Mythical Guy (‘Silent Night’)

NASA Photo: ‘The Blue Marble’ photo taken on 7 December 1972 by Apollo 17 (the last human mission to the Moon), some 29,000 km from Earth on the way out to the Moon. Wikimedia Commons.

In honour of advancing critical thinking and placing myth and tradition in a place of cultural memory, this filk song is to be sung to the tune of Silent Night*
(*With acknowledgement to Franz Xaver Gruber and Joseph Mohr)

Mythical guy, cultural lie.
We believe – why, oh why?
Jesus, Moses and Abraham,
Each of them is a mythical man.
Use your brain to make good,
They’re fiction like Robin Hood.

Critical thought, freedom long fought,
Adult life – much hard bought.
Accept your responsibility,
Live up to capability.
God and his holy cause
They’re as real as Santa Claus.

Life is too short, do as you ought,
Use your critical thought.
Superstition we leave behind,
Forge a future that’s hopeful and kind.
Use your passion to live,
Use your compassion to give.

Racism? No. Sexism? No.
Watch our education grow.
Prejudice and homophobia,
Hatred and Islamophobia.
We reject as we grow.
We look ahead as we grow.

No reliance upon what’s past,
Use science to make life last.
Education and evidence,
Using reason and your common sense.
Learn and research and share,
The future is ours if we dare.

© 2020 Geoff Allshorn

In Praise of Human Rights

In honour of Human Rights Day, 10 December.

“…What is loved endures…” (J. Michael Straczynski).

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

10 December each year marks the anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document compiled by many people including possibly LGBT-aligned Eleanor Roosevelt. It has shaped much of our modern world with a secular humanist framework against which some modern forces of religious intolerance are actively agitating.

We should pause every day to commemorate our human rights and recommit ourselves to protecting and enacting these precepts. Most emphatically, we should celebrate the human rights activism that is undertaken by many people around the world.

I pay homage to the activism of Ruth Coker Burks*, who, back in the days before modern medications turned HIV into a largely manageable medical condition, worked selflessly to help those afflicted with AIDS. She recalls her first AIDS patient, a young man dying alone in hospital after being abandoned by family, and whose pleas for his mother were being ignored by nursing staff. When she – a visitor to the hospital and a total stranger – went into his room to comfort him, he had an emotional reaction:

“”Oh Mama, I knew you’d come,” he said, in that small, reaching voice. I was so confused that I just stood there, my feet glued to the floor. Then he started to cry…
…But then he tried to reach his hand out to me. I couldn’t not take his hand in mine.
“Mama,” he said again.
“Yes,” I said, squeezing his hand gently, “I’m here.”
(“All The Young Men ”, by Ruth Coker Burks)

I also celebrate the courage of Philonise Floyd and Judy Shepherd and Ziauddin Yousafzai and Rebiya Kadeer and Mordechai Vanunu and Nelson Mandela and many others who seek to turn their personal tragedies or tribulations into a larger triumph for the human rights of others.

I pay testimony to those who look beyond their own civil rights and seek to promote wider human rights, such as those activists who look beyond Marriage Equality in their own country and seek to assist LGBTQIA+ people who face much harsher conditions in Africa or Russia or across the Commonwealth or elsewhere.

Human rights are not simply about whether or not people should feel compelled to wear face masks in order to protect themselves and others from a viral pandemic (that is not human rights, that is basic human decency); nor is it about granting special rights to an elite group and allowing them to discriminate against others. Human rights is about recognising the equality of all people: our right to life, to joy, to kindness and to dignity, to be treated as part of our human family. Sascha Sagan encapsulates this in her recent book:

“Being alive was presented to me as profoundly beautiful and staggeringly unlikely, a sacred miracle of random chance. My parents taught me that the universe is enormous and we humans are tiny beings who get to live on an out-of-the-way planet for a blink of an eye. And they taught me that, as they once wrote, “for small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love”.”
(“For Small Creatures Such As We ”, by Sasha Sagan, p. 5)

We do not need to seek meaning or purpose in esoteric, supernatural or external sources. Our search ends much closer to home: in our common humanity. In our human quest for significance, we can find no greater purpose than to enrich the lives of others; anyone seeking immortality should ponder how fighting for human rights leaves a legacy that endures.

© 2020 Geoff Allshorn

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(*My study of HIV/AIDS has been connected to a PhD study. This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.)

Christmas Is Coming…

Bah, humbug? The Ghost of Christmas Repast…

Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash

Christmas in Australia has an antipodean flavour. In recent years, some Aussies have bewailed those who proclaim ‘happy holidays’, declaring that there is a ‘war on Christmas’ even while they offer libations to our cultural symbol of consumerism: an obese bloke overdressed in a heavy red suit, who sprinkles gifts like confetti during sweltering bushfire season.

Perhaps I am living proof of George Carlin’s notion that, “Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.” I was not always so caustic. As a child, I used to wonder whether the star on top of the Christmas tree represented enlightenment or some similar paragon of virtue shining its light on the world. Despite my atheism today, I wish that Christmas – or religion in general – still deserved such symbolism. It would give the religious community a just reason to feel proud.

Instead, Christmas today seems to represent two things: gluttony on Christmas Day (please pass the turkey!), and the bestowing of gifts aplenty upon children and other family members as evidence that the prosperity doctrine is correct: God or Santa rewards good people with abundance, while punishing bad people with scarcity. Maybe someone should throw a spare turkey bone at hippie, socialist Jesus and his proclamations of helping the poor and oppressed?

If I could make a Christmas wish for Australia, it would be that Christians – including those Members of Parliament who profess such a faith – would revisit the human truths contained within the fable of infant boat person, Moses, who was accepted and welcomed into a new family and culture; and of refugee Jesus, seeking shelter in a nation that told him they had no room.

I would also hope that non-Christians and those of no religious faith – a growing and significant percentage – would look beyond the hypocrisy and affluence of Australia’s Christian elite, and find sanctuary in the supposed aspirations of a Parliament which professes certain ethical tenets but fails to practice them, and in a national culture that pays lip service to providing a “fair go” for the underdog while openly favouring the privileged. May our lives be the answer to the prayers of those whose faith allows them to pray away the world’s problems. “She’ll be right mate” should be a self-fulfilling Australian ambition to help others rather than a casually dismissive retort.

Let’s be honest. Despite platitudes of good will and peace on earth, the reality is that life – and death – go on, even during Christmas. For people affected by physical or mental health issues, homelessness, domestic violence, poverty, entrenched discrimination or myriad other problems, will this really be the season of good will, or simply another time of being overlooked?

Photo by Heiko Otto on Unsplash

In this sunburnt country, this stolen land, this vast panorama of yabbies and yobbos, of fires and football, we still largely defer to the cultures and religions of overseas nations and times. We have yet to formulate a collective culture of our own, born in the dusts and ochres of our home soil and underneath the stars of the Milky Way Galaxy that seeded our world and sheltered our indigenous cultures for millennia. Australians need what might be termed spirituality – not religious waffle, but a way of being authentic to their humanity and to their world.

If there is surely one ‘real’ meaning of Christmas, it that it’s for life, not just for Christmas. Learning from First Nations cultures, perhaps the wider Australian experience should adopt a Dreaming that does not focus upon ghosts of Christmas past, present, or future, but upon ‘everywhen’, a timelessness where we can come together and live in a way that respects people, environment, and planet.

As a Humanist, I do not experience Christmas in terms of religious devotion or worship, but as a time when the importance of family – whether nuclear or blended or extended or alternative, whether biological or technological or communal or universal – is celebrated. What will we each do this Christmas to help others in our universal human family? Are we our brother’s (or sister’s) keeper?

Perhaps we could learn from the life and altruism of Australian hero Sidney Myer, whose benevolence extended into Christmas and beyond the Great Depression:

On Christmas Day 1930 he had endeavoured to cheer the unemployed by holding a vast Christmas dinner for over 10,000 people at the Exhibition Building; free tram travel was provided, a band played, and every child received a present.

We do not all have the financial resources of Sidney Myer, but we can have the greatness of spirit if we dare. This is why I have published this Christmas blog article some weeks ahead of the event; I hope to inspire people to change their plans for Christmas, and instead consider the following possibilites…

Instead of buying that self-indulgent Christmas gift, might we instead donate the money to kiva or a charity to help others? Instead of purchasing generic greeting cards, why not buy charity greeting cards? Instead of attending that expensive Christmas social event, perhaps instead volunteer that time (and money) to a local homeless shelter or humanitarian cause? Why not forego the artificial Christmas tree, and spend an afternoon doing some real-life tree planting or helping some other environmental cause? Instead of stocking your home full of extraneous trinkets and baubles, why not gift the money to a homeless person? Maybe forego buying that ostentatious set of Christmas lights for the front garden, and instead use the money to light up the life of someone in need?

Are there ways we can invert the consumerist nature of Christmas and make it truly a time of sharing and celebration: for example, turning the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ into a 12-day marathon of creatively gifting to others in need? Better still, why not work out how to do some of these things all year round?

That would surely be a worthwhile Christmas gift to humanity. Happy holidays.

© 2020 Geoff Allshorn

See It And Understand

In honour of World AIDS Day, 1 December 2020.

While the world largely regards COVID-19 as an unusual and singular event in living memory, the reality is that many epidemics and pandemics have swept the world. We can learn from another pandemic in our recent past that has killed millions and changed our cultural and human landscape – or have we already forgotten its many, many lessons?

While flags, uniforms and banners might arguably be seen as aligning with nationalism, elitism, or other forms of division, fabrics can also be used to bring people together in widespread community bonding – none more self evident than with the AIDS Quilt, which formed a strong public testimonial between the late 1980s and the early years of the 21st century. Fighting stigma and prejudice, the Quilt served a public function during a public health emergency.

Today, a COVID-impacted world could learn from the achievements of the activists, mothers, families and volunteers who formed a virtual underground army. Their activism during the catastrophe of AIDS led to reforms in social attitudes, religious homophobia, decriminalisation, anti-discrimination protections, sex education and sexual autonomy, family and inheritance rights, health care, and marriage equality. Will long-term positive benefits somehow also arise from the modern-day catastrophe of COVID-19? Such social and societal reforms could help to improve lives across the developing world in particular, especially in places such as Africa, where LGBTQIA+ people today suffer from the same abominable treatment that they endured in western society during the era of AIDS some two or three decades ago.

As a committee member/supporter of the AIDS Memorial Quilt Project Melbourne for over twenty years, I recall its many educational and support roles for those who were grieving, memorialising, or trying to overcome ignorance, prejudice and stigma. This essay comprises a talk I gave to an LGBT History Conference in Sydney on 24 September 2010.

Australian AIDS Memorial Quilt Project on Display in the Exhibition Building, Melbourne. Photo (c) 1999 Geoff Allshorn.

The Australian AIDS Quilt is our nation’s most evocative public response to AIDS and it remains our largest ever example of activist and community art. Following the 1987 founding of the American AIDS Quilt, called the NAMES Project, the Australian AIDS Quilt was launched on the first annual World AIDS Day, 1 December 1988. Panels were made by families, partners, friends, colleagues, workmates, nurses, carers or others in memory of people who had been lost to AIDS. Panels were sewn into blocks of eight, and these quilt blocks were then displayed individually or collectively. Each quilt panel was a unique testimony to an individual, a group or to a slogan such as “See It and Understand”. Names, dates, photos, personal messages, badges, clothing, teddy bears or more exotic personal items were often included on a panel. It is estimated that approximately 900 panels were eventually produced across Australia.*

Although the AIDS Quilt might be seen as an example of gay activism and a radical appropriation of a traditionally conservative crafting form, it is simply one manifestation of quilts being used for activist purposes. Despite its being an offshoot of the NAMES Project, the Australian AIDS Quilt also has historical and cultural precedents from elsewhere and elsewhen.

Quilts enjoy a long tradition around the world. It has been suggested that quilting may have travelled from Asia, where early surviving examples include grave goods; to Europe, where it became popular as clothing for knights during the Crusades (von Gwinner, 1988, 12 & 13). These early symbolic links between quilting and death or warfare would prove to be a recurring motif.

The 11th century Bayeux Tapestry is a famous example of medieval embroidery. Its pictorial form resembles surviving medieval quilts which suggest that such textiles were commonly used during those times to present information to largely illiterate populations – and once again, we see themes relating to warfare and death.

US medieval historian Norman Cantor reports that tapestries were hung across doorways and windows of medieval churches to alleviate common fears of airborne plague contagion (Cantor, 2002, 22) and German art historian Schnuppe von Gwinner reports that African burial cloths, resembling AIDS Quilt panels, were used in colonial Dahomey and Nigeria (op cit, 29 – 32). Thus we can see that such crafting has been a popular tool in response to plague and in memorialising past lives.

In 17th century France, bed quilts were hung from windows to commemorate religious processions (ibid, 16). This connection between quilts and street marches resembles the AIDS Quilt being displayed in conjunction with AIDS Candlelight Vigils during the 1980s and 1990s.

Socially isolated groups in the USA, such as pioneer and Amish women, included this quilting within their traditions. During the US Civil War, women sewed quilts in order to raise money and awareness for the abolitionist cause (Brackman, 1997, 12). It is also claimed – probably incorrectly – that quilts may have been used as markers for the “underground railway” to guide escaping slaves to freedom (Dobard & Tobin, 1999; Brackman, 1997, 14 & 15; Wikipedia, 2020). Clearly, there is a long association – both real and reputed – between quilting and providing a voice for disempowered peoples.

Australian quilting historians Annette Gero and Margaret Rolfe report that quilting has enjoyed a long history in Australia, where quilts have been used not simply for comfort but also to convey messages. Some quilting traditions have also provided clear parallels between war, mortality, crisis and AIDS, and have supported disempowered peoples.

Aboriginal women made decorative patchwork cloaks and sleeping covers from possum skins (Gero, 2008, 9; Rolfe, 1987, 14). One surviving cloak includes what may be representations of clan patterns (Beasley & Conte, 1995, 33).

Quilting also offered some degree of self-sufficiency for female convicts and an opportunity for colonial women to provide both bedding and social narrative within their families. Subsequent immigrant women have also made quilts to acknowledge significant life transitions. One recent group of Australian Iraqi women has used quilts to promote compassion for asylum seekers – a marginalised group in our modern society (Gero, 2008, 13 & 14; Marshall, 2004, ii).

The National Quilt Register lists over 1000 quilts from Australia’s history, many of which represent life transitions such as birth, war, marriage, illness, hard times and death (National Quilt Register, 2020) and some include recycled materials due to a scarcity of cloth among pioneer women. Such recycling was revisited and reinterpreted on the AIDS Quilt, through the occasional inclusion of a deceased person’s clothing on their panel.

In the Australian AIDS Quilt, a sampling of 190 panels (an estimated 20% of the entire Quilt) reveals that men comprised approximately 40% of identifiable quilt makers in the sample. Their contribution within a traditional “female” activity gives us another reason why the AIDS Quilt was a significant community project. But it must be stressed that, within this sample, women comprised approximately 60% of identifiable Quilt makers and they extended the traditional “female” roles of nurturing and quilting into activism on behalf of their gay sons, brothers, friends and patients – yet their contribution is largely overlooked by the gay male community’s social appropriation of the AIDS Quilt.

Australian quilts made during times of war provide the greatest parallel to the AIDS Quilt. Both forms of quilting were created at times when many young men were dying, and were a personal response to battles that involved love, loss, community, death and grief. In a break from the traditional female stereotype, war quilts were made by men (Gero, op cit, 129) as were many AIDS Quilt panels. Australia’s first war quilt was made in 1806 by a Prussian soldier who had been imprisoned during the Napoleonic wars (ibid). Later war quilts encompass a range of conflicts including the Boer War, both World Wars and Korea.

During the World Wars, women reclaimed their role in quilting by creating “Red Cross Quilts”, which were fundraisers for the Red Cross (ibid, 161). One example is a World War One “signature quilt” created by women in Williamstown, Victoria, who were inspired by one of their sons who sent home patches of cloth containing signatures from the battlefield. Some of those who were featured, including the young man at the centre of the quilt, did not survive the war (Author unknown, 2010). Further “Red Cross” quilts continue to be made. Although they are intended primarily as fundraisers, they enable local communities to publicly show their support for a humanitarian cause and have parallels with signature panels connected to the AIDS Quilt, which also enabled visitors to leave messages of support.

The Australian War Memorial reports that women imprisoned in Changi Prison during World War Two also compiled signature quilts which included personal messages, the meaning of which has now been lost (Australian War Memorial, 2017). Some AIDS Quilt panels also contain cryptic personal messages.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Australian scholars such as Robert Ariss and Jennifer Power have written of the role of the AIDS Quilt in providing both ritual and structure for shared grieving among the gay community during the 1990s. Ariss drew upon a parallel from the 1980s, when an AIDS diagnosis was often seen as a public and unintended double “coming out”. He suggested that “The Quilt is death coming out” (Ariss, 2004, 282), thereby breaking another social taboo. Perhaps this explains why the Quilt has almost disappeared from public view now that AIDS has largely faded from our collective awareness.

The AIDS Quilt began its decline during the mid to late 1990s. Death rates, activist burnout and the arrival of new medical treatments for AIDS may all have contributed to this decline. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some Australian gay men grew tired of visiting what had been nicknamed, “the doonah of death”. As the era of AIDS gave way to the era of living with HIV, the AIDS Quilt quietly disappeared from public view. It might therefore be seen as a product of its historical context rather than as a major contributor to ongoing discourse. The other Australian quilts discussed in this study also appear to follow this pattern of transitory fame.

Even though much of the AIDS Quilt has disappeared, some of it is still available for public viewing via live displays or on the Internet. Meanwhile, quilting has become a popular method for presenting memorial tributes. Recent examples include memorial quilts for those lost to other diseases, violence or armed conflict. The Australian Salvation Army has launched a “Life Keeper Memory Quilt”, a memorial to people lost to suicide (Benson, 2009). Thus quilting continues its perennial connections with conflict and death.

The Australian gay community founded and operated the AIDS Quilt as an assertive activist entity for over a decade, and the high participation rate of other groups of people provides a testimony to the creation of a memorial which promoted respect and diversity. A study of its place in both history and society enables us to fully appreciate how gay people operated in neither a cultural vacuum nor social isolation, and it also enriches our appreciation of the AIDS Quilt within a wider historical and cultural context. With its disappearance from public prominence, we are challenged to consider how best to ensure that its people do not fade from the rich tapestry of our lives, cultural memory or folklore.

*Estimate provided during conversation by the Secretary, Quilt Project Melbourne on 6 September 2010.

The above talk was preparation for my PhD Studies on, “A Social History of HIV/AIDS in Melbourne During the ‘Crisis Years’ 1981 to 1997”. This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

References:

Robert Ariss, 2004. ‘Re-Inventing Death: Gay Community Memorial Rites in Sydney, Australia’, in Robert Aldrich (editor), Gay Perspectives II: More Essays in Australian Gay Culture, University of Sydney.

Australian War Memorial, 2017. History of the Changi quilts, last updated 5 March.

Author unknown, 2010. The Story of the Quilt, Williamstown Historical Society Inc.

Lyn Beasley and Jon Conte (compilers), 1995. ‘Possum Skin Cloaks: Activity Sheet’, in Koorie Education Kit, Koorie Heritage Trust.

Kate Benson, 2009. ‘Finally, Some Comfort, Some Peace‘, in The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 June.

Barbara Brackman, 1997. Quilts from the Civil War, C & T Publishing.

Norman F. Cantor, 2002. In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made, Simon & Schuster.

Raymond Dobard, Jr., Ph.D., & Jacqueline Tobin, 1990. Hidden in Plain View, Doubleday.

Annette Gero, 2008 (?). Fabric of Society: Australia’s Quilt Heritage from Convict Times to 1960, The Beagle Press (Sydney).

Nikki Marshall, 2004. Between Memory and Hope: Tears for the Future, Prowling Tiger Press.

National Quilt Register, 2020.

Jennifer Power, 2011. Movement, Knowledge, Emotion: Gay activism and HIV/AIDS in Australia, Canberra: ANU E-Press.

Margaret Rolfe, 1987. Patchwork Quilts in Australia, Greenhouse Publications.

Schnuppe von Gwinner, 1988. The History of the Patchwork Quilt: Origins, Traditions and Symbols of a Textile Art (English edition, translated by Dr. Edwards Force), Schiffer Publishing.

Wikipedia, 2020. Quilts of the Underground, last edited 15 August.

© 2020 Geoff Allshorn