Finding and fostering the things that really matter

+ what I'm watching and my poem of the week

Far out!!! I could start every single newsletter with the same lament: the world is bonkers and broken, the madness seems infectious and I am trying not to spend all my waking hours anxiously wringing my hands. And it would be true. Last week when I went to write this newsletter my hands froze above the keyboard as I watched, with horror, the aftermath of the shooting of a young far right leader in the U.S. Charlie Kirk galvanised young conservatives and championed open debate, which is important, but he also advocated punishing academics for any sign of “leftist” views, and said some extreme and hateful things. The responses to his murder showed a bitterly divided America - the crowing was ugly, the threats were ugly and the retribution will be far uglier.

It’s like we need to make the case for decency all over again.

But I know that this Substack, and much of my work, is dedicated to working out what helps us endure when it feels like – or when we are in fact – paddling up a river of sewage. What makes us strong. Not as sop or distraction, not like zooming in on a kitten when a war blazes in the background and pretending that wee fluffball will make everything okay. But as an acknowledgment that humans' thirst for meaning, purpose and light, that this defines us and also makes life possible when it seems impossible. That sometimes, when the world is shadowed and we are seeing the worst of people – rage, greed, contempt, war, hate – that we need to remind ourselves of the best of people, too.

Which brings me to my dear friend Holly Ringland, best-selling author of books like The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and a delightful person, full of wonder, warmth, colour and creativity. When we found ourselves on simultaneous book tours, wheeling around festivals together, talking on stage (and being dubbed “joy experts”, how good is that) jumping in the Indian Ocean and going to a tattoo parlour, we forged a friendship of awe and ink. We’ve talked a lot about the state of the world, how hard it is to work out what to do, and about what it means to be creative in the midst of it.

So we decided to join together for a fundraiser for Doctors Without Borders – Medécins sans Frontières - those incredible medical teams who continually put their own lives and sanity at risk to venture into war zones, conflicts, famine to care for the ill, the injured, the starving and the dying. Several of them have been killed whilst working in Gaza.

It’s going to be in Sydney, at the Bondi Pavilion, on November 28. And it’s about “Finding and Fostering the Things that Really Matter” – family, friends, connection, love, beauty, art. Tickets are on sale now, we’d love to see you there. All proceeds will go to Doctors Without Borders.

If you’d like to hear one of our previous chats, you can find this talk we did at Angel Place for the Sydney Writers’ Festival, aired on ABC RN, here.

Some stuff I’ve done

So, as mentioned above, like many people, I’ve been horrified by the responses to the murder of MAGA figure Charlie Kirk - the appetite for violence, the lies, the distortions, the absence of unity as a political goal. I relished having Planet America’s Chas Licciardello back on the Not Stupid podcast (filling in for Jez, who is travelling) to discuss this. We dissected who the gunman was, why some on the right are so irrationally consumed by the idea of transgender shooters, and the contradictions in those people who espouse free speech then deny it to others – which we are seeing in spades right now. Chas fears dark times ahead.

On a lighter note, we also spoke about his new life-changing toe socks – no more blisters! If you’d like to see them, check the show out on Youtube!

The previous week, the NSW Chief Scientist Darren Saunders – whom some of you may remember from his frequent appearances on the Drum – joined me. As we are both ocean swimmers – and Darren is a surf life saver – we had a solid chat about sharks, and what the evidence shows about why they attack, what works to deter them, why humans are getting better at managing shark attacks (hint: the tourniquet) and what can happen to a local community when one of their own – most recently, a northern beaches surfer – is killed by a shark. We also looked at the question of whether shark nets can save us. It’s interesting to see a scientist consider the role of emotion in policies that have a weak evidentiary basis.

Stuff I'm into

I’ve just finished watching My Brilliant Friend on SBS on demand, and was absolutely gripped by it. Anyone who read Elena Ferrante’s excellent, internationally best selling four book series of Neapolitan novels will enjoy this depiction of two women growing up in Naples in the 1950s, yearning to study and write, becoming mothers and wives in the 1960s, managing the mafia, domestic violence, clashes between communism and fascism in the 1970s, shocking working conditions and a culture where any concept of the independence of women was generally considered anathema to order. The casting, the score (by Max Richter), the acting, are all superb. The Guardian called it “brilliant”, adding: “This is television at its best and it weaves a spell unlike anything I have seen in a very long time.” I agree.

Poem of the week

Here’s a treat from Simon Armitage, the superbly talented poet laureate of the U.K. who also happens to be a birdwatcher. I love the last two lines of this poem, called Nest Box, as well as the idea of an owl-angel baffling people, forcing us to both fire up our imaginations and look more closely at the natural world.

Nest Box by Simon Armitage

When the drunken old fool
saw the barn owl,

he swore blind it was an angel.
‘Half-human, half-eagle,’

he told someone in the town square.
‘White flames in mid-air,

a ghost with wings,’ he crowed
to the gathering crowd.

‘A weird presence
that materialised out of the heavens,’

he said to the scrum of reporters
before he keeled over.

They searched the meadow and heath
but found only pellets of small bones and teeth

and skulls and part-digested fur
and knotted hair.

Which was strange, because when the young girl
saw the angel she swore blind it was a barn owl,

but when birdwatchers went to the copse
and looked in the nest box

they found tinselly silver threads
and luminous turds

and a warm meteorite
and a few feathers made only of light.

Luminous turds and a warm meteorite seem the right note to end on.

These are tough times, friends, bewildering and exhausting.

Look skywards, hold tight and keep an eye out for feathers made of light.

With love,

Julia