In praise of being ordinary

Last night in Sydney the local  Chinese community gave Sydney a priceless cultural present to celebrate Chinese New Year.
This was a Twilight Parade, with elaborate floats, magnificent costumes, dancing, drums and dragons. Lots of dragons. It was reported as the largest Chinese celebration for New Year, outside of China. Who knows if that is true or not. It certainly felt true, as the parade worked its way through the centre of the city.
This has become a major event on the summer calender, for those who know that it is on. But The Chinese New Year doesn’t get a quarter of media promotion that is given to other festivals on in Sydney during summer.
More than 3 000 Chinese-Australians gave of their time energy and talent to make this parade happen. Ordinary people; mums, dads, kids, tradesmen, bankers, shopkeepers, chefs and clerks.
There were a few poobahs up the front of the parade, councilors, politicans and glamorous movie stars, soaking up glory. But the rest of the paraders were our neighbours and schoolmates.
About 100 000 people came into town to enjoy the spectacle as spectators. But that means about 4 million people didn’t get to see this magnificent cultural celebration.
And how did the media bring this massive event into our homes. About 7 seconds viewing on the TV news, photographed in the dark. A small paragraph in the paper; with no photos. A story about a picnic in the park earlier in the day got more media coverage.
All those people who spent months rehearsing, training, practicing, making costumes, raising funds really add quality and depth to life in Sydney.
As I walked around Hyde park earlier in the afternoon I was constantly greeted with smiles, laughter, people pleased for a chance to show off their costumes and show me how they brought dragons to life during the Twilight Parade.

For more images of the costumes in the parade, have a look at my Flickr gallery

My grandmother was buried in an unmarked grave. Her choice.
I wouldn’t mind following her example. My choice.
If my grandchildren need some scratches on a slab of marble in order to remember me, then I have probably wasted too much of my time here on earth.
There are many paupers’ graves marked in pencil, with a number written on a piece of wood that’s been stuck into the grass. O tempore. O mores.
Something grander is needed for all the forgotten people.
The British tomb of The Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey holds an unidentified British soldier killed on a European battlefield during the First World War. This everyday battle-body is buried in splendour amongst Kings, and Princes of the church.
The idea for the British national monument was spawned by a rough grave on the western front, marked by a rough cross which bore the pencil-written legend ‘An Unknown British Soldier’.
The anonymity of the entombed soldier is key to the symbolism of the monument: since his or her identity is unknown, it could theoretically be the tomb of anyone who fell in service of the nation, and therefore serves as a monument to all of their sacrifices. My father died in the war, and his body was never recovered. I never knew the man, but by all the war memorials, I can know his deeds.
Now many nations have similar memorials, more frequently recognising unknown soldiers, sailors and airmen, rather than an ‘unknown warrior’.
I wonder why we can’t also have a magnificent public tomb for all the unknown citizens who may not have family or friends to see the good they have done passed on through time, rather than have that good interred with their bones.
I think of all the unknown and unrecognized citizens who are alive today who, when they die, may never be remembered. They haven’t been a burden on the state, there is no record of them having been a trouble.
They are everyman, the faceless neighbour down the street, the forgotten relative, the quiet unassuming stranger whom you pass in the city without a glance; Joe Public or Edna Average.
They go about their lives unseen, unsung and uncelebrated, living a life swimming with the tide.
These are people who are solid, hard working independent citizens. But forgotten. Death, as in life, really does mean oblivion for them. Sometimes their words and ideals might live on, quoted by millions, but recognized only as being from ‘anonymous’.
My idea is that the house of debate in every democratic parliament should have a magnificent memorial to the Unknown Citizen, built in a central position in the lower house. The remains of the Unknown Citizen would be firmly positioned between the leader of the government and the leader of the loyal opposition, so that every issue of debate would have ‘every citizen’ at its core. No politician in the chamber couldn’t avoid this symbolic memorial to constituents they never took the time to get to know.

Charles Wolfe. 1791–1823

Why is the Baby Boomer generation treated as if they are special and important? There’s nothing extraordinary about people born between ’45 and ’64, except there are lots of them.

I beat the rush. I was a result of the start of the war. In 1939 my mum met a handsome bloke, a new recruit who probably looked good to her in his new uniform. He enlisted almost as soon as war was declared. He probably used the old soldiers line “ I am going away, and might not come back. We only have tonight for me tor remember while I am over there, fighting”. He was right, he didn’t come back.

We war babies grew up in a society strongly over represented by women. I was on the map too late to have been a part of the great depression, but I can remember my family was still affected by the poverty from those times.

There was no male in the household to earn the normal male based income of the time, so mum worked in an armaments factory during the war, and my grandmother cleaned houses for the officers’ wives class. This was a time governed by shortages, not just shortage of cash. This was a time of rationing books, meat was rationed, petrol was rationed, eggs and sugar were rationed ” for the war effort”. Our family saucepans were taken, to melt down for aircraft parts.

My family saved string, darned socks and budgeted all week to give me threepence pocket money on Saturday when I started school.

Then I was too old and conservative (in my twenties) to really be bona fide participant in the youth revolution of the sixties, the one big time when Boomers did something for the world.  Boomer time was a time of plenty, and immediate satisfaction. They, and my grandkids want it all, and they want it now!

I was ready for retirement when most of the Baby Boom bunch were worrying about their mid-life crisis. The The government began to worry about the cost of paying pensions to that great swell of Boomers, so they announced a plan to give a big bonus to Baby Boomers to stay on at work instead of retiring. Sadly, I retired a month before the scheme started, so I missed out on a lovely big lump sum.

I went back to work because the pension for war babies wasn’t enough to live on.

And now the government has announced a new financial incentive scheme to encourage the Boomers to stay on a work. I am five years past the old retirement age; my employer has decided to make me redundant, to make room for more Boomers on the staff.

 I will work till I drop. After all, I am part of the generation who will make do. My only choice is to work independantly. The pension will put me on a new form of ration card

Now I am only a blogger. I am a late starter in this field. Its a new career, and I need to find a way to beat the Boomers, and make some living money from the business.