done and harm suffered was by people other than the political class; a by-election won by a conservative man called John; a MYEFO presaged by strategic leaks to produce misleading headlines!
All bundled into a convenient narrative of the prime minister getting his thirtieth chance or his fiftieth reboot or his mojo back or whatever. It must be quite something, to repeatedly, endlessly, receive the benefit of the doubt on a national scale. Especially when any lingering doubt has long since departed the minds of thinking observers.
Because what the prime minister wants (ending the year on a "high note") is indistinguishable from the national interest, right?
Yeah nah.
This month, between the house and the hustings, many long-term issues – the Uluru Statement, off-shore refugee camps, the NDIS – were put to the prime minister in a solo appearance on the ABC QandA program. It was a golden opportunity to show the intellect and statesmanship that allegedly forms part of his political repertoire.
He didn't though, because it doesn't, and he can't.
The Terrible Show
Turnbull oozes a smugness that many mistake for charm. Then someone holds him to account for some dodgy nonsense he has said, or his government has done. Suddenly the smug-charm turns to outright condescension, he belittles and bullies, manipulates facts, and misleads his audience.
When host Virginia Trioli asked about a recording which, the evidence suggests, must have been leaked by security services, Turnbull implied she was impugning the spooks. He told Iranian Australian and ship-wreck survivor Yaser Naseri that he cares about asylum seeker deaths at sea (he doesn't); he told Tommasina Owens of his fine grasp on the difficulties faced by her aging father caring for her brother with severe disabilities (he doesn't). He did not answer Michael Doyle on his future vision for recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (he couldn't).
This bonfire of vanities culminated when Teela Reid, who participated in the Regional Dialogues, asked about the Uluru Statement. After reeling off the usual spurious points – mischaracterising the Voice to Parliament as a House of Parliament (it isn't); asserting that Indigenous MPs represent Indigenous constituencies (they don't) – the prime minister used a technique called gaslighting.
Gaslighting is when the speaker not only distorts the question ("straw man") but also seeks to make the other person doubt their own position, loyalties, or self-worth. Turnbull accused Ms Reid of disrespecting Indigenous MPs (she didn't) while asserting that he himself has the greatest respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture, and people (he doesn't). He put this argument while disrespecting an Aboriginal woman on national television.
For the record, Ms Reid remains confident of her position and respect for her people.
Yes Success
December kicked off with the passing of an amendment to the Marriage Act. Pushing on through measurable harm resulting in increased demand for mental health services, raising and dispersing funds not only for activism but for support, the rainbow community finally saw marriage equality made law.
When the prime minister, who did not campaign, rose to move that the bill be read for a third time – an essential step to making a bill into law – he accidentally gave a victory speech instead. The Speaker reminded him to do his job, and the error was edited from history. As is always expected of progressive punters – conservatives actually know they are the nastier bunch – the Yes folks generously shared their joy with all.
Responses to responses
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is a grave moment. Its scale is gargantuan: five gruelling years, more than 1.2 million documents; testimony from over 8,000 people; a 21-volume final report; more than 400 recommendations. By all accounts, the commitment, professionalism and thoroughness of the Commission were impeccable.
Did Turnbull and the (then) responsible Minister, Christian Porter, rise to the occasion?
On the last day of hearings, Porter was tweeting a selfie at the cricket with John Howard. He followed this up with an awkward speech thanking the Commission and survivors, and boasting about increased sentences for child sex offenders, a common political response with no known efficacy.
Presumably Porter had been tapped for promotion and was merely going through the motions.
"An outstanding exercise in love", declared Malcolm Turnbull creepily, of a child abuse investigation. He also reiterated his policy of limiting and capping the compensation costs, which are to be borne by the Australian public. The policy rules out redress for victims with a conviction for a serious crime. Given that police routinely escalate charges against Aboriginal suspects, this will disproportionately disenfranchise Aboriginal survivors. The policy is racist, arbitrary, populist, and unjust.
Predictably, catholic church leaders conducted tacky, tone-deaf press conferences, speaking to the obscure theology of the confessional seal, and defending their vows of celibacy. On Insiders, veteran church-watcher David Marr called their defence of the confessional 'barbaric'. Social media exploded. But the depravity of grown men who purport to be virgins discussing celibacy and theology when the true issue is sexual abuse of children went without comment from our political leaders.
Another by-election
If you thought the skin-crawling display from Joyce and Turnbull in New England (my write-up here) wait til you hear about the oratorical wit of Bennelong MP John Alexander.
'John is an honest man', Turnbull shouted at the happy throng, despite the fact that he had lied on a statutory declaration about checking his eligibility parliament. 'A hard-working man', crowed the PM, among other hackneyed descriptors invoking a tennis career rather than political career – because what political career?
In real life, this retiree-in-waiting bunks down in Bondi while renting his Moss Vale mansion for $1400 a night – without declaring it. He says sexist, racist and ableist things on camera. He makes non-apologies, and channels Donald Trump, saying 'no-one has done more for people with disabilities than I have'.
This is not true. Thousands of people, including children, care for people with disabilities from dawn to dusk and every hour in-between every single day for a carer's allowance that amounts to 7 cents an hour above the Newstart rate… so no, John. Stop lying.
MYEFO
The Mid-Year Economic Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) was delivered by a man whose degree is in 'applied economic geography' and who has apparently now been informed that cutting wages dampens demand, and consumption, and growth.
The trick to MYEFO is for Treasurers to cut spending, preferably targeting people who conservative politicians hate, like students and migrants and children. This disinvestment in education and social cohesion is called 'savings'. The budget deficit increase projection is revised downward, and presto! An economically illiterate press babble ignorantly about 'slashing debt'. By the time financial journalists produce a more sober analysis, of falling real wages and rising public and private debt, the government got the headlines it wanted.
The caravan moves on
And there it is. A quick trip across the Australian political landscape reveals long-term issues like First Peoples justice and rights, our torture of refugees, and what was once enthusiastically sold as 'debt and deficit disaster', have gotten nowhere. It shows a prime minister with no vision for the future, and apparently no capacity to form one.
So season's greetings! Thank you for your time, and for your shares and comments. I look forward to writing more next year.
*This post was first published by Independent Australia on Wednesday 20 December 2017
Official responses to Royal Commissions: A sorry take on a sorry tale
December 17, 2017 December 2017December 2017oecomuse
The gargantuan Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has come to a close. Its scale is almost impossible to comprehend: more than 1.2 million documents; testimony from over 8,000 people; a 21-volume final report; more than 400 recommendations. By all accounts, the commitment, professionalism and thoroughness of its processes were impeccable. And it would have surely taken a huge toll on survivors, counsel, journalists and lower-profile staff as well.
It is important to keep this Royal Commission in our sights, and in the headlines. Sexual predators thrive in secrecy, and catholic leaders have vowed to keep the secrets of its criminals, if they confess their crimes behind the confessional wall. Bearing bad news is never fun, but it must be said: the hopes and dreams of Australians desperately yearning for change in the wake of this Commission are already stymied.
The two most powerful actors on this stage are the federal government and the catholic church, and both have already signalled limits to – even rejection of – meaningful change.
The authority and efficacy of Royal Commissions
Many examples could be cited to demonstrate how governments stymie and side-track and otherwise render ineffective the work of Royal Commissions. It is tempting to re-visit the failure to secure justice for Anangu people at Maralinga, and the fact of a subsequent Royal Commission into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle; or remind everyone again that the Cole Royal Commission was supposed to clean up corrupt kickbacks paid by the Australian Wheat Board to the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein in breach of United Nations sanctions yet in the real world we followed the USA into an illegal war in Iraq and the responsible minister at the time is now our High Commissioner in London.
But for this post I confine myself to the one historical example, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and the four RCs called during the Abbott-Turnbull administration, to make some general observations about the institution of the RC as a constitutive part of Westminster systems of government.
There is a general public perception that Royal Commissions are a solution in themselves, but the ultimate efficacy of any Royal Commission rests with government and other institutions in its purview. This is not to overlook that public trust in institutional processes is a democratic good; or that bearing witness carries an intrinsic value. As Alice Walker eloquently writes here, it does. Over these five years, people who struggled for decades to be heard were finally heard. People who were ignored, stonewalled, manipulated, and re-traumatised were honoured, respected and believed.
This matters.
But governments consistently lag behind community expectations, leaving recommendations unimplemented, underfunding monitoring and compliance bodies, and allocating resources to appearances over action. Another failure is at the coal face, where officers of the state, such as police officers, ignore reforms.
Since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, no police or prison officer has ever been successfully prosecuted for killing an Aboriginal person on their watch. The police officers Nunn and Matier, on duty when Ms Dhu died in a Western Australian police cell, were later promoted. So was Chris Hurley, the officer who Magistrate Brian Hine found caused the death of Mr Doomadgee on Palm Island.
When police failed to notify the Aboriginal Legal Service that Wiradjuri woman Ms Maher was in their custody, in breach of Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Royal Commission recommendations, they failed to prevent her death. Ms Maher was 36 years old. She was taken into custody 'because police had concerns for her welfare'. Her death was the first in the 16-year history of the Custody Notification Service.
Properly considered reforms in response to thoroughly investigated structural circumstances save lives. It follows that those who resist such reform wish to preserve their own positional power over the actual lives of others. Obviously this is a disgusting position to take, whether by a man of the church, an officer of the state, or a representative of the people.
So Royal Commissions, the most powerful investigative process in the Commonwealth, are not enforcement bodies. And in recent years, the official authority and community respect commanded by Royal Commissions has been diluted. Unsurprisingly, the politicisation of Royal Commissions, which were never entirely free of political influence, accelerated during the short and ugly prime ministership of Tony Abbott. Both Royal Commissions he called were established for no better reason than partisan vengeance, thereby cheapening the institution itself (my comment on the Trade Union Commissioner here).
It is worth noting that many political reporters continue to view the aggressively hyper-partisan Abbott as 'effective' and 'successful' rather than as nasty and destructive.
Malcolm Turnbull has also called two Royal Commissions in two years. He is more desperate than aggressive, because his prime ministership is driven more by internal disunity. The first was called the morning after a television program (my take here). Like most Turnbull initiatives, it was designed for him to be seen to be doing something. The show screened footage of state employees viciously assaulting and otherwise abusing black children in detention.
These criminal practices were well-known, as this 2014 report makes clear. Yet Turnbull invested so little in its brief – the literal torture of black children by the state – that his first choice of Commissioner had to be stood aside immediately due to dubious differential treatment of black and white offenders. Turnbull also resisted calls to extend the inquiry to other jurisdictions, as though the states do not also employ prison guards who routinely violate black children (they do). That Commission has finalised its reports. The political speeches have been made. The work on the ground, which is largely done by Aboriginal community and organisations, and Aboriginal staff at NFPs like Amnesty International, will continue.
Turnbull, a former merchant banker, had also resisted calls for an inquiry into banks which 'literally stitch up widows and orphans' and breach anti-terror and money laundering laws. He was eventually forced to choose between a self-orchestrated backflip, or humiliating defeat in the chamber, because his numbers were weakened by two by-elections and perennially fickle Nationals MPs. He chose the backflip.
The likelihood of reform to 'keep children safe'
The response to the Child Abuse Royal Commission recommendations lie with Turnbull and three others in particular: Christian Porter, Anthony Fisher, and Denis Hart. Keen-eyed observers will spot the immediate problem with this line-up. These men are not anointed as a result of actual effectiveness in institutional reform. In fact, all four have presided over colossal damage to substantial sections of the population, from children in institutions to welfare recipients sent fictional debt notices, driven to suicide, and forced onto a cashless regime which does not work.
What have these men had to say?
The Child Abuse Royal Commission "is an outstanding exercise in love" blathered the Prime Minister, presumably creeping out everyone who knows anything about sexual abuse. Christian Porter is the minister responsible for the government implementation (or otherwise) of its recommendations. This rhetoric is as repetitive as it is obtuse. "This card is an act of love," said Turnbull when launching cashless welfare in Kalgoorlie, on the first anniversary since 14 year old Elijah Doughty was killed by a white vigilante. Christian Porter is the senior minister responsible for that program too.
Turnbull also announced limiting and capping costs of compensation, for the crimes of rapists in institutions, which are to be borne by the Australian public. He ruled out redress for victims with a conviction for a serious crime. Given that police routinely escalate charges against Aboriginal suspects, this will disproportionately disenfranchise Aboriginal survivors. Even without the embedded racism, the policy is arbitrary, populist, and unjust.
Then the most senior catholics in Australia, archbishops Fisher and Hart, shared their thoughts on celibacy and the seal of the confessional. This, too, would creep out everyone who knows anything about sexual abuse. In her book Cardinal (temporarily removed from Victorian book stores) Louise Milligan describes Hart as 'Pell's best mate in the church' (2017, p. 66).
Hart and Fisher also unilaterally rejected any change to their confessional practices, supported by the scholarship of Fr Frank Brennan. They want to keep their culture of secrecy immune from scrutiny by secular society and the law. This tells us that despite what Geoffrey Robertson has argued amounts to crimes against humanity, the church does not want to change, ergo they do not want to stop rapists, and do not want to save lives.
Finally, there are growing community demands that the churches pay tax on their obscene wealth. This will not happen, despite the fact that religious organisations are handed multimillion dollar government contracts to deliver 'charitable' services, when provision of charitable services is the indefensible rationalisation for tax free status in the first place.
How do I know this will not happen? Because of the disproportionate, unrepresentative power that the catholic church wields as a political lobbyist. Recall that the lawful authority for religious organisations to discriminate against service users or staff with impunity was recently reaffirmed in amendments to the Marriage Act 1961 (Cth). The lawful authority to impose hateful doctrine – referred to as 'religious freedom' by their parliamentary allies – includes the freedom to refuse abortion advice to women or sack gay staff, in places like hospitals, schools, homelessness services, and drug and alcohol counselling.
So while the Commission has done its work, all the evidence suggests that the federal government and the catholic church will not do theirs, although there is one recommendation we will see implemented. A national memorial to survivors will provide an opportunity for politicians to appear to be doing something. That one will get done.
Marriage equality and Joycean humility: the week that was
Nobody with ears could mistake the words of recently re-elected Nationals Party leader Barnaby Joyce for stirring speechmaking. But in a close run thing, the indulgent nonsense from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, when the House of Representatives eventually reconvened to debate marriage equality, was the bigger oratorical mess.
Joyce first. The footage of his breathlessly anticipated return to Canberra shows Barnaby muddling through a poorly-conceived and grossly misleading analogy on eligibility for the national parliament.
"We threw ourselves under a bus", said Joyce of his decision to stay on in cabinet and the parliament until disqualified by the High Court of Australia. "Matty Canavan came out the other side, I got stuck under there for a little while." The camera zooms in briefly on that footy ruck neck and his lanyard strap. VISITOR.
That VISITOR stamp was a momentary reprieve from an otherwise grim reality. The thumping Joyce victory is disappointing and dangerous. I lived and voted in New England from 1989 to 2002, and visit every year to see family and stand with community against coal and coal seam gas mining. I have written at length that Joyce talks the farming talk while walking the mining walk.
The Joyce victory is a betrayal of traditional custodians and their country, of farmers and food production, and of looming climate catastrophe. It is also telling of a hyper-masculine culture that many voters knew why Mrs Joyce and their daughters were not on the campaign trail, and voted for him anyway.
That reason was kept strictly under wraps until Joyce was safely back in Canberra in record time. As ABC political editor Andrew Probyn told Insiders, the fastest turnaround from by-election to swearing in was previously 11 days. Joyce took four days. That timing was essential to avoiding the referral of several Coalition MPs to the High Court for potential breaches of the Constitution, but Joyce had other matters on his mind.
While preaching on 'traditional marriage' – whatever that is – to the parliament, Joyce announced publicly for the first time that he is currently separated 'so that is on the record'. Presumably he meant 'on the record as of this exact moment'. Joyce later told radio 2GB that he disclosed his marriage breakdown – widely tipped to be caused by his adultery – so as not to appear hypocritical. While a worthy goal, this is logically unattainable goal, given events and the passage of time.
"Some Nationals also feel that locals may have voted for Mr Joyce on principle," reported the ABC, "or in sympathy because they felt the High Court citizenship ruling had been harsh."
What principles? Joyce tracked across the electorate – was there was a New England pub he did not visit? – telling his constituency he did not understand why a fine bloke like his good self was disqualified from the parliament. This actively encourages ignorance of, and disrespect for, the Constitution. Which is his call, except that Joyce votes on laws that govern this country, and collects a hefty parliamentary salary, under that same Constitution.
But the by-election was not about the Constitution, because Joyce is apparently some kind of unreconstructed retail politics genius. "If you want to focus on the person in the weatherboard and iron they will give you the grace of their vote," he said. That is code for the poor white rural (Australianised rustbelt) vote, as Joyce told Fairfax here.
The reality is that New Englanders know which side on which their bread is buttered. The cache of having the Deputy Prime Minister as the local member is real. Government largesse rains down upon New England at a greater rate than in any other electorate. At the same time, you could count the number of New England farmers who support government handouts on no hands. Agrarian socialist entitlement is as intractable as it is invisible to its beneficiaries.
Anyway, it worked. A victorious Joyce said he is "completely and utterly humbled", as shown here with an equally humble Prime Minister. You can practically smell the humility.
If the Joyce victory speech was a clatter of misplaced triumphalism and cringe-worthy hypocrisy – which it was – nothing can top the way Turnbull carried himself during the passage of the bill drafted to legalise marriage equality.
The highlight of the Turnbull "gay marriage" speech – such a staunch supporter, just ask him – was this piece of patronising gibberish:
"Co-dependency is a good thing. If we believe two gay people are better off together than living alone, comforted only by their respective cats, then why should we deprive that relationship of equal recognition?"
The question, recall, is equality before the law – specifically sections 5 (definition of marriage between a man and woman) and 88EA (recognition of overseas marriages not between a man and woman) of the Marriage Act 1961 (Cth) as enacted under s. 51(xxi) of the Australian Constitution (the marriage power). Since 2004 – the date at which 'traditional marriage' was defined by the Howard government – and until Friday 8 December 2017, that definition discriminated against same-sex couples.
It is not about religion, or sex education, or de facto relationships, or cats. It is fundamentally not about whether "we believe two gay people are better off together than living alone". They can do that now, without scrutiny by the entire electorate. Yet having put thousands of people through an unnecessarily protracted and intrusive survey process, the Prime Minister endorses legal recognition of rainbow couples getting married by grossly insulting single gay people, complete with cat schtick. Classy, huh?
Turnbull then cited David Cameron, the bloke who brought on Brexit. That still-unresolved matter has seen an increase in hate crimes, cost millions, and was essentially designed to outsource petty internal differences between two white conservative men who attended Oxford University.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
"And for those to see this [sic] as an ideological issue", Turnbull brayed in that paternalistic hector that he imagines portrays gravitas and great moment, "recall British Prime Minister David Cameron as he spoke for marriage equality six years ago: 'To anyone who has reservations, I say Yes, it is about equality, but it's also about something else: commitment. Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other. So I don't support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I'm a Conservative."
There it is. Turnbull outs himself as a conservative by quoting an actual Tory.
I mention this, because one of the most irritating features of the Turnbull government years is a press gallery which insists on the existence of moderate Malcolm. This is not true. Turnbull is an ideological chameleon, a man of ambition rather than loyalty, who once reportedly said "I could never succeed in the Labor party as it would be unforgiving towards someone who had been a successful businessman".
The idea that Turnbull may have joined the Labor Party is ridiculous. Turnbull married into blue-blood Liberal heritage, as he reminded us in the second reading speech extracted above. As we watch Trump unravelling live on his twitter stream, the proposition that being a businessman somehow trains an individual for public life is exposed as the self-serving lie it has always been.
It does not matter how enthralled our fourth estate remain by "the Prime Minister held court as he regaled all and sundry with witty anecdotes about his days as Kerry Packer's lawyer". Whatever, Phil. This is a lawyer who as a politician basically concedes that his team are announcing a new legislative package designed to criminalise and otherwise control their political opponents (Senator Sam Dastiyari and GetUp! if you were wondering). That is not democracy but authoritarianism, so at least Turnbull himself has finally put to bed the myth of moderate Malcolm, given myriad other examples, including the shabby lonely cat dig at single gay people.
The bill reaches the House of Representatives
Tone-deaf as that verbal imagery was, the next day Turnbull's performance was substantially worse. As those carefully watching the procedure would have noticed, Turnbull was not responsible for commissioning the drafting of 'the Dean Smith bill'. It began legislative life as a private members bill, introduced in the Senate.
After the postal survey results were announced, Turnbull assigned passage of the bill through the lower house to himself. In the normal course of events, a bill is tabled (first reading), debated (second reading) and passed (third reading). In this case, the second reading was interminable. Every MP and their dog wanted a position on the record. The conservative derailment exercises in pre-defeated amendments went on and fucking on.
Even Tony Abbott, who campaigned against his own sister and delayed the reform for as long as politically possible, whose electorate returned a 75% Yes in the postal survey, who left the chamber so as not to vote on the bill – and whose 'traditional marriage' hypocrisy is as well-kept a secret as Joyce's – got his mug on the news as he banged on with his bigoted bullshit.
The debate was also derailed by that s. 44 disqualification vote which Joyce snuck back in just in time to defeat. But eventually, even all the boring bigots had had their say and the House was ready for the Prime Minister to move that the bill be read a third time so that it could be passed into law, pending the signature of the Governor General and the clock striking midnight.
Naturally, given the suspense and patience of those in the public gallery, the rainbow community, and everyone else watching at home, the Prime Minister rose and moved that the bill be read for a third time so the speaker could bring on the vote and the thing be done.
Just kidding. Turnbull rose to move the motion, but instead started shouting about what a great day it was for Australian democracy. He boasted about the shoddy postal survey which cost $80 million and saw a swift rise in mental health stresses for LGBTQI+ people. He waved his arms and thumped his tub. When he had exhausted his misplaced triumphalism, the prime minister sat back down to what he imagined was appreciative applause for himself.
The Speaker was thus compelled to ask the Prime Minister to rise again and move that the bill be read for a third time, without which the vote can not be called.
This moment has been edited out of every inch of footage I have seen of the vote. Why? Either it is mere procedural glitch, of no shame or moment to a prime minister who, naturally, was feeling exuberant that marriage equality – or gay marriage, as Turnbull, in the language of the No campaign, said consistently throughout. If Turnbull failing to move that the bill be read a third time is a trivial and meaningless oversight, it surely can be shown. After all, that moment is as accurate an account as any of what actually happened in the chamber in the moment the bill was passed.
Maybe commercial television has the clip on repeat, but in the mediascape I inhabit – the Guardian, Fairfax, the ABC – nobody is showing the clip of the Speaker reminding Turnbull to do his actual job. Nobody is commenting on the fact that Turnbull rose to perform an essential step in the passage of a bill into law, but became so distracted by his own vanity that he failed to perform this simple task.
The final step in making a bill into law is the Governor General giving royal assent. Then all that remains is for the clock to tick past midnight on the commencement date. So off to Yarralumla went Turnbull, godspeed, with his Attorney General George Brandis. Interestingly, given nobody threw brickbats at Turnbull for fluffing his final lines, Brandis got all sorts of feathers for his cap for being visibly moved by the reform. This is a simple manifestation of inherent bias to incumbent power: individualise and heap praise on the good (you are quite emotional, Senator), while ignoring or universalising (it could happen to anyone!) the bad.
While Dean Smith, the first openly gay Liberal member of the parliament, received a gift of the pen used by the Governor General, he did not get to share the limelight with the Prime Minister on leaving Yarralumla. In a piece to camera framed by the French doors of Government House – and presumably recorded by the PMO media team – Turnbull again sang his own praises, alone.
The strategy here is obvious enough. Just in case media had mischievously broadcast historical truth and shown him messing up procedure the day before, Turnbull wanted to command his own legacy and take credit for the new law no matter what mistakes he made along the way. Any media advisor knows that the news of today supercedes the news of yesterday, so it was a sure bet. Right on cue, the piece-to-camera was broadcast far and wide.
The most lasting image, by AAP photographer Michael Masters, must go to Labor MP Linda Burney and Nationals MP Warren Enstch; and the final word to Ms Burney, who lost her son Binni Kirkbright-Burney during the protracted campaign. She spoke incredibly eloquently and courageously:
"I support marriage equality as someone who has and has had loved ones who identify as LGBTI," she said. "To them marriage equality would mean so much. I honour these people, in particular my late son, Binni."
*This is an updated account of marriage equality debates and the return of Barnaby Joyce to Canberra following a by-election in the seat of New England. An earlier version was published by Independent Australia on Wednesday 6 December 2017, before the Marriage Act Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill 2017 (Cth) had passed the lower house, and before Joyce was sworn back in as Deputy Prime Minister.
Heroes of Green Wattle Creek (and the leaders who abandoned them)
Love in the Time of Terror: Slam at Sydney Film Festival
No Glory to this Story
Lies, damn lies and the flatlining economy
Imagining A Parallel Campaign
Heroes of Green Watt… on Lies, damn lies and the flatli…
No Glory to this Sto… on Legislation is policy. Law is…
No Glory to this Sto… on Australia, our white supremacy…
No Glory to this Sto… on An interpretation of the ideol…
Anonymous on Lies, damn lies and the flatli…
And in good news
Everlasting awfulness
Logic law and politics
Ongoing embarrassment
The Daily Outrage


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My mental health was taking a beating - Downie
by 24britishtvJan. 24, 2023, 9 a.m. 14
Last updated on .From the section Gymnastics
Great Britain's Ellie Downie has said she chose to retire from gymnastics because her mental health "was taking a beating".
Downie won 12 medals during her senior career, including a historic all-round European Championship gold in 2017.
"It wasn't the sport itself, I still very much love gymnastics," Downie told BBC Sport's Laura Scott.
"I want to stay within realms of it, but it was how people were treating me."
In 2020, Downie and her sister Becky spoke out about abusive behaviour in British Gymnastics, saying it was "ingrained" and "completely normalised".
Last year, the Whyte Review found systemic abuse in the sport in Britain, but Downie says speaking out hindered her further selection.
"At the time I was pretty confident to [speak out]," she said. "Ultimately it did really hinder us a lot, we both didn't make the Tokyo Games. But I really wanted to make a positive change.
"When I got to the last trial [before Tokyo], I decided to pull out. But the whole scenario around it, no-one came up to me, I sat on the bench crying, the coaches ignored me.
"I went home without anyone speaking to me before I left, - that was absolutely heart-breaking."
Downie, an Olympian at Rio in 2016, said she had been considering retirement since October, shortly before the World Championships.
"I got asked to be a reserve before trials, but then to not get picked it put me in a very low state.
"Ultimately I knew I couldn't carry on, because I didn't think I would ever get picked again."
Downie lost her brother Josh in 2021 after he suffered a heart attack during cricket training, and while she says she "lost direction" following his death, she felt it was used as a "narrative" to justify her non-selection for the Tokyo Games.
"I was coming in as a reigning world medallist, with the potential to do well in Tokyo if they would help me along the way," she said.
"I didn't speak on it at the time, it was too painful to talk about. It's only been until now that I've felt like I can and strong enough to do so."
Chief executive of British Gymnastics Sarah Powell said Downie was a "trailblazer in how she has reflected on her experiences to challenge and push the sport of gymnastics forward."
"Her bravery and honesty, privately and publicly, helps shape the future of our sport," she said.
Powell added that Downie "produced history making performances on the world stage" and "helped lead a ground-breaking group of British women's artistic gymnasts and in doing so inspired generations of younger gymnasts to reach their goals."
In announcing her retirement, Downie also shared an interview with her on Dr Alex George's podcast Stompcast. , where she spoke in depth about her reasons to retire and experiences she had in her career.
In that interview Downie also said:
• None Throughout her career her weight was ridiculed with coaches blaming injuries on how "heavy" she was. "If I am sad I want to eat and I feel that is because I was told I couldn't," she said. "Some people go to drink or drugs when they are highly emotional and I turn to food. It has given me a tough relationship with food at times."
• None Downie claimed she experienced a lack of support and communication from the governing body after she failed to qualify for the Olympics and the death of her brother.
• None Felt "worthless" after only being selected as a reserve for the 2022 World Championships, despite meeting the criteria that was set out for her and it left her "mentally battered".
• None Claims an email sent to those who competed at the World Championships by national coach David Kenwright said: "We finally put the naysayers to rest". She that added a performance director called the language in the email "not acceptable".
• None Said the "wrong person" is in charge of the national programme at the moment.
Speaking later to the BBC, Downie also added that she felt she had "nothing to lose now" in speaking out about the issues.
She said that "ultimately' she didn't feel like "they wanted me back that much".
In response to the claims in the podcast, British Gymnastics said in a statement: "She's raised issues that we are already aware of and are being addressed, particularly around the conduct and communication of a member of our coaching team.
"As part of the wide reform of gymnastics being undertaken, we must ensure appropriate behaviours and attitudes are maintained and always reinforced."
In response to the email claim, the governing body said it "did not meet our standards or reflect our values as an organisation" and a disciplinary process was ongoing.
"Our Performance Director immediately sent correspondence to recipients outlining that some of the language and tone was unacceptable and not in line with our culture and commitment to reform," British Gymnastics added: "A subsequent discipline and education process took place and this is being monitored as an ongoing process."
British Gymnastics put together an action plan called Reform '25 to deliver on the findings of the Whyte Review.
"Our Reform '25 action plan makes it abundantly clear that abuse, mistreatment, and a culture of fear have no place in gymnastics, and that nothing is more important than the safety and wellbeing of gymnasts and everyone involved in the sport," the statement continued.
"The reforms we have already put in place in bringing in two new Performance Directors in Tracy Whittaker-Smith and David Hart, together with Scott Hann as Technical Advisor, were made to ensure these kinds of issues were addressed.
"We still need to go further and faster over the next two years of delivering our plans, but the immediate response and subsequent action to deal with this email is a demonstration that progress is being made."
If you have been affected by any of the issues in this story, the BBC Action Line has links to organisations which can offer support and advice.
• None Why did Gabby Logan get into sport?: The broadcaster looks back at her career and shares her favourite music
• None Amanda Holden and Alan Carr set out to renovate two crumbling properties in sun-drenched Sicily

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Home Board index The Sanctuary
New cell type in human lung has regenerative properties
Spirituality, Science, & Insightful Stuffs
Postby Edge Guerrero » Fri Apr 08, 2022 11:40 pm
Findings shine light on underpinnings of COPD, pave new direction for future research on treatments
Source: University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Summary: A new type of cell that resides deep within human lungs and may play a key role in human lung diseases has been discovered.
A new type of cell that resides deep within human lungs and may play a key role in human lung diseases has been discovered by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
The researchers, who report their findings today in Nature, analyzed human lung tissue to identify the new cells, which they call respiratory airway secretory cells (RASCs). The cells line tiny airway branches, deep in the lungs, near the alveoli structures where oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide. The scientists showed that RASCs have stem-cell-like properties enabling them to regenerate other cells that are essential for the normal functioning of alveoli. They also found evidence that cigarette smoking and the common smoking-related ailment called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can disrupt the regenerative functions of RASCs -- hinting that correcting this disruption could be a good way to treat COPD.
"COPD is a devastating and common disease, yet we really don't understand the cellular biology of why or how some patients develop it. Identifying new cell types, in particular new progenitor cells, that are injured in COPD could really accelerate the development of new treatments," said study first author Maria Basil, MD, PhD, an instructor of Pulmonary Medicine.
COPD typically features progressive damage to and loss of alveoli, exacerbated by chronic inflammation. It is estimated to affect approximately 10 percent of people in some parts of the United States and causes about 3 million deaths every year around the world. Patients often are prescribed steroid anti-inflammatory drugs and/or oxygen therapy, but these treatments can only slow the disease process rather than stop or reverse it. Progress in understanding COPD has been gradual in part because mice -- the standard lab animal -- have lungs that lack key features of human lungs.
In the new study, Morrisey and his team uncovered evidence of RASCs while examining gene-activity signatures of lung cells sampled from healthy human donors. They soon recognized that RASCs, which don't exist in mouse lungs, are "secretory" cells that reside near alveoli and produce proteins needed for the fluid lining of the airway.
"With studies like this we're starting to get a sense, at the cell-biology level, of what is really happening in this very prevalent disease," said senior author Edward Morrisey, PhD, the Robinette Foundation Professor of Medicine, a professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, and director of the Penn-CHOP Lung Biology Institute at Penn Medicine.
Observations of gene-activity similarities between RASCs and an important progenitor cell in alveoli called AT2 cells led the team to a further discovery: RASCs, in addition to their secretory function, serve as predecessors for AT2 cells -- regenerating them to maintain the AT2 population and keep alveoli healthy.
AT2 cells are known to become abnormal in COPD and other lung diseases, and the researchers found evidence that defects in RASCs might be an upstream cause of those abnormalities. In lung tissue from people with COPD, as well as from people without COPD who have a history of smoking, they observed many AT2 cells that were altered in a way that hinted at a faulty RASC-to-AT2 transformation.
More research is needed, Morrisey said, but the findings point to the possibility of future COPD treatments that work by restoring the normal RASC-to-AT2 differentiation process -- or even by replenishing the normal RASC population in damaged lungs.
Return to "The Sanctuary"


text:
Restaurant & Bar Updates
Well, It Looks Like Dallas Restaurants Are Adjusting to Omicron
Kicking off 2022 with some familiar pandemic challenges. Here's how a few restaurants are handling omicron.
Resident Taqueria and its outdoor dining setup circa early 2020, mind you. Rosin Saez
If you're sensing a bit of deja vu heading into 2022, you're not alone. As the omicron variant of COVID surges, some Dallas restaurants and bars are taking steps to reduce its already rapid spread.
We've been here before: high community transmission leads to sick staff and a temporary closure. The silver lining is that we have more experience and a few more tools—get boosted!—in our toolbox to handle it. Not thrive, per se, but enough for many businesses to survive and go on another day.
Sandwich Hag has been COVID-cognizant from the beginning. It helps that the order-at-the-window setup has never had indoor seating. Recently, owner Reyna Duong gave her space in the Cedars a refresh: more protection from winter winds and communal long tables have been split up to allow for more distance. Now you can eat bánh mì and cà ri (it's coconut curry season, folks!) without the full blast of a 15 mph wind.
Meanwhile, in Bishop Arts, Dude, Sweet Chocolate has adjusted its hours "in an abundance of safety," says an Instagram post. It will be open from noon until 6 p.m. for online pickup orders or for masked-up visitors who want to shop inside.
In Northeast Dallas, Andrew Savoie put Resident Taqueria on a holiday break until January 11. This is usually when they take a breather each year, but it happens to be a good time as cases increase. When it reopens, indoor dining will remain temporarily closed. (It shut the door to the public last month after an employee tested positive for COVID.) Taco-seekers can eat outdoors or get their orders to-go. After the hiatus, Savoie hopes to be as ready as possible for whatever 2022 will bring.
"I'm starting to think this week: What am I doing for my model this year? What is Resident Taqueria anymore?" Savoie says. "It isn't a taqueria. It just isn't. It is not what I created six years ago. Here I am playing the takeout game." He needs to strike that balance of being pandemic-nimble but still exciting, both for diners and his employees. "I know what I need to do to survive," he says, "but I need to make sure my staff is onboard."
He doesn't want to overwork his already overworked staff, for one. "I'm already low-staffed … I've been looking for people for two and half months. I've gotten one application." Savoie also understands that many of his employees need to stay engaged. "It's not about me anymore, it's about my family, my employees. I can adjust, I can have fun. But really it's about my team … I want them be intrigued. I want them to get paid."
And he wants them to stay safe. Savoie will talk with his crew about what they want to do moving forward. As Resident Taqueria gets back next week, Savoie offers an inconclusive picture: "I don't know, we may change, we may not change."
We'll have to wait and see.
Although January tends to be a quiet month considering all of the shopping and socializing in December, now is not the time to let up. Local businesses still need diners—as they tinker and adjust and prep for the weird road ahead—to get through this ongoing and tremendously hard pandemic. We may have a bit of normalcy during the holidays, but nothing is guaranteed.
I think we can anticipate more restaurants and bars to temporarily close until omicron dies down.
By now, we should know that 2022 can bring us anything. And "normal" is a word best left loosely defined until further notice.
Editor's note: Since this article published, Tei-An announced it would close until January 11 after an employee tested positive for COVID. And Dallas Morning News (paywall) published an article about an Oak Lawn bar, Alexandre's, that will be closed through the month of January for the same reason as Tei-An.
This Weekend's Food & Drink Events in Dallas: Aug. 27–29
Test your 'cue skills at Pitmaster University. Sip fine whiskeys.
DFW Restaurant Week
DFW Restaurant Week Reservations Open Today
The annual dining week—ok, really, a whole dang month—is back to its usual summer schedule with 100 restaurants.
Remembering Anthony Bourdain's Texas Ties
Today, June 25, is Anthony Bourdain Day, which is the late chef and world traveler's birthday. Let's look back at some of ways the beloved culinary thinker touched Texas.
What Biden's Coronavirus Plan Might Mean for Texas Restaurants
If passed, the American Rescue Plan could potentially help restaurants weather the remainder of the pandemic.


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Wharton, Edith.  "The Recovery."<lb/>
<hi rend="italic"> Harper's Monthly</hi> 102 (Feb. 1901): 468-477.<lb/>
                                I
<pb n="468"/>

TO the visiting stranger Hillbridge's first question was,
"Have you
seen Keniston's things?"

     Keniston took precedence of the Colonial State House, the
Gilbert Stuart Washington, and the Ethnological Museum; nay, he
ran
neck and neck with the President of the University, a
pre-historic
relic who had known Emerson, and who was still sent about the
country in cotton-wool to open educational institutions with a
toothless oration on Brook Farm.

     Keniston was sent about the country too; he opened art
exhibitions, laid the foundations of academies, and acted, in a
general sense, as the spokesman and apologist of art.  Hillbridge
was proud of him in his peripatetic character, but his fellow-townsmen let it be understood that to "know" Keniston one must
come
to Hillbridge.  Never was work more dependent for its effect on
"atmosphere," on <hi rend="italic"> milieu</hi>.  Hillbridge was Keniston's <hi rend="italic">
milieu</hi>,
and there was one lady, a devotee of his art, who went so far as
to
assert that once, at an exhibition in New York, she had passed a
Keniston without recognizing it.  "It simply didn't want to be
seen
in such surroundings; it was hiding itself under an incognito,"
she
declared.

     It was a source of special pride to Hillbridge that it
contained all the artist's best works.  Strangers were told that
Hillbridge had discovered him.  The discovery had come about in
the
simplest manner.  Professor Driffert, who had a reputation for
"collecting," had one day hung a sketch on his drawing-room wall,
and thereafter Mrs. Driffert's visitors (always a little flurried
by the sense that it was the kind of house in which one might be
suddenly called upon to distinguish between a dry-point and an
etching, or between Raphael Mengs and Raphael Sanzio) were not
infrequently subjected to the Professor's off-hand inquiry, "By-the-way, have you seen my Keniston?"  The visitors, perceptibly
awed, would retreat to a critical distance and murmur the usual
guarded generalities, while they tried to keep the name in mind
long enough to look it up in the Encyclopaedia.  The name was not
in the Encyclopaedia; but, as a compensating fact, it became
known
that the man himself was in Hillbridge.  Hillbridge, then, owned
an
artist whose celebrity it was the proper thing to take for
granted!
Some one else, emboldened by the thought, bought a Keniston; and
the next year, on the occasion of the President's golden jubilee,
the Faculty, by unanimous consent, presented him with a Keniston.

Two years later there was a Keniston exhibition, to which the
art-critics came from New York and Boston; and not long afterward a
well-known Chicago collector vainly attempted to buy Professor
Driffert's sketch, which the art journals cited as a rare example
of the painter's first or silvery manner.  Thus there gradually
grew up a small circle of connoisseurs known in artistic circles
as
men who collected Kenistons.

     Professor Wildmarsh, of the chair of Fine Arts and
Archaeology, was the first critic to publish a detailed analysis
of
the master's methods and purpose.  The article was illustrated by
engravings which (though they had cost the magazine a fortune)
were
declared by Professor Wildmarsh to give but an imperfect
suggestion
of the esoteric significance of the originals.  The Professor,
with
a tact that contrived to make each reader feel himself included
among the exceptions, went on to say that Keniston's work would
never appeal to any but exceptional natures; and he closed with
the
usual assertion that to apprehend the full meaning of the
master's
"message" it was necessary to see him in the surroundings of his
own home at Hillbridge.

     Professor Wildmarsh's article was read <pb n="469"/>
one spring
afternoon by a young lady just speeding eastward on her first
visit
to Hillbridge, and already flushed with anticipation of the
intellectual opportunities awaiting her.  In East Onondaigua,
where
she lived, Hillbridge was looked on as an Oxford.  Magazine
writers, with the easy American use of the superlative,
designated
it as "the venerable Alma Mater," the "antique seat of learning,"
and Claudia Day had been brought up to regard it as the fountain-head of knowledge, and of that mental distinction which is so
much
rarer than knowledge.  An innate passion for all that was thus
distinguished and exceptional made her revere Hillbridge as the
native soil of those intellectual amenities that were of such
difficult growth in the thin air of East Onondaigua.  At the
first
suggestion of a visit to Hillbridge—whither she went at the
invitation of a girl-friend who (incredible apotheosis!) had
married one of the University professors—Claudia's spirit
dilated
with the sense of new possibilities.  The vision of herself
walking
under the "historic elms" toward the Memorial Library, standing
rapt before the Stuart Washington, or drinking in, from some
obscure corner of an academic drawing-room, the President's
reminiscences of the Concord group—this vividness of self-projection into the emotions awaiting her made her glad of any
delay that prolonged so exquisite a moment.

     It was in this mood that she opened the article on Keniston.

She knew about him, of course; she was wonderfully "well up,"
even
for East Onondaigua.  She had read of him in the magazines; she
had
met, on a visit to New York, a man who collected Kenistons, and a
photogravure of a Keniston, in an "artistic" frame, hung above
her
writing-table at home.  But Professor Wildmarsh's article made
her
feel how little she really knew of the master; and she trembled
to
think of the state of relative ignorance in which, but for the
timely purchase of the magazine, she might have entered
Hillbridge.
She had, for instance, been densely unaware that Keniston had
already had three "manners," and was showing symptoms of a
fourth.
She was equally ignorant of the fact that he had founded a school
and "created a formula"; and she learned with a thrill that no
one
could hope to understand him who had not seen him in his studio
at
Hillbridge, surrounded by his own works.  "The man and the art
interpret each other," their exponent declared; and Claudia Day,
bending a brilliant eye on the future, wondered if she would ever
be admitted to the privilege of that double initiation.

     Keniston to his other claims to distinction added that of
being hard to know.  His friends always hastened to announce the
fact to strangers—adding after a pause of suspense that they
"would see what they could do."  Visitors in whose favor he was
induced to make an exception were further warned that he never
spoke unless he was interested—so that they mustn't mind if he
remained silent.  It was under these reassuring conditions that,
some ten days after her arrival at Hillbridge, Miss Day was
introduced to the master's studio.  She found him a tall
listless-looking man, who appeared middle-aged to her youth, and who stood
before his own pictures with a vaguely interrogative gaze,
leaving
the task of their interpretation to the lady who had courageously
contrived the visit.  The studio, to Claudia's surprise, was bare
and shabby.  It formed a rambling addition to the small cheerless
house in which the artist lived with his mother and a widowed
sister.  For Claudia it added the last touch to his distinction
to
learn that he was poor, and that what he earned was devoted to
the
maintenance of the two limp women who formed a sort of neutral-tinted background to his impressive outline.  His pictures of
course fetched high prices; but he worked slowly—"painfully," as
his devotees preferred to phrase it—with frequent intervals of
ill
health and inactivity, and the circle of Keniston connoisseurs
was
still as small as it was distinguished.  The girl's fancy
instantly
hailed in him that favorite figure of imaginative youth, the
artist
who would rather starve than paint a pot-boiler.  It is known to
comparatively few that the production of successful pot-boilers
is
an art in itself, and that such heroic abstentions as Keniston's
are not always purely voluntary.

     On the occasion of her first visit the <pb n="470"/>
artist said so
little that Claudia was able to indulge to the full the harrowing
sense of her inadequacy.  No wonder she had not been one of the
few
that he cared to talk to; every word she uttered must so
obviously
have diminished the inducement!  She had been cheap, trivial,
conventional; at once gushing and inexpressive, eager and
constrained.  She could feel him counting the minutes till the
visit was over, and as the door finally closed on the scene of
her
discomfiture she almost shared the hope with which she
confidently
credited him—that they might never meet again.

</div1>
<div1 type="section" n="2" id="d4">

                                II

     Mrs. Davant glanced reverentially about the studio.  "I have
always said," she murmured, "that they ought to be seen in
Europe."

     Mrs. Davant was young, credulous, and emotionally
extravagant;
she reminded Claudia of her earlier self—the self that, ten
years
before, had first set an awe-struck foot on that very
threshold.

     "Not for <hi rend="italic"> his</hi> sake," Mrs. Davant continued, "but for
Europe's."

     Claudia smiled.  She was glad that her husband's pictures
were
to be exhibited in Paris.  She concurred in Mrs. Davant's view of
the importance of the event; but she thought her visitor's way of
putting the case a little overcharged.  Ten years spent in an
atmosphere of Keniston-worship had insensibly developed in
Claudia
a preference for moderation of speech.  She believed in her
husband, of course; to believe in him, with an increasing
abandonment and tenacity, had become one of the necessary laws of
being; but she did not believe in his admirers.  Their faith in
him
was perhaps as genuine as her own; but it seemed to her less able
to give an account of itself.  Some few of his appreciators
doubtless measured him by their own standards; but it was
difficult
not to feel that in the Hillbridge circle, where rapture ran the
highest, he was accepted on what was at best but an indirect
valuation; and now and then she had a frightened doubt as to the
independence of her own convictions.  That innate sense of
relativity which even East Onondaigua had not been able to check
in
Claudia Day had been fostered in Mrs. Keniston by the artistic
absolutism of Hillbridge, and she often wondered that her husband
remained so uncritical of the quality of admiration accorded him.

Her husband's uncritical attitude toward himself and his admirers
had in fact been one of the surprises of her marriage.  That an
artist should believe in his potential powers seemed to her at
once
the incentive and the pledge of excellence: she knew there was no
future for a hesitating talent.  What perplexed her was
Keniston's
satisfaction in his achievement.  She had always imagined that
the
true artist must regard himself as the imperfect vehicle of the
cosmic emotion—that beneath every difficulty overcome a new one
lurked, the vision widening as the scope enlarged.  To be
initiated
into these creative struggles, to shed on the toiler's path the
consolatory ray of faith and encouragement, had seemed the chief
privilege of her marriage.  But there is something supererogatory
in believing in a man obviously disposed to perform that service
for himself; and Claudia's ardor gradually spent itself against
the
dense surface of her husband's complacency.  She could smile now
at
her ignorant vision of an intellectual communion which should
admit
her to the inmost precincts of his inspiration.  She had learned
that the creative processes are seldom self-explanatory, and
Keniston's inarticulateness no longer discouraged her; but she
could not reconcile her sense of the continuity of all high
effort
to his unperturbed air of finishing each picture as though he had
despatched a masterpiece to posterity.  In the first recoil from
her disillusionment she even allowed herself to perceive that if
he
worked slowly it was not because he mistrusted his powers of
expression, but because he had so little to express.

     "It's for Europe," Mrs. Davant vaguely repeated; and Claudia
noticed that she was blushingly intent on tracing with the tip of
her elaborate sunshade the pattern of the shabby carpet.

     "It will be a revelation to them," she went on,
provisionally,
as though Claudia had missed her cue and left an awkward interval
to fill.

     Claudia had in fact a sudden sense of deficient intuition.
She felt that her visitor had something to communicate which
required, on her own part, an in-<pb n="471"/> telligent
co-operation; but
what it was her insight failed to suggest.  She was, in truth, a
little tired of Mrs. Davant, who was Keniston's latest
worshipper,
who ordered pictures recklessly, who paid for them regally in
advance, and whose gallery was, figuratively speaking, crowded
with
the artist's unpainted masterpieces.  Claudia's impatience was
perhaps complicated by the uneasy sense that Mrs. Davant was too
young, too rich, too inexperienced; that somehow she ought to be
warned.  Warned of what?  That some of the pictures might never
be
painted?  Scarcely that, since Keniston, who was scrupulous in
business transactions, might be trusted not to take any material
advantage of such evidence of faith.  Claudia's impulse remained
undefined.  She merely felt that she would have liked to help
Mrs.
Davant, and that she did not know how.

     "You'll be there to see them?" she asked, as her visitor
lingered.

     "In Paris?"  Mrs. Davant's blush deepened.  "We must all be
there together."

     Claudia smiled.  "My husband and I mean to go abroad some
day—but I don't see any chance of it at present."

     "But he <hi rend="italic"> ought</hi> to go—you ought both to go this
summer!"
Mrs. Davant persisted.  "I know Professor Wildmarsh and Professor
Driffert and all the other critics think that Mr. Keniston's
never
having been to Europe has given his work much of its wonderful
individuality, its peculiar flavor and meaning—but now that his
talent is formed, that he has full command of his means of
expression" (Claudia recognized one of Professor Driffert's
favorite formulas), "they all think he ought to see the work of
the
<hi rend="italic"> other</hi> great masters—that he ought to visit the home of
his
ancestors, as Professor Wildmarsh says!"  She stretched an
impulsive hand to Claudia.  "You ought to let him go, Mrs.
Keniston!"

     Claudia accepted the admonition with the philosophy of the
wife who is used to being advised on the management of her
husband.
"I sha'n't interfere with him," she declared; and Mrs. Davant
instantly caught her up with a sudden cry of, "Oh, it's too
lovely
of you to say that!"  With this exclamation she left Claudia to a
silent renewal of wonder.

     A moment later Keniston entered; to a mind curious in
combinations it might have occurred that he had met Mrs. Davant
on
the door-step.  In one sense he might, for all his wife cared,
have
met fifty Mrs. Davants on the door-step: it was long since
Claudia
had enjoyed the solace of resenting such coincidences.  Her only
thought now was that her husband's first words might not
improbably
explain Mrs. Davant's last; and she waited for him to
speak.

     He paused with his hands in his pockets before an unfinished
picture on the easel; then, as his habit was, he began to stroll
touristlike from canvas to canvas, standing before each in a
musing
ecstasy of contemplation that no readjustment of view ever seemed
to disturb.  Her eye instinctively joined his in its inspection;
it
was the one point where their natures merged.  Thank God, there
was
no doubt about the pictures!  She was what she had always dreamed
of being—the wife of a great artist.  Keniston dropped into an
arm-chair and filled his pipe.  "How should you like to go to
Europe?" he asked.

     His wife looked up quickly.  "When?"

     "Now—this spring, I mean."  He paused to light the pipe.
"I
should like to be over there while these things are being
exhibited."

     Claudia was silent.

     "Well?" he repeated after a moment.

     "How can we afford it?" she asked.

     Keniston had always scrupulously fulfilled his duty to the
mother and sister whom his marriage had dislodged; and Claudia,
who
had the atoning temperament which seeks to pay for every
happiness
by making it a source of fresh obligations, had from the outset
accepted his ties with an exaggerated devotion.  Any disregard of
such a claim would have vulgarized her most delicate pleasures;
and
her husband's sensitiveness to it in great measure extenuated the
artistic obtuseness that often seemed to her like a failure of
the
moral sense.  His loyalty to the dull women who depended on him
was, after all, compounded of finer tissues than any mere
sensibility to ideal demands.

     "Oh, I don't see why we shouldn't," he rejoined.  "I think
we
might manage it." <pb n="472"/>

     "At Mrs. Davant's expense?" leaped from Claudia.  She could
not tell why she had said it; some inner barrier seemed to have
given way under a confused pressure of emotions.

     He looked up at her with frank surprise.  "Well, she <hi rend="italic">
has</hi>
been very jolly about it—why not?  She has a tremendous feeling
for art—the keenest I ever knew in a woman."  Claudia
imperceptibly smiled.  "She wants me to let her pay in advance
for
the four panels she has ordered for the Memorial Library.  That
would give us plenty of money for the trip, and my having the
panels to do is another reason for my wanting to go abroad just
now."

     "Another reason?"

     "Yes; I've never worked on such a big scale.  I want to see
how those old chaps did the trick; I want to measure myself with
the big fellows over there.  An artist ought to, once in his
life."

     She gave him a wondering look.  The words implied a dawning
sense of possible limitation; but his easy tone seemed to retract
what they conceded.  What he really wanted was fresh food for his
self-satisfaction: he was like an army that moves on after
exhausting the resources of the country.

     Womanlike, she abandoned the general survey of the case for
the consideration of a minor point.

     "Are you sure you can do that kind of thing?" she
asked.

     "What kind of thing?"

     "The panels."

     He glanced at her indulgently: his self-confidence was too
impenetrable to feel the pin-prick of such a doubt.

     "Immensely sure," he said, smiling.

     "And you don't mind taking so much money from her in
advance?"

     He stared.  "Why should I?  She'll get it back—with
interest!"  He laughed and drew at his pipe.  "It will be an
uncommonly interesting experience.  I shouldn't wonder if it
freshened me up a bit."

     She looked at him again.  This second hint of potential
self-distrust struck her as the sign of a quickened sensibility.  What
if, after all, he was beginning to be dissatisfied with his work?

The thought filled her with a renovating sense of his
sufficiency.

</div1>
<div1 type="section" n="3" id="d5">

                                III

     They stopped in London to see the National Gallery.  It was
thus that, in their inexperience, they had narrowly put it; but
in
reality every stone of the streets, every trick of the
atmosphere,
had its message of surprise for their virgin sensibilities.  The
pictures were simply the summing up, the final interpretation, of
the cumulative pressure of an unimagined world; and it seemed to
Claudia that long before they reached the doors of the gallery
she
had some intuitive revelation of what awaited them within.

     They moved about from room to room without exchanging a
word.
The vast noiseless space seemed full of sound, like the roar of a
distant multitude heard only by the inner ear.  Had their speech
been articulate their language would have been incomprehensible;
and even that far-off murmur of meaning pressed intolerably on
Claudia's throbbing nerves.  Keniston took the onset without
outward sign of disturbance.  Now and then he paused before a
canvas, or prolonged from one of the benches his silent communion
with some miracle of line or color; but he neither looked at his
wife nor spoke to her.  He seemed to have forgotten her
presence.

     Claudia was conscious of keeping a furtive watch on him; but
the sum total of her impressions was negative.  She remembered
thinking when she first met him that his face was rather
expressionless; and he had the habit of self-engrossed
silences.

     All that evening, at the hotel, they talked about London,
and
he surprised her by an acuteness of observation that she had
sometimes inwardly accused him of lacking.  He seemed to have
seen
everything, to have examined, felt, compared, with nerves as
finely
adjusted as her own; but he said nothing of the pictures.  The
next
day they returned to the National Gallery, and he began to
examine
the paintings in detail, pointing out differences of technique,
analyzing and criticising, but still without summing up his
conclusions.  He seemed to have a sort of provincial dread of
showing himself too much impressed.  Claudia's own sensations
were
too complex, too overwhelming, to be readily classified.  Lacking
the <pb n="473"/>  craftsman's instinct to steady her, she
felt herself
carried off her feet by the rush of incoherent impressions.  One
point she consciously avoided, and that was the comparison of her
husband's work with what they were daily seeing.  Art, she
inwardly
argued, was too various, too complex, dependent on too many
inter-relations of feeling and environment, to allow of its being
judged
by any provisional standard.  Even the subtleties of technique
must
be modified by the artist's changing purpose, as this in turn is
acted on by influences of which he is himself unconscious.  How,
then, was an unprepared imagination to distinguish between such
varied reflections of the elusive vision?  She took refuge in a
passionate exaggeration of her own ignorance and insufficiency.

     After a week in London they went to Paris.  The exhibition
of
Keniston's pictures had been opened a few days earlier; and as
they
drove through the streets on the way to the station an
"impressionist" poster here and there invited them to the display
of the American artist's work.  Mrs. Davant, who had been in
Paris
for the opening, had already written rapturously of the
impression
produced, enclosing commendatory notices from one or two papers.
She reported that there had been a great crowd on the first day,
and that the critics had been "immensely struck."

     The Kenistons arrived in the evening, and the next morning
Claudia, as a matter of course, asked her husband at what time he
meant to go and see the pictures.

     He looked up absently from his guide-book.

     "What pictures?"

     "Why—yours," she said, surprised.

     "Oh, they'll keep," he answered; adding, with a slightly
embarrassed laugh, "We'll give the other chaps a show first."
Presently he laid down his book and proposed that they should go
to
the Louvre.

     They spent the morning there, lunched at a restaurant near
by,
and returned to the gallery in the afternoon.  Keniston had
passed
from inarticulateness to an eager volubility.  It was clear that
he
was beginning to co-ordinate his impressions, to find his way
about
in a corner of the great imaginative universe.  He seemed
extraordinarily ready to impart his discoveries; and Claudia was
conscious that her ignorance served him as a convenient buffer
against the terrific impact of new sensations.

     On the way home she asked when he meant to see Mrs.
Davant.

     His answer surprised her.  "Does she know we're
here?"

     "Not unless you've sent her word," said Claudia, with a
touch
of harmless irony.

     "That's all right, then," he returned simply.  "I want to
wait
and look about a day or two longer.  She'd want us to go sight-seeing with her; and I'd rather get my impressions alone."

     The next two days were hampered by the necessity of eluding
Mrs. Davant.  Claudia, under different circumstances, would have
scrupled to share in this somewhat shabby conspiracy; but she
found
herself in a state of suspended judgment, wherein her husband's
treatment of Mrs. Davant became for the moment merely a clue to
larger meanings.

     They had been four days in Paris when Claudia, returning one
afternoon from a parenthetical excursion to the Rue de la Paix,
was
confronted on her threshold by the reproachful figure of their
benefactress.  It was not to her, however, that Mrs. Davant's
reproaches were addressed.  Keniston, it appeared, had borne the
brunt of them; for he stood leaning against the mantel-piece of
their modest <hi rend="italic"> salon</hi> in that attitude of convicted
negligence
when, if ever, a man is glad to take refuge behind his
wife.

     Claudia had, however, no immediate intention of affording
him
such shelter.  She wanted to observe and wait.

     "He's too impossible!" cried Mrs. Davant, sweeping her at
once
into the central current of her grievance.

     Claudia looked from one to the other.

     "For not going to see you?"

     "For not going to see his pictures!" cried the other,
nobly.

     Claudia colored, and Keniston shifted his position
uneasily.

     "I can't make her understand," he said, turning to his
wife.

     "I don't care about myself!" Mrs. Davant interjected.

     <hi rend="italic">" I</hi> do, then; it's the only thing I do care about,"
he
hurriedly protested.  "I <pb n="474"/>  meant to go at
once—to write—
Claudia wanted to go, but I wouldn't let her."  He looked
helplessly about the pleasant red-curtained room, which was
rapidly
burning itself into Claudia's consciousness as a visible
extension
of Mrs. Davant's claims.

     "I can't explain," he broke off.

     Mrs. Davant in turn addressed herself to Claudia.

     "People think it's so odd," she complained.  "So many of the
artists here are anxious to meet him; they've all been so
charming
about the pictures; and several of our American friends have come
over from London expressly for the exhibition.  I told every one
that he would be here for the opening—there was a private view,
you know—and they were so disappointed—they wanted to give him
an
ovation; and I didn't know what to say.  What <hi rend="italic"> am</hi> I to
say?" she
abruptly ended.

     "There's nothing to say," said Keniston.

     "But the exhibition closes the day after to-morrow."

     "Well, <hi rend="italic"> I</hi> sha'n't close—I shall be here," he
declared with
an effort at playfulness.  "If they want to see me—all these
people you're kind enough to mention—won't there be other
chances?"

     "But I wanted them to see you <hi rend="italic"> among</hi> your
pictures—to hear
you talk about them, explain them in that wonderful way.  I
wanted
you to interpret each other, as Professor Wildmarsh says!"

     "Oh, hang Professor Wildmarsh!" said Keniston, softening the
commination with a smile.  "If my pictures are good for anything
they oughtn't to need explaining."

     Mrs. Davant stared.  "But I thought that was what made them
so
interesting!" she exclaimed.

     Keniston looked down.  "Perhaps it was," he murmured.

     There was an awkward silence, which Claudia broke by saying,
with a glance at her husband: "But if the exhibition is to remain
open to-morrow, could we not meet you there?  And perhaps you
could
send word to some of our friends."

     Mrs. Davant brightened like a child whose broken toy is
glued
together.  "Oh, <hi rend="italic"> do</hi> make him!" she implored.  "I'll ask
them to
come in the afternoon—we'll make it into a little tea—a <hi rend="italic">
five
o'clock</hi>.  I'll send word at once to everybody!"  She gathered
up
her beruffled boa and sunshade, settling her plumage like a
reassured bird.  "It will be too lovely!" she ended in a self-consoling murmur.

     But in the doorway a new doubt assailed her.  "You won't
fail
me?" she said, turning plaintively to Keniston.  "You'll make him
come, Mrs. Keniston?"

     "I'll bring him!" Claudia promised.

</div1>
<div1 type="section" n="4" id="d6">

                                IV

     When, the next morning, she appeared equipped for their
customary ramble, her husband surprised her by announcing that he
meant to stay at home.

     "The fact is I'm rather surfeited," he said, smiling.  "I
suppose my appetite isn't equal to such a plethora.  I think I'll
write some letters and join you somewhere later."

     She detected the wish to be alone, and responded to it with
her usual readiness.

     "I shall sink to my proper level and buy a bonnet, then,"
she
said.  "I haven't had time to take the edge off that
appetite."

     They agreed to meet at the Hotel Cluny at mid-day, and she
set
out alone with a vague sense of relief.  Neither she nor Keniston
had made any direct reference to Mrs. Davant's visit; but its
effect was implicit in their eagerness to avoid each
other.

     Claudia accomplished some shopping in the spirit of
perfunctoriness that robs even new bonnets of their bloom; and
this
business despatched, she turned aimlessly into the wide inviting
brightness of the streets.  Never had she felt more isolated amid
that ordered beauty which gives a social quality to the very
stones
and mortar of Paris.  All about her were evidences of an artistic
sensibility pervading every form of life like the nervous
structure
of the huge frame—a sensibility so delicate, alert, and
universal
that it seemed to leave no room for obtuseness or error.  In such
a medium the faculty of plastic expression must develop as
unconsciously as any organ in its normal surroundings; to be
"artistic" must cease to be an attitude and become a natural
function.  To Claudia the significance of the whole vast
revelation
was centred in the light it shed on one tiny <pb n="475"/>
spot of
consciousness—the value of her husband's work.  There are
moments
when to the groping soul the world's accumulated experiences are
but stepping-stones across a private difficulty.

     She stood hesitating on a street corner.  It was barely
eleven, and she had an hour to spare before going to the Hotel
Cluny.  She seemed to be letting her inclination float as it
would
on the cross-currents of suggestion emanating from the brilliant
complex scene before her; but suddenly, in obedience to an
impulse
that she became aware of only in acting on it, she called a cab
and
drove to the gallery where her husband's pictures were
exhibited.

     A magnificent official in gold braid sold her a ticket and
pointed the way up the empty crimson-carpeted stairs.  His
duplicate, on the upper landing, offered her a catalogue with an
air of recognizing the futility of the offer; and a moment later
she found herself in the long noiseless impressive room full of
velvet-covered ottomans and exotic plants.  It was clear that the
public ardor on which Mrs. Davant had expatiated had spent itself
earlier in the week; for Claudia had this luxurious apartment to
herself.  Something about its air of rich privacy, its diffusion
of
that sympathetic quality in other countries so conspicuously
absent
from the public show-room, seemed to emphasize its present
emptiness.  It was as though the flowers, the carpet, the
lounges,
surrounded their visitor's solitary advance with the mute
assurance
that they had done all they could toward making the thing "go
off,"
and that if they had failed it was simply for lack of efficient
co-operation.  She stood still and looked about her.  The pictures
struck her instantly as odd gaps in the general harmony: it was
self-evident that they had not co-operated.  They had not been
pushing, aggressive, discordant: they had merely effaced
themselves.  She swept a startled eye from one familiar painting
to
another.  The canvases were all there—and the frames—but the
miracle, the mirage of life and meaning, had vanished like some
atmospheric illusion.  What was it that had happened?  And had it
happened to <hi rend="italic"> her</hi> or to the pictures?  She tried to rally
her
frightened thoughts; to push or coax them into a semblance of
resistance; but argument was swept off its feet by the huge rush
of
a single conviction—the conviction that the pictures were bad.
There was no standing up against that: she felt herself
submerged.

     The stealthy fear that had been following her all these days
had her by the throat now.  The great vision of beauty through
which she had been moving as one enchanted turned to a
phantasmagoria of evil mocking shapes.  She hated the past; she
hated its splendor, its power, its wicked magical vitality.  She
dropped into a seat and continued to stare at the wall before
her.
Gradually, as she stared, there stole out to her from the dimmed
humbled canvases a reminder of what she had once seen in them, a
spectral appeal to her faith to call them back to life.  What
proof
had she that her present estimate of them was less subjective
than
the other?  The confused impressions of the last few days were
hardly to be pleaded as a valid theory of art.  How, after all,
did
she know that the pictures were bad?  On what suddenly acquired
technical standard had she thus decided the case against them?
It
seemed as though it were a standard outside of herself, as though
some unheeded inner sense were gradually making her aware of the
presence, in that empty room, of a critical intelligence that was
giving out a subtle effluence of disapproval.  The fancy was so
vivid that, to shake it off, she rose and began to move about
again.  In the middle of the room stood a monumental divan
surmounted by a <hi rend="italic"> massif</hi> of palms and azaleas.  As
Claudia's
muffled wanderings carried her around the angle of this seat, she
saw that its farther side was occupied by the figure of a man,
who
sat with his hands resting on his stick and his head bowed upon
them.  She gave a little cry and her husband rose and faced
her.

     Instantly the live point of consciousness was shifted, and
she
became aware that the quality of the pictures no longer mattered.

It was what <hi rend="italic"> he</hi> thought of them that counted: her life
hung on
that.

     They looked at each other a moment in silence; such
concussions are not apt to flash into immediate speech.  At
length
he said simply, "I didn't know you were coming here."
<pb n="476"/>

     She colored as though he had charged her with something
underhand.

     "I didn't mean to," she stammered; "but I was too early for
our appointment—"

     Her blundering words cast a revealing glare on the
situation.
Neither of them looked at the pictures; but to Claudia those
unobtruding presences seemed suddenly to press upon them and
force
them apart.

     Keniston glanced at his watch.  "It's twelve o'clock," he
said.  "Shall we go on?"

</div1>
<div1 type="section" n="5" id="d7">

                                 V

     At the door he called a cab and put her in it; then, drawing
out his watch again, he said, abruptly: "I believe I'll let you
go
alone.  I'll join you at the hotel in time for luncheon."  She
wondered for a moment if he meant to return to the gallery; but,
looking back as she drove off, she saw him walk rapidly away in
the
opposite direction.

     The cabman had carried hr half-way to the Hotel Cluny before
she realized where she was going, and cried out to him to turn
home.  There was an acute irony in this mechanical prolongation
of
the quest of beauty.  She had had enough of it, too much of it;
her
one longing was to escape, to hide herself away from its all-suffusing implacable light.

     At the hotel, alone in her room, a few tears came to soften
her scared vision; but her mood was too tense to be eased by
weeping.  Her whole being was centred in the longing to know what
her husband thought.  Their short exchange of words had, after
all,
told her nothing.  She had guessed a faint resentment of her
unexpected appearance; but that might merely imply a dawning
sense,
on his part, of being furtively watched and criticised.  She had
sometimes wondered if he was never conscious of her observation;
there were moments when it seemed to radiate from her in visible
waves.  Perhaps, after all, he was aware of it, on his guard
against it, as a lurking knife behind the thick curtain of his
complacency; and to-day he must have caught the gleam of the
blade.

     Claudia had not reached the age when pity is the first chord
to vibrate in contact with any revelation of failure.  Her one
hope
had been that Keniston should be clear-eyed enough to face the
truth.  Whatever it turned out to be, she wanted him to measure
himself with it.  But as his image rose before her she felt a
sudden half-maternal longing to thrust herself between him and
disaster.  Her eagerness to see him tested by circumstances
seemed
now like a cruel scientific curiosity.  She saw in a flash of
sympathy that he would need her most if he fell beneath his
fate.

     He did not, after all, return for luncheon; and when she
came
up stairs from her solitary meal their <hi rend="italic"> salon</hi> was still
untenanted.  She permitted herself no sensational fears; for she
could not, at the height of apprehension, figure Keniston as
yielding to any tragic impulse; but the lengthening hours brought
an uneasiness that was fuel to her pity.  Suddenly she heard the
clock strike five.  It was the hour at which they had promised to
meet Mrs. Davant at the gallery—the hour of the "ovation."
Claudia rose and went to the window, straining for a glimpse of
her
husband in the crowded street.  Could it be that he had forgotten
her, had gone to the gallery without her?  Or had something
happened—that veiled "something" which, for the last hour, had
grimly hovered on the outskirts of her mind?

     She heard a hand on the door and Keniston entered.  As she
turned to meet him her whole being was swept forward on a great
wave of pity: she was so sure, now, that he must know.

     But he confronted her with a glance of preoccupied
brightness;
her first impression was that she had never seen him so vividly,
so
expressively pleased.  If he needed her, it was not to bind up
his
wounds.

     He gave her a smile which was clearly the lingering
reflection
of some inner light.  "I didn't mean to be so late," he said,
tossing aside his hat and the little red volume that served as a
clue to his explorations.  "I turned in to the Louvre for a
minute
after I left you this morning, and the place fairly swallowed me
up—I couldn't get away from it.  I've been there ever since."
He
threw himself into a chair and glanced about for his pipe.

     "It takes time," he continued musingly, "to get at them, to
make out what <pb n="477"/>  they're saying—the big
fellows, I mean.
They're not a communicative lot.  At first I couldn't make much
out
of their lingo—it was too different from mine!  But gradually,
by
picking up a hint here and there, and piecing them together, I've
begun to understand; and to-day, by Jove, I got one or two of the
old chaps by the throat and fairly turned them inside out—made
them deliver up their last drop."  He lifted a brilliant eye to
her.  "Lord, it was tremendous!" he declared.

     He had found his pipe and was musingly filling it.  Claudia
waited in silence.

     "At first," he began again, "I was afraid their language was
too hard for me—that I should never quite know what they were
driving at; they seemed to cold-shoulder me, to be bent on
shutting
me out.  But I was bound I wouldn't be beaten, and now,
to-day"—he
paused a moment to strike a match—"when I went to look at those
things of mine it all came over me in a flash.  By Jove! it was
as
if I'd made them all into a big bonfire to light up my
road!"

     His wife was trembling with a kind of sacred terror.  She
had
been afraid to pray for light for him, and here he was joyfully
casting his whole past upon the pyre!

     "Is there nothing left?" she faltered.

     "Nothing left?  There's everything!" he exulted.  "Why, here
I am, not much over forty, and I've found out already—already!"
He stood up and began to move excitedly about the room.  "My God!

Suppose I'd never known!  Suppose I'd gone on painting things
like
that forever!  Why, I feel like those chaps at revivalist
meetings
when they get up and say they're saved!  Won't somebody please
start a hymn?"

     Claudia, with a tremulous joy, was letting herself go on the
strong current of his emotion; but it had not yet carried her
beyond her depth, and suddenly she felt hard ground
underfoot.

     "Mrs. Davant—" she exclaimed.

     He stared, as though suddenly recalled from a long
distance.

     "Mrs. Davant?"

     "We were to have met her—this afternoon—now—"

     "At the gallery?  Oh, that's all right.  I put a stop to
that;
I went to see her after I left you; I explained it all to
her."

     "All?"

     "I told her I was going to begin all over again."

     Claudia's heart gave a forward bound and then sank back
hopelessly.

     "But the panels—?"

     "That's all right too.  I told her about the panels," he
reassured her.

     "You told her—?"

     "That I can't paint them now.  She doesn't understand, of
course; but she's the best little woman and she trusts
me."

     She could have wept for joy at his exquisite obtuseness.
"But
that isn't all," she wailed.  "It doesn't matter how much you've
explained to her.  It doesn't do away with the fact that we're
living on those panels!"

     "Living on them?"

     "On the money that she paid you to paint them.  Isn't that
what brought us here?  And—if you mean to do as you say—to
begin
all over again—how in the world are we ever to pay her
back?"

     Her husband turned on her an inspired eye.

     "There's only one way that I know of," he imperturbably
declared; "and that's to stay out here till I learn how to paint
them."

</div1>

</text>
</TEI.2>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub