Category Archives: Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Machan

23 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Story and Photograph by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

My friend came to visit me in Hakodate. He thought he would write a travel story for an inflight magazine while he was there. He called the City Hall to ask them about local artisans or people of interest, but the City Hall pointed him in the direction of a souvenir sausage shop, which he wasn’t really interested in.

I want to meet some Ainu people, said my friend. But it was common knowledge in Hakodate that there were few if any people in the town calling themselves Ainu. Then I remembered Machan. I’d heard from a journalist friend that he was Ainu. Machan was a little-bit-wild looking man who I often saw around riding his bicycle with his dog following along. We had talked a little bit a few times without any particular connection. He had a shop across the road from the International Hotel. So we went along to Machan’s shop.
Machan’s shop had a kind of log-cabin look to it, and inside it was a bit dark and a bit shabby. There were certainly some carvings of bears and owls, but they looked a lot like the mass-produced carvings you find in all the souvenir shops, and the recycle shops, just a bit dustier. Other than that there really wasn’t much you could buy. Mostly when it was warm enough Machan sat with his dog on the front step of his shop, which looked out on to the lobby of the International Hotel.

My friend asked Machan a bit about the Ainu. Did he know any Ainu people living in the town my friend could talk to? Not really. Did he know of any Ainu artists? Not really. Did he know of anything interesting he could write about? Not that he could think of. Anyone who made things? Nah. Machan’s shop is gone now, but it was there quite a long time.

Somehow the response we got that day did not surprise me. I used to see Machan around a lot, riding his bicycle, with his dog following along, one time he gave me a CD he had in his basket; The Beatles, for no particular reason; I took it and said thankyou. I like to see Machan’s life as a complicated and contradictory act of civil disobedience, of social education. Somehow I must have been prepared by the people around me to understand that. But here – I am speaking for him again. I will stop.

Milk Tea with Cream

14 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

, ,

Illustration and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

 

Illustration

I begin this piece with a cup of milk tea at the Cafe de The Francois in Kyoto. Waiting for a friend who didn’t turn up (lost at the other end of the street). The lighting is yellowed like the walls, playing off bald heads and gold spectacles. Well dressed ladies cluster on red velvet upholstery raising their pitch over the piano concerto. A man with his elderly mother bend over cream cakes. He stirs his drink vigorously and when it spills he exclaims and stops all movement. His mother rustles through her purse and takes out tissues to wipe the spill. After finishing his cake, he reaches into his own bag, takes out his own tissues, and wipes his own mouth. I accept a final refill of my glass of water, and leave for the train.

Milk Tea with Cream

This week I’ve been occupied, watching an old 11 week TV Japanese drama on Youtube starring Takuya Kimura, a Japanese singer and actor breaking new ground in pan-asia entertainment, followed by the Julian Assange interview series. I started with the old guys and worked my way down to the new ones, ending with Occupy.

Toward the end of the Occupy compilation he asks a question about the organisation of the occupy sites. You started to put up instructions, he says. For how to organise the police, how to organise yourselves, how to organise interferers, crazy people, the garbage. Was this a model specifically for your events? Or was this some kind enactment of a larger model.

Fascinating to listen to the responses. I had the feeling that Assange is not interested in the Occupy movement as much as his audience. President Obama, did you take note of the cigars he was waving about? Or was that smoke not meant for you.

It seems that there is more to come.

Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On

05 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

≈ 31 Comments

Tags

, ,

Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

I remember a night, when I was a kid. Sitting in the very back of a white station wagon, in the dark, driving through the night on the way home from my Aunt’s house. And we were listening to a radio play, everyone quiet. All in the dark, only the radio play and the car lights playing over the road.

There was a man, and he was an astronaut. He was in a rocket, in space, and that rocket had lost it’s way. He was on his way to death, when the fuel finally burned out, and there was nothing anyone could do. Except talk to him, on the radio, while he waited for the end. I think it was a long time, that we listened. I think the conversation got further and further away, until, in the end, there was silence. I still remember driving through that silence on my way home.

I remember going home from school because we were going to watch the first man on the moon, on the television. Though I don’t remember going home, and I don’t remember watching it, I only know that I did do that, and I remember it because it was so important, even at the time, even for a five year old. I remember that, and I remember all the excitement about space. The Jetsons, Elton John’s Rocket Man, David Bowie’s Ground Control to Major Tom.

I remember it today because I was sitting in a restaurant, and old fashioned kind of a place, lots of dark wood and dark upholstery, with a dark booth and a dark table, and Rocket Man came on on the stereo. I’ve been looking at all that stuff about the Moon; the big money-making dreams, the hotel schemes, thinking it was all some macho techno-gamble. But then I heard Rocket Man again, and I remembered. There was a time, not so long ago, when it was the stuff of dreams. And we were the dreamers.

When We See a lot of Gold, We Know it’s time to go to the Museum

18 Friday May 2012

Posted by in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

≈ 86 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Museum Peace

Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

There is a story in the Australian newspapers that I find very interesting. It concerns a politician called Craig Thompson who has been accused of misusing the funds of a union when he worked there. There is proof that he used a lot of money on prostitutes, expensive meals, travel, etc; having free use of the union credit cards. Mr Thompson is now ain independent member assisting  the federal government.

A government agency has investigated and released a report saying he acted fraudulently. Mr Thompson has refused to speak about this for months and months, but after this report came out, he went on television and said that he had been threatened by people in the union, who said that they would set him up to ruin his career by exactly the things that he has been accused of.

I’m not sure what it is that makes this case so interesting. Perhaps it’s the response of the press. That’s ridiculous, they all say. But actually my impression is that it is not at all ridiculous.

The press loves a good scandal. So it strikes me as particularly odd that they would not want to even indulge this new element in the scandal. It might be that they can see that the possible result would be the discrediting of the unions, and the undermining of the Labor government for all the worst reasons. The Labor government’s traditional base was unions, of course. And then, of course, it’s unusual for someone to come out and talk conspiracy after being so long silent. I guess he was expecting the report to have investigated his claims. But of course they didn’t. They limited their investigation to exactly what they were told to look for, and kept their eyes away from anything else that might have had a connection or been a contributing factor.

Yes, I well understand how they came to the conclusion that they did. But now, if Mr Thompson’s confidence in speaking out can indicate that he does have some evidence to back up his claims, it will be interesting to see if anyone in the press can get past their fear of this situation and take another look at it. At the moment, not even the Liberal, opposition, conservative press will touch it.

Researchers Believe…

14 Monday May 2012

Posted by in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Trunk

Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Researchers believe they can get more detailed data through wild monkeys

I was reading yesterday about a plan to attach collars to wild monkeys in the countryside somewhere around Fukushima. These collars will have devices attached that collect data about the radiation levels in the area. The argument on the appropriateness of such an experiment appears to be that as the monkeys move around a lot through this terrain, the devices will be able to monitor the radiation levels randomly and perhaps gain a more accurate reading. No comment was given regarding the monkeys’ interest in IT or being adorned with chokers, however we do learn that these chokers can be controlled by remote control.

In another story hitting the press, the ABC’s drum today carries a story on how other countries are getting the advantage on Australians because their children are put in schools earlier. Dr Oberklaid of the Royal Children’s Hospital reports: “…it’s like building the foundations of a house. “If you take shortcuts, like using cheaper cement, everything that follows is potentially at risk.”” According to a quoted source, a Dr Einstein, “no problem can be solved by the same thinking which created it.”

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111211a3.html

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-14/alberici-early-childhood-education/4008962

I think of the Moon

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

, ,

Orchestral

Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

In the big news in education today, MIT and Harvard are teaming up to make a Super Online Learning collaboration, inviting lots of little institutions to join them. While in the little news in education, a school in Melbourne is teaming up with lots of other schools to make a business out of their playing field. For which the Victorian Government has provided $40 000 in legal fees. To make the official agreement. To share it and it’s profit-making capabilities.

Education usually seems to move very slowly, taking maybe 20 years to make a decision to revert to the position of twenty years ago. At the moment it seems to be moving very fast.

Education appears to be lining up for position, ready to take us somewhere. Or, alternatively, it appears to be splitting up into playing fields, with their own sharing agreements and profit-making capabilities. There are the Online Universities, the Online Academies, the Online Consortiums, the Collaborative Research Centres and the Centralization of Research Papers. And then there is International Education, and after that is the education of young people in their local areas.

I don’t know what it is that is making education so frisky right now. For some dumb reason, every time I read something about it, I think of the moon. These days everyone seems to be after the moon. It’s such a prize, isn’t it? We’re all itching to get to it and hang up a banner: OPEN FOR BUSINESS. It’s as if we imagine that having the moon, the lights will never go out, the computers will never turn off, and things will just make themselves.

Maybe that’s what people thought in the ’60s, when we were trying to get to the moon.

Nihon Chinbotsu

03 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

,

Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Last night in my quest for entertainment I came across a movie online called Nihon Chinbotsu (Sinking of Japan) and watched it in some amazement. Whoever has posted it online appears to have found a “sign” that it foretells the earthquake and tsunami from last year. But I was just shocked to realize that I had no idea of something that probably affected so many people, in an experience I shared.

I really know nothing of Japan, my twenty years has not supplied me with the tools to read the culture in any depth. I don’t know what’s cool, what’s new, what’s big. So it doesn’t surprise me that I never heard of this film before. Even though it came from a bestselling book, is the second movie version since 1973, has pulled in $43 million in the box office since it opened in 2006, has some of the most desirable celebrity talent in its lineup, has had parodies made of it. I think the movie I watched just before it was Rollerball, so there was nothing at all insightful about my stumbling across it.

It’s a movie about the almost complete downfall of Japan, which falls victim to a series of natural disasters. The plate on which the islands rest is getting sucked down, and the islands experience a string of horrific disasters, calculated to entirely submerge them in less than a year. The people who are not killed are being shipped off to foreign countries, all of which are reluctant to take them,  to spend the rest of their lives, and the remaining people are going to die terrible deaths. Only the vision of one scientist can save them.

So I watched as town after town exploded and washed away, and eventually I saw the giant wave encompass the red brick warehouses and the old ship crane of Hakodate. Bricks flying everywhere, people all washed away. And I thought: oh my god, how many people in Hakodate were standing braced in the doorways of their houses on March 11 last year, thinking of that scene. Because after an earthquake in a coastal town people always have to take action against a possible tsunami. How many of the shop owners in those red brick warehouses, in that 30 minute or so wait for the wave that did hit, were thinking of that movie? How many people in Tokyo, when the power went out and the trains shut down and the earth moved, thought about those skyscrapers crumbling. And in the regions that didn’t have time for thinking, how many recognized what was happening?

Imagine yourself, having watched this film, turning on the television to the kind of live footage we saw last year. And in the days and months after, as the battle with the nuclear power stations continued, like a kind of cultural deja-vu.

What must people have been thinking?

The Nuclear Break

30 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Cafe Wall

Story and Photograph by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Coming up in Japan: a dilemma. Since last year’s triple disaster in Japan the nuclear power stations have been suspending operations, one by one, for checking and maintenance. The last reactor is scheduled to be de-activated on May 5.

The dilemma is a little complicated. Many people say that this is a time that Japan really needs a “miracle recovery”, like the one that took place after World War II. But there are a lot of factors needed for this miracle recovery, and one of them is power. Since March last year, power has been a concern to the government. As the nuclear reactors shut down, companies are asked to reduce their power consumption. So instead of increasing production, in many cases they have had to reduce it.

A further problem is the looming increase in the price of electricity. Many companies are considering moving their manufacturing and production off-shore, and increases in electricity prices will strengthen the argument to do so. Aside from industry, there is concern that ordinary people will be affected by rising electricity prices and blackouts.

The government seems to be of the opinion that before the last nuclear power station suspends operation, it is important to start up one of the stations that has been inspected. But the public is currently divided over whether they want to do this. On the one hand, there is a great deal of concern about the safety of nuclear power plants. On the other, they are being warned that there may be widespread blackouts over the summer, and that the shutting down of the plants may contribute to further economic troubles. It seems that the government wants to prevent the anti-nuclear movement growing stronger.

The closure of all nuclear stations might make it harder to get the support to restart them. On the other hand, if there are numerous blackouts over the summer, that might cause support for nuclear power to resume to grow. The government also appears to be a little unsure of how to persuade the people.

It seems clear that the Central Government is committed to nuclear power. Not so the Municipal Governments, some of which are opposing efforts to get the plants restarted. Many local governments too are opposed.

Another problem is that the increased use of fossil fuels as an alternative to nuclear power has many problems. Increased cost, pollution, reliance on outside energy sources. There seem to be huge investments going into alternative sources and research. Nobody is really sure if a cheap and safe alternative can be found, and it is unclear as to whether a cheap and safe alternative is really being searched for. It may be that these efforts are aimed more at placating the public.

I feel a lot of sympathy for the Japanese people. This dilemma comes at a time when the country was already experiencing a drop in economic power, and started a serious conversation about what the future should be, which direction to take. It’s a discussion we all need to take, because once the babble about carbon, offsets, all those airy-fairy economic games stops, we still haven’t made any serious choices or serious decisions about how to stop the world from ending up on a junk-pile. People here are thinking.

Coming up in the beginning of May are the Golden Week holidays, when we will experience our first Nuclear Break.

Difficulty Blending

22 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in Lehan Winifred Ramsay

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

, ,

Difficulty Blending

Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Well I don’t like to mention The Other Place, the one I used to work at. Sometimes its because I start to blow smoke through my ears. But usually its because I don’t have anything good to say, and I feel like a grumpy old Prohibition campaigner. Nor do I like to mention The Other Place where I used to study, because I sometimes feel like the only thing they taught me there is when to put the apostrophe on my its – and that knowledge rests only tenuously in my command of the language.

But some of the students are doing very well. So well that I find myself having to UnFriend them. They have moved into Contentious thoughts and actions. Unlike the general stream of public announcements of ground-breaking research; work I read and snort coffee through my nose, they now have the ability to get me worked up. I am kind. I have learned now that technology researchers don’t like to be upset by unfavourable reviews, and so at the first itching of my fingertips I UnFriend them and liberate them.

Recently one has been involved in ground-breaking research in robotics. That’s really a great indication of the impact of our educational philosophies. When these students first arrived on our doorsteps we showed them our pack of wild robot dogs from Sony, the ones that wagged their tails and yipped before tripping over themselves and lying, little fat legs flailing, on the carpet.

And lo and behold, they’ve made a robot girlfriend. She’s hot, and she’s in huge demand, tirelessly working the Valentines Shift in a department store in Japan, before scooting over to Hong Kong to model her extensive repertoire of facial expressions and blinks in a Pierre & Gilles – like tableau for her many fans there.

It wasn’t, though, until I got word of her latest foray that I became truly aware of the potential in this for me. She went off to the hairdresser, and got a very sexy ‘do. Not only that, but she let someone else decide the style! Imagine that! The girlfriend or boyfriend you always wanted, who will let you take him/her to the hairdresser, and actually let you choose their ‘do! Now there’s my boyfriend! I can take him along to karaoke, he’ll carry the bags of stuff I couldn’t do without, he’ll sit absolutely uncomplaining and listen to every overly-sugary song I want to sing, no complaining, and I can put an absolutely beautific expression on his face after every one of them! Starting off contemplative and curious, of course, and moving to beautific toward the finale.

You know, if you can’t afford the blinking model, you can get life-size dolls for your home now. Not sex toys. Companions. I don’t know if they have any boys yet, but certainly if it’s cute girls you want, you don’t have to suffer to get them, you can just order them online. But if it’s a relationship you’re after, there’s always a game, right? In this case it’s LovePlus, by Konami. You can choose from three animation character cuties, and once you sign up they’ll stick by you thick or thin until the subscription runs out.

Of course you’re going to have to learn commitment. There are certain things you have to do to maintain this relationship. You have to care for her. If you don’t, I’m afraid there will be a little strife between you. No, she’s not going to die, like the tamagocchi chicken. We’ve moved on to a more sophisticated era, here. But you might find that the next time you get back to her, things are not all happy anime music and roses. She’s showing her Sad Face. Or, even, her Angry Face. Daunting. You may have to change models after that. On the other hand, it’s quite worth looking after her. If you do, she’ll send you emails that you can smile over at work. Pet names, stuff like that. Stuff that really is what relationships are about.

I have to say that it could have been worse. Had we shown them a bunch of tamagocchis when they walked in the door, would they now be making – ah – a bunch of augmented reality chickens to help us in our senior years? Had we known about the Great Philip K. Dick headless model, would they have made a bunch of robotic old guys spouting erratic science fiction predictions for the future? With a weakness for sheltering in overhead lockers? At least these girls are going to be quiet.