Why I love the ABC

Lunchtime radio today:

Richard Stubbs is talking to his counterpart in New South Wales. They agree the states have felt quite close over the last two weeks, with the movement of money, firefighters and sympathy coming southwards, and they start talking about football and the various non-Victorian teams. The NSW guy says he sees it as a sign that the fires have eased a little, that Stubbs is interested in football, and Richard says, "oh well, you know, as soon as you've got the water coming through the hose, someone'll say, 'so, how do you think the Pies* will go this year?'"

I love it when the radio makes me laugh out loud, even though I'm in the house on my own.

But generally, I do love the ABC. It is also the emergency broadcaster, and even last night, nearly two weeks after that horrendous Saturday, they were still interrupting the evening show with updates, though they were generally downgrading reports from "urgent" to "alert". A good quarter of Wilson's Promontory national park remains alight; and Derek Guille, at Narbethon, was interviewing a woman who had four times in the last two weeks packed up her kids, best possessions, and the fifteen animals she was caring for, ready to evacuate. She'd got the routine down to half an hour. It is gruesome, though, to hear the warnings for residents in Marysville still coming through.

For nearly ten days, the Melbourne branch of the ABC broadcast almost nothing but updates, interviews and emergency broadcasts. I was listening when someone phoned in from Kinglake saying they were about to evacuate from the main street of the town...

Radio is such a brilliant medium. The internet and television have played their part, too, but there is something about radio that you know is immediate. An internet call for assistance isn't tied so tightly to a particular time, for example. I heard, one evening, a callout for baby-sitters and childcare workers. The next evening, I heard the same woman say she'd had to put two extra people on, just to answer the telephone inquiries. And the ABC folk I've heard have all been brilliant: sympathetic and patient. They ditched most of the weekend sport, for example, and brought in their best weekday hosts (Faine, Guille, Stubbs, Gorr), who still came in for their regular gigs the next week.

Marieke Hardy had a column saying it was time for the media to withdraw from the disaster zones, and let people get on with repairs and grieving and rebuilding. I'm the first to excoriate myself for my fascination with the disaster, but I think there is also a role for the media to play in healing. After the disaster, after trauma, we as bloggers know what people want. To tell their story, to rehearse the trauma to a sympathetic audience, to help make sense, to put a narrative shape around that trauma. Every evening this week, Guille has been broadcasting from a different town, and is clearly trying to juggle invitations from a number of communities.

I'm trying to think about comparisons with the Katrina disaster. It's a bit like comparing apples with oranges, really. But the immediacy of the radio coverage, and its direct engagement with affected communities has played an important part, I think, in keeping the communication going, in both directions.


* Magpies. Collingwood. Old inner-Melbourne team. Huge fan base. Much loathed by other old inner-urban Melbourne teams.

On not being over-modest...

I'm taking courage from Dr Virago's recent comments on the teaching award she won, to say how pleased I am to have been given an award, too. The University has decided this year to honour the work of mentoring, with two awards, one for academic and one for general/professional staff. They are both named after Pat Grimshaw, who recently retired as professor of history, and who continues to be a brilliant mentor, teacher and advocate. I've seen her being so courageous in some difficult times in the university, most notably speaking up against the development of the university's private branch that turned out to be so disastrous and has now been disbanded. So I'm honoured to try and follow in her footsteps of kindness and courage.

It is particularly delightful to me that the other winner is my friend Margot, who works in the Science Faculty. We had a funny exchange two weekends ago. We each knew the other had been nominated (well, I should confess that her staff nominated her; I asked my head of program to nominate me...), and had each received the call from the Provost, but the results hadn't been made public yet, and neither of us wanted to be the one to ask if the other had won! But Margot, generous as always, was the first to break the ice, and so now we are extremely pleased with ourselves and each other. In fact we are going out with a group tonight to a Turkish restaurant for her son Nick's 13th birthday (he and Joel were at childcare and primary school together), with a promises of a callipygous belly dancer. This is another reason I love Margot, for introducing me to the word callipygous!

Well, we don't get our awards till December, when they will be presented by the Vice-Chancellor at his annual Teaching and Learning Colloquium. I think we'll have to have some champagne to celebrate.

But the main reason I wanted to mention this on the blog is that my application said a few things about the Humanities Researcher blog, and Peter's nomination also made mention of it. This is what he wrote:

My second example of Stephanie’s skill at providing support and sharing knowledge with mentees is her now long-running, extensive, and widely read blog. We sometimes think of mentoring as involving face to face activities, but of course the WWW offers a dizzy range of new opportunities for being role-model and mentor to others. I won’t detail here the widening-circles of Stephanie’s blog, from its initial concern with ARC grant writing, to its rapid accumulation of additional narrative and thematic threads when Stephanie was diagnosed with cancer, to the blog (with its history) that we have today, which offers a unique exploration of the interactions between thought, life, friendship and family, the contexts from which intellectual work springs. In work such as this there is enormous scope for disaster as well as success. The undoubted, truly remarkable success of Stephanie’s blog, the extent to which it has touched people’s lives, is a profound testament to her skills as a mentor. The blog makes me realize anew the degree to which mentoring and being a role-model are central although often not acknowledged planks in “knowledge transfer”.

I should explain that "knowledge transfer" is the awkwardly-named but excellent idea that the university should be working in close contact with city, society, community, industry, etc. There are some tricky issues, here, but it's hard to disagree with the general principle here. But isn't this a lovely paragraph for Peter to write? I thought about over-modestly not blogging about the award, but then thought it would be nice to quote Peter's comments for anyone who's thinking about the social/pedagogical function of blogging. And after all, it looks as if Humanities Researcher played its part in the award, and the blog would have no life if it weren't for its lovely readers.

I can feel myself gearing up soon for a final onslaught on the first draft of my book, and sometimes wonder whether I will have time to keep blogging. But I reckon I will. I think it'd be good if I spent a little less time checking my sitemeter stats, but I also think that when the book insists on being written, as it is starting to, then everything will fall into place anyway.

Malory on the Radio

Some time over the next week, while it's still available, check out David Wallace's BBC Radio feature on Malory. Alas, the segment we recorded at the College of Arms didn't make it into the final cut, even though Bluemantle Pursuivant was so wonderful.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/sundayfeature/

The program begins and ends at Winchester College. Contributors include Helen Cooper (on the Winchester MS, BL), ASG Edwards (on the Caxton edn, Manchester), Richard Barber (House of Lords Robing room), Martin Biddle (Great Hall at Winchester), Anne Sutton (Mercers' Hall, Newgate), Geoffrey Day (Fellows' Librarian, Winchester College), Lawrence James (biographer), Tim Sutherland (battlefield historian, Towton), poet laureate Andrew Motion (as the voice of Malory), and poet Geoffrey Hill (as himself). Producer: Paul Quinn.

Love the sound effects of the footsteps and creaking door as they re-enact the discovery of the Winchester MS in the Warden's bedroom in 1934...