Mistakes were made

 In a class I run, I teach students about passive language. If you can finish a sentence with 'BY ZOMBIES, then it it is passive sentence. Steven King in On Writing goes to town on passive language. Kathy Bates would be hobbling her writerly students but I'm quite nice about it really. 

I write BY ZOMBIES on the whiteboard. "It's at its most insidious when it comes to police statements. They want to cover their arses right? They don't want to say if the perp is male or female so they just say 'the body was carried to the river.'" Then I point to the whiteboard. BY ZOMBIES. "The most insidious reason for passive language when it comes to cops is when they talk about sexual violence against women. By using this language, for example: 'A woman was attacked in Como last night', they are placing the word woman as the actor in that sentence, not the perpetrator." Dismay ripples across my class as this sinks in.

This post has started quite serious when I had funny in mind.  Yes, mistakes were made BY ZOMBIES. 

A handsome cyclist stopped outside my local supermarket. I was at the checkout when he got off his bike outside and stared at me through the window. He looked straight at me. I was buying wine and broccoli and a newspaper and his look was quite intense. Then he smiled at me, this beautiful huge smile. I could see that he knew me, saw me, recognised me. I smiled back. It was a bit weird because I wasn't sure if I even knew this fit, blonde-haired, genetically blessed human. Then he kind of did this thing with his hair, smoothing it down and then ruffling it. He smiled again and pushed his fingers through his hair and I thought, with my broccoli and wine and newspaper at the checkout: Jesus, he's checking out his own reflection in the window.

There are times in life where we think oh dear I think I got that one completely fucking wrong.We can cover it for a little while with the beautiful prevarications of passive language: mistakes were made.

I hadn't seen Brownie for a few weeks.He's been fishing at the inlet for the whole time I've lived here and then I read his funeral notice in the local paper. It was the last few weeks of the commercial season and I hadn't seen him for a while, so when I saw the funeral notice I thought he's died. Brownie has actually died! He'd had a heart attack at my place a few years ago. Maybe that had happened again?

So I logged onto the streaming service of his funeral and watched family members go back and forth like goldfish on the screen: welcoming friends, family, people sitting down in the chapel. Music played, the whole service going forward. Images of Brownie went up on the screen as the celebrant began to talk. 

It was then that I realised I was at someone else's funeral. This was not Brownie. The photographs on the screen showed a complete stranger to me. The ease of being at an online funeral is so weird. I was at the wrong funeral and watching a different family process their grief.

 This felt pretty fucking weird to tell you the truth. It was like I'd crashed a wedding as a bad actor in a romance. I slapped down the lap top lid and took a few breaths. I felt quite creepy. Does that make sense?

 

Notes From The Tower

FAQ

Mount Frankland is part of the DBCA’s tourist trails in the national parks around Walpole, so naturally the fire tower folk meet plenty of people on holidays. Summitting climbers are often surprised to see someone in the tower and here are some of their questions.

 

“Dr Livingston, I presume?”

Yes, and I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you

 

“What are you doing?”

I’m looking for smoke and doing weather reports.

 

“Are they still doing this? I thought that was back in the olden days!”

We’ve been doing fire and weather lookout here since the 1960s. It’s a simple system for early detection of bushfires.

 

“Do you serve ice-cream?”

No. Bring your own ice-cream.

 

“Do you get taken up by helicopter?”

I got up here the same way as you just did.

 

“Great office!”

I know, right?

 

“Do you come up here every day?”

Yes, between December and March.

 

“Don’t you use AI or drones?”

Human eyes and knowledge of the landscape is pretty accurate. AI cameras are getting better at detecting smoke and one day my job will be sitting in front of a computer rather than atop a mountain. At the moment, I can see a smoke hours before it registers on a heat map.

 

“Are you alone the whole time?”

I hope you may be parsing this question wrong but also please don’t be creepy.

 

“How many hours do you do?”

That depends on the fire danger index. My day gets longer as the FDI goes up.

 

“Are you a volunteer?”

(This question always bugs me. Who would volunteer their whole summer when they could be making heaps of money elsewhere. Unless they are retired – and therefore, the insinuation is that I’m old and retired? Whoa, it’s getting personal now.)

No. I’m paid very well, thank you very much.

 

“Do you climb up three times a day like those old tower guys?”

I bring up my lunch.

 

“How many fires have you seen?”

Lots. Christmas Day, New Years Day and I caught that one over near Mt Barker a week ago.

 

“There are no toilets up here. Where do you go to the toilet?”

Bush wees are no problem. Bush poos are horrible and problematic. Would you like me to elaborate?

 

“What do you do with your time?”

I love audio books and podcasts and the radio. I can’t really read books because my eyes are down and I need to be looking up and around, constantly scanning the horizon.

Aftermath of the waterstorm

Last weekend the inlet looked like this as the wind created a storm surge that smashed into the bush.

  

 

And this is the inlet today: See that little grove of melaluca trees? It's the same one!

 

For weeks the inlet swelled and I was thinking, one more winter storm will do it, and then after another storm, well the next one should break it. 

"Never seen her so punishing, so angry," an old resident said, when I sent him a video of the water's influx on Saturday. It was hard to go outside into the intense, oxygenated air. It just felt relentless and the waves were throwing white foam everywhere. Chesapeake road became impassable as the inlet crept through the karri forests and all the river systems backed up. Eventually there was just nowhere for the water to go.

Finally, after days of insane wind and rain, the sand bar to the sea broke open. I woke up on Monday morning, looked out the window and realised we had a beach again. It was an eery feeling after all the drama. A Xenotopia, an in-between space where even the ravens breathed out a more measured Faaark!

Today we headed east along the beach, looking for things, beach combing for plastic and treasure. Peacocky tea tree oil from the forest was still leaching across the freshly exposed undersea.

 

 

 

The trees seemed surprised, caught unawares and exposed after months of being under water. The inlet dropped about 6 feet in as many days. Some of the trees displayed the tattered rosettes of their neighbours' papery bark, wearing them like survivor prizes. 

  

In the photo below, you may see something that looks like a bird's nest. It's not. It's flotsam from the water storm. We looked up in wonder and I measured myself against it, I'm tall but not that tall. "It's like a king tide," said H.

 

Paper bark trees hammered by the water are the most obvious signs of how high the inlet went. They have the tide lines etched into their skin.

 

On How Marrow Bones Can Kill You

And no, this is not about a reality cook-off show where the cravated judge eats a bone marrow risotto and then dies of a heart attack*

This is the story of a plant in Western Australia that contains a poisonous compound - well there are many - but a plant in the gastrolobium family is especially famous for creating havoc with the colonisers. The names Poison Point, Poison Hill and Poison Swamp are mapped by cattlemen when driving their stock out to the coast to feed in the summertime. They mapped the areas where the gastrolobiums grew and they deliberately kept sheep, cattle and goats away from the beautiful egg and bacon plants.

This plant was later developed by the government and made into a synthetic version of its essence: sodium fluoroacetate or 1080: a biochemical weapon now used to get rid of feral animals such as cats, dogs, pigs and foxes.These animals were driving native fauna into extinction So this pretty little heart-shaped plant became weaponised against the ferals. Most native animals who fed on this plant over millennia were totally immune to its killer effects. This is why it is such a perfect poison for interlopers.

Every few months, a plane flies laps over my place. It is the baiting plane, dropping poisonous baits into the national park that surrounds me. I'm constantly warned by letters that these dried sausage baits full of 1080 are highly attractive to dogs and cats.The last time my dog ate one from the beach below my house, it cost her a general anesthetic and probably several years of her life. Her stomach was pumped out with charcoal and I copped a two thousand dollar bill. It will kill her next time. That is the cost of living next to a national park and with a wandersome old dog who still thinks she is invincible.

Every time I hear the baiting plane droning overhead me, I hate it. I really hate that plane. I know they are doing the right thing but I still hate that plane.

I haven't got to the point about bone marrow and what it has to do with sp.gastrolobium, 1080 and dogs. So bear with me here.

In 1885, a Mr Web wrote to the Australian Advertiser (28/07/1885) about cooking up a bronze wing pigeon for breakfast and giving the dogs the wish bone. "I have just had a valuable dog poisoned by eating the breastbone of a Bronze wing pigeon." The dog had died a terrible death. "I have seen dogs die of arsenic or prussic acid but their sufferings seemed mild compared to that poisoning from the bones of the bronze wing pigeon." He then went onto the idea that the bronze wing pigeons, who feed primarily on the poison bush gastrilobium bilobum, excrete the the poison really quickly from their bodies but store it in their marrow bones. This was one of the original 1080 poisonings and it came from introduced dogs eating the marrow bones of bronze wings.

'A valuable dog' 

 

Show me the money, tech bro

 It's no compliment to know your book has been used to train an AI machine. It feels dismaying, infuriating and gut wrenching.

 'My book has been dismantled, broken up for parts and sold to a wrecking yard.'

'It feels like someone has broken into my house and stolen my stuff.'

'Fucking livid!' 

'Why bother creating anything, if these guys are just gonna steal it for dollars and get away with it?'

'I wanted to vomit when I found out.' 

These are very real responses from Australian authors, as Meta scrapes our books and songs to train their AI Llama3. In January, the world was alerted to Meta's use of pirated copies of books and academic papers. Not long after, The Atlantic published a search option where you could check if your book, song, artwork or academic paper had been scraped by Meta. It's here. One of my books is in there. Fucking Facebook, just like Google, are still being evil.

So ... this week in Australia, the Productivity Commission released a report on 'unlocking the benefits of AI' and suggested that we exclude the Copyright Act for fair dealing with AI companies. 'Fair dealing' means sacrificing our books and songs to the machines. There has been an uproar from creative workers because our government is basically giving a license to mega rich AI companies to steal our books, songs and art without paying us a cent in royalties.

I've had many philosophical conversations recently with artists, writers and academics. We are entering a new age where some creatives are using AI to make really interesting work and others are being pummeled by Copilot's idiotic suggestions and bad memes, while Google's dodgey AI just makes shit up:

(I managed to track down the 'source' of this lie to a 2023 Classics conference where someone gave a paper on Jane Austen, claiming that she considered Wollstonecraft as literary parentage. So, for Google's AI it therefore follows that Wollstonecraft is actually Austen's biological mother.) When accused of lying, the chat bot will come back with the grovelling apology of a problematic drinker. Promises to do better follow.

I teach in areas of English Literature and History. Call me a Luddite but I will die on the hill of arguing that to write an essay or short story is to think through a problem. It is not about getting high distinctions for typing an elegant prompt to ChatGPT. It's about writing through a problem. Mary Wollstonecraft  thought through a problem when she wrote A Vindication for the Rights of Women. Descartes thought through a problem and came up with I think, therefore I am. Both of these thinkers did not need Meta or Copilot to nut out their argument in 2 seconds. Slow work is where great creative breakthroughs happen.

What is happening now feels like a dilution of our brains and our language and it comes at the expense of critical thinking and people who create art, music and literature.

There is hope though, at least in this nook of the woods. Maybe work written by humans will soon be worth more than AI slop. At the moment we are being fleeced by out of control tech billionaires who buy governments and dictate international policy. It's a terrible analogy ... but like free-range, hormone-free chicken, perhaps the product of careful work and thinking can win out in this situation and be worth more.

 The Australian Productivity Commission has proposed to allow big tech companies access to copyrighted Australian content to build their artificial intelligence platforms without compensating creators, like this is a good idea to sell out our national cultural canon! At the moment there are class actions by authors in the US against Meta illegally scraping their books. In Australia, there are no laws yet to prevent this kind of behaviour and the Productivity Commission appears to think it is all cool. So ... crickets.

Liz and the Tingles

The generator is whirring outside tonight. I say whirring, maybe it is thumping. Anyway, the generator is a presence, a petrol-induced entity who keeps the lights and internet on. My batteries connected to the solar panels are giving me ambivalent signals right now. Living off grid is a constant mind-state of thinking about power sources.

Last week a young woman contacted me. 'Hi Sarah, I'd like to interview you about your part in the Women's Work project. Could we set up a time for me to film you talking about this project?' 

As always, I was driving between towns. Someone once told me I have a house in Gemini, which means I live in two houses and this is so true. I replied, stuck in road works world between two towns, 'Coming into town. Can we meet at Lawley Park?'

There were several vehicles at Lawley Park when I turned up. It was lunch time, so some council workers stretched by their truck, a stray Winnebago lurched between the big colonial trees and there was that guy in a lime green Holden commodore. The driver of a crimson people mover looked like she just needed to get away from her kids.

Rachel from the television news network got out of her white SUV and started setting up tripods, checking her camera and testing the audio. From my old lady point of view, she looked like she was about 11 but she was actually a pretty competent woman in her 20s. She interviewed me for about fifteen minutes, went back to work, did the editing and production work herself and her story was on the news by 5.30 pm.

I'm bringing up this scene because I have spent several months creating a simple audio visual story to contribute to the Women in Media, Wimmin's Work project. The State Library asked me to contribute a story and I was like, 'Of course, yes! I can do audio work.'  (ummm). After months of quite intense sessions on my own with head phones and still learning the lingo, I came up with this:

I mean - it took me months! And Rachel from Channel 7 did much the same thing in about three hours. I'm now in awe of people who can put together a story so fast. Anyway ... enjoy my foray into AV. It's been a trip. If you would like to see other stories from the same project, go here: 

https://slwa.wa.gov.au/wimminswork

Valley of the Giants

This is a poem by Dorothy Hewett, an esteemed Western Australian poet with legendary status in these parts.

THE VALLEY OF THE GIANTS

In the burnt-out trunk
in the karri forest
myself my little sister
hand in hand
one dark one fair
one bonnetted one
with a nimbus
of platinum hair
like lost children
out of a gothic tale
behind us his akubra hatted
head
sprouting unseen antlers
our father the wood demon
growing out of a tree
snapped up by a box brownie
the 60 year old negative
exposed like a parable
the dark father
the dark child
subdued and powerful
the blonde
in her white dress
blazing into the light
transitory
as a cabbage moth
alighting for an instant
in the forest

those judging figures
orchestrate the scene
rising out of the litter
on the forest floor
implacable as horned owls
the giant tree's fallen down
the children grown
the tragic rotting order overthrown.