Category: Personal
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I am Andrew and I am an OverResearcher : Writing Out Loud #2
“You over-research too much,” she said to me. I looked up from my desk, covered in academic papers. Then down at the floor, strewn with textbooks, references and more academic papers. “Do I? I suppose I do.” My wife shook her head at me. My name is Andrew and I am an over researcher. My […]
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Roadside : Saturday Afternoon Tragedy
Inspired by the poet William E Stafford Travelling Through The Dark… Mid Saturday afternoon. All of us, Mum, me, two children in the car. Hot, not yet humid but dusty. We had driven from our place into town for shopping, I don’t recall exactly. What happened afterward didn’t much matter. We saw it right after […]
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The Space Between Feminism and Neo-Masculinity
An Open Letter To Neo-Masculinists, MRAs, And General Dudebros Everywhere Hardly a call to feminism is it? With a title like “An Open Letter to Neo-Masculinists, MRAs, and General Dudebros Everywhere”, it just has to be click bait. Besides what the heck is a Dude-Bro? I checked the Urban Dictionary and its not me! But […]
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Writing Out Loud #1 : The Short Story that Grew…
If I wait long enough a story appears. It’s my calling to catch and keep it. Usually a pen or Evernote is in reach. Then the work begins: to unravel the story into most of its truth. The rest is for the reader or remains unknown. Like unravelling a twisted string strand by strand….or unwrapping […]
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Vulnerability is the Endless Way Back
Twitter is like someone sitting next to you while you write. And as soon as you look up, she winks at you. Then you go back to writing again. Until you stop and she winks at you again. Until you put down the pen or stylus and return the look. For you realise that she […]
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Blue Sky Mine : The Wittenoom Tragedy
Every time I hear Blue Sky Mine by Midnight Oil, about the Wittenoom mining tragedy, I’m taken back in time. To 23 May 1988, to probably the saddest TV interview I have ever seen. The interview featured on the ABC Four Corners episode called Blue Death. Blue Death was about the Wittenoom tragedy in Western Australia which was built around […]
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Freedom of Speech Doesn’t Exist
Freedom of speech belongs to the loud and aggressive. Freedom of speech is their cacophony of voices shouting all at once. Freedom of speech is their smothering words that silences all other. Freedom of speech is the preserve of the crowd that excludes all but them. Freedom of speech is not our freedom extended to the […]
Andrew James Whalan 