Playing Trains

Vol. 2 No 5 June 1992 $4.00 Playing Trains Switching points: Margaret Simons on railway reform Creation, new physics, no new answers J.J.C. Smart takes on Paul Davies Mark Coleridge juggles with Genesis Eamonn in error Margaret Coffey on the case of Bishop Casey People's Pari<, Tianjin, December 1991 Photo by Emmanuel Santos Elders in Tianjin amuse themselves with pet birds. Each day they take the birds out into the park, release them for exercise and entice them back with food. Before the Cultural Revolu tion the pastime was regarded as 'bourgeois', and it was banned for a time under Mao Zedong. Now, as politics and ways of life change, owning pet birds has become popular again. June 1992 marks the third anniversary of the Tienanmen massacre. Volume 2 Number 5 June 1992 A magazine of public affaiis, the arts and theology CoNTENTS 4 27 COMMENT QUIXOTE Peter Steele sizes up the season; Frank Stilwell considers Fightbacl<! and 28 equity (p 7); Margaret Coffey recalls Bishop SHIFTING ALLIANCES Eamonn Casey (pl2). Two ALP stalwarts have quit the party. Ross McMullin asked them why. 6 LETTERS 30 REVIEW ESSAYS 8 J.J. C. Smart gives a philosopher's per RUNNING OFF THE RAILS spective on Paul Davies' The Mind of Margaret Simons looks at the future of God; Mark Coleridge offers a biblical Australia's railways; Dermot Dorgan scholar's view (p33). remembers the red rattler (pll ). 34 13 MUSINGS CAPITAL LETTER A theology of bird watching, by Aileen Kelly; Timing, a poem by Peter Steele. 14 TRADING PLACES 35 Paul Rodan investigates the eagerness of OBITUARY Australian universities to chase the over Christopher Willcock pays tribute to seas student dollar. Olivier Messiaen. 15 36 ARCHIMEDES BOOKS Ray Cassin salutes The Death of Napo 16 leon by Simon Leys; Michael McGirr REPORTS discussesThe Last Magician with author Cover graphic and graphic p22 Paul Ormonde on SO years of the Move Janette Turner Hospital (p37). by Siobhan jackson and Tim Mctherall. rnent; Andrew Hamilton on El Salvador, Photo p2 by Emmanuel Santos. Photo p5 by Andrew Stark. and Alan Nichols on Burma (p20). 40 Photo pp28-9 by Bill Thomas. FLASH IN THE PAN Cartoons pp6, 36 by Dea n Moore; 18 Reviews of the films Nal<ed Lunch; p41 by Michael Cusack. CALLING IN COLUMBUS' DEBTS Europa, Europa; Ben Hur; and Meeting The year of Columbus is also the year of Venus. indigenous peoples, writes Frank Brennan. 42 Eureka Street magazi ne 22 SPECIFIC LEVITY jesuit Publications LOOKING FOR SIGNS AND WONDERS PO Box 553 Jean Vernette surveys New Age religions; Ri hmond VIC 3 121 Tel (03)427 731 1 Michael McGirr talks to Judy-Ann Steed, Fax (03)428 4450 palm and tarot-card reader (p26 ). COMMENT P ETER STEELE A magazine o( public affairs, the arts and theology Publisher Michael Kelly SJ Editor Morag Fn1ser Production editor Ray Cassin Design co nsultant John van Loon Production assistants Paul Fyfc SJ, Chri s Jenkins SJ Co ntributing editors 'A sad tale's best Adelaide: Frances Browne IBVM Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ Darwin: Margaret Palmer for winter' Perth: Dean Moore Syd ney: Edmund Campion, Gerard Windsor European correspondent: Damicn Simonis US co rresponden t: Mi chael Harter SJ Editorial board Peter L'Estr<mge SJ (chair), Margaret Coady, Margaret Coffey, Madeline Duckett RSM, Tom Duggan, Trevor Hales, Christine Martin, 'IT"w<Nm.' Sometimes, when th" is soid, it can cany •n Kevin McDonald, joan Nowotny IB VM, emotional freight almost like the 'It was night' of John's Gospel, Lyn Nossal, Ruth Pcndavingh, when Judas goes out into the da rkness. The words stand for Peter Steele SJ, Cletus Storey FSC, more than the halt that the wheel of the seasons has made at Bill Uren SJ the m oment. N obody says, 'in the dead of summer', or autumn, or spring; when we say, 'in the dead of winter', we lmow what Advertising representative: Tim Stoney we m ean. As the skies darken, we have trouble on our hands. Business manager: Louise Metres Napoleon said that he wanted 'three o'clock in the morn Accounts manager: Bernadette Bacash ing' courage in his soldiers: the dead of winter is three o'clock Patrons in the morning of the year. Things are worse in another hemi Ewel<a SLreeL gratefull y acknowledges the sphere, they keep telling us. In Iceland, the period after Christ support of C. L. Adami; the trustees of th e estate mas is the height of the suicide season, partly because the winter of Miss M. Condon; D.M. Cullity; festivities have taken place and things still don't seem any F.G. Gargan; W.P. Gurry; J.F. O'Brien; better, so they wade out to sea until they drown or freeze. It is A.F. Mol yneux; V.). Peters; not quite like that in Australia. Anon.; the Roche family; Anon .; But at least in southern Australia we arc left in no doubt Si r Donald and Lad y Trescowthick; about the season of the year. The air turns sloppy, the earth Mr and Mrs Lloyd Williams. turns slushy, fires seem roo far away, and water-well, water Emelw Street magazine, ISS 1036-175R, i like the sea's revenge upon the creatures that deserted it Austr<l li a Post registered publication VAR 91 - 0756, those millions of years ago. This is the time of unpleasant in is published eleven times a yea r stability, chastening, aggressive, inhumane. It is the bleak by Eure ka Street Magazi ne Pty Ltd, festival for snuffling, the period in which our bodies are as 300 Vicroria Street, Richmond, Victoria 3 12 1. sailed, the m onths in which adults who otherwise walk tall Responsi hi Ii ty for cdi tori a I con tent is accepted by suddenly wheeze and splutter like small children. It is, as a Michae l Kell y, 300 Victoria Street, Ri chmond. brilliant villain calls it, 'the winter of our discontent'. Printed by Doran Printing, Shakespeare's Richard III was speaking mainly about the 4 C ommercial Road, H ighett VIC 3 190. political milieu. Today, still, many live in political winters, or © jesuit Publications 1992 in their remnants. I think of two recent visitors to Melbourne, The editOr welcomes letters and unsolicited manu men of the highest distinction. One was Adam Michnik, and cripts, including poetry and fiction. Manuscripts w ill the other the Dalai Lama. Michnik, now middle-aged, was first be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self- in gaol in Poland at 19, politically vexatious because a free addressed envelope. Requests for permission to reprint spirit. Outspoken, resolute, very intelligent, and gifted to a high material from the magaz ine should be addressed in degree with the capacity for eloquent contempt of sleaze and writing to: T he editor, Eurel<a Street magazine, malice, he has been one of the great ones of central and eastern PO Box S53, Ri chmond VIC 3 121. Europe, the people compared with whom its recent gaolers look 4 EUREKA STREET • j UNE 1992 like manikins. At a dinner him the kind of welcome not given in Michnik's honour, com monly fo und in such a passage fr om one of his places. Perhapsit recognised writings was read out in in this man the fo llowing of which he said that he and his aspirations that we can all friends had resolved to be identify in ourselves, be the have 'as if we were living in cultural seasons of the world a free country'. It is a haunt what they will. ing sentence, and not only 'A sad tale's best for because he has paid dearly for winter! I have one of sprites fo llowing its logic. and goblins', ays a charac It is haunting because it ter in The Winter's Tale, can be applied universally. beginning a story which is Ordinary Poles-and Hun interrupted and not finished. garians, and Czechs, and 'Sprites and goblins', alien Russians-have lived for spirits often mischievous decades in a political winter, and som etim es dem onic, which has brought distress at can haunt our winters, indi best and death at worst. Try vidual or shared. Ursula K. ing to live there as if one Le Guin's The Left Hand of were in a free country must Darl<ness- 'light is the left often have seemed like fatu hand of darkness'-is set on ity, a kind of Unrealpolitil<. a planet whose name is Now by analogy, all of us, 'Winter', a milieu in which inhabitants of the land we all the human quest for call 'the world', are visited Bondi Pavilion, winter. Photo: Andrew Stark depth of meaning and dura from time to time by the bility of love has still to be suspicion that perhaps we carried through . On the should be living 'as if we were The ancient Irish poets used to planet we know best, that in a free country'. Very clear quest has to be pursued not ly we are not, at present, liv compose while lying down, just through a segm ent of ing in that country. A world the year but in every quad so repeatedly embattled, so cowled in their great cloaks, in rant of the heart. given to avidities, so sys T wo images, in con tematically narcissistic, so the dark and cold of the beehive clusion. First, in Donne's A apt for satire, is not 'a free Hymn to Christ, at the country'. But it will always stone huts in that often wintry A u thor's last going into get worse, always and every Germany, he writes, 'As the where get worse, unles the islan d.

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