This is my initial poetic response to my first viewing of a truly great cinematic poem:
I am up:
Riveting,
A totality,
Of our living.
Die.
My.
Love.
Go see God.
Geoff Fox, former Registered Midwife, November 10, 2025, Cinema Nova, Carlton, Australia
Category: The People
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Is Lynne Ramsay’s DIE MY LOVE The Best Film Ever Involving Martin Scorsese?
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MATER DOLOROSA in the Tasmanian Village of Ross
I studied classical Latin for ten years beginning at high school and finishing at Melbourne University.
Later on I was a registered midwife for thirty years.
Today I was deeply moved to see an image of Mary as Mater Dolorosa (Sorrowful Mother) in the Our Lady Of The Sacred Heart church in the lovely village of Ross in Tasmania.
I think that such simple human places can teach the rest of the modern world cursed by unaffordable housing and rising postnatal depression something about meeting the real needs of mothers.
An African proverb (made more famous by Hillary Clinton) teaches us that “It takes a village to raise a child.”
I have found Ross to be a village where the people stop to say hello and love to be helpful. And my own accomodation here at the Stone Cottage Guesthouse is very affordable.
This village sings to me of good mothering and fathering.
Geoff Fox, October 27, 2025, Stone Cottage Guesthouse, Ross, Tasmania
William Montgomery created the stained glass window shown in this micro-movie.
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KIND-HEARTED KARTINI and CLIMATE CHANGES
Devastating climate change has been a part of God’s creation for a long time.
On January 17, 1903, (normally the wet season) Raden Ajeng Kartini wrote this to her friend in Holland about an unseasonal drought in Java:
“For three longs weeks not a drop of rain has fallen. It is boiling hot as it has never been before, even in the dryest Oostmoesson.
Father is in despair; the young rice in the fields is turning brown, Oh, our poor people! So far they have had enough to eat here and they do not know the most frightful of all calamities which a land can suffer—Famine. But what has not been, may be; and this great drought in the time of the wet season presages anything but good. What will happen if it keeps up? For several mornings the wind has blown as it usually does first in May. Has the turning point been reached, has the dry season begun?
It is frightful, every one looks on helpless. It is hard to see everything that has been sown and planted turn brown and die, without being able to turn a finger to help it, and the great heat harasses the body too; one feels dull and listless.
What do you think of such a complaint from a child of the sun? Oh, how frightful for the people who are working out in the fields, if for us in here it is so scalding hot, and this is the wet season (Westmoesson). Do not be chary with your cold; could you not spare a little of it? You may take as much of our warmth as you wish.”
Here is my attempt to write lyrical musings from the above:
“The Child Of The Sun
Take our heat, old Holland, and let us keep some of your cold.
Our people must eat,
But our crops are all dead
In a drought my heart dreads.
So let us get some of your cold.”Geoff Fox, January 17, 2025, Australia
MOTHERHOODS MATTER 