Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Keywords: Letter

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Letter from Yangon

    • Peta Fresco
    • 19 September 2017
    2 Comments

    Much has been reported on the plight of the Rohingya in Rakhine state in Myanmar's west, where violence has seen more than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims cross into Bangladesh. Elsewhere in the country, local villagers continue to suffer the effects of a four cuts strategy, and are targeted if they are suspected of helping ethnic armies. In the country's north, aid has been slow to reach 20,000 Kachin villagers living in former gambling dens and warehouses along the China border.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A poem for Agnes Bojaxhiu

    • Grant Fraser
    • 04 September 2017
    8 Comments

    Recently published letters have revealed that although Mother Teresa of Calcutta spent many years in her inspiring ministry, she felt, during much of that time, a profound spiritual emptiness.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Our addiction to connection is centuries old

    • Sarah Klenbort
    • 15 June 2017
    4 Comments

    On a recent tour of Vaucluse House in Sydney's east, I couldn't help but notice, in every bedroom, a writing desk. I imagined Sarah Wentworth scribbling away with inkpot and pen 180 years ago. I wonder if the Wentworths went straight to their writing desks first thing in the morning, the way some people check their phones? The desire to receive news from someone somewhere else is century's old. In 1850 Tasmania had 11 newspapers, for a population of 70,000.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Letters from dystopia in these best and worst of times

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 04 April 2017
    6 Comments

    Small wonder there is a particular surge of interest in dystopian novels: many people feel times have never been so troubled or so complicated, although I remember my father pointing out that people felt the same when the longbow and later gunpowder were invented. Amazon recently reported that Orwell and Huxley are selling like hot cakes. This at a time when certain purveyors of doom are lamenting the fact that 26 per cent of Americans, for example, did not read a single book during 2016.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Larger fears fuel cardinals' divorce beef

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 November 2016
    30 Comments

    Four cardinals wrote to the Pope demanding yes or no answers as to whether his reflection Amoris Laetitia was faithful to Catholic tradition in its treatment of the reception by divorced Catholics of communion. On not receiving a reply they published their letter, and one followed it up with murmurs about impeachment. The incident prompts reflection on the propriety of cardinals questioning a pope in this way and the reasons why discussion of communion for the divorced should raise such passion.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Oliver Stone's love letter to hero Edward Snowden

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 28 September 2016
    1 Comment

    Snowden's disclosures regarding the data-mining activities of the US government sparked a worldwide debate about security versus privacy that rages to this day. If his status as either a villain or a hero - a traitor, or the ultimate patriot - remains a matter of debate in some circles, you won't die wondering in which camp Oliver Stone sits. In Snowden the famously didactic filmmaker posits an utterly sympathetic portrait within the structure of a lithe and gripping political thriller.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia's 'alien' relations then and now

    • June Factor
    • 03 August 2016
    13 Comments

    In 1940, Prime Minister Robert Menzies received a letter from a woman in Western Australia: 'I have heard on the wireless the news that Australia would be willing to receive internees from England. I beg to protest; we have enough of the scum here already, too many in fact ... I sincerely trust that a U-boat gets every one of them.' The 'scum' she rejected so emphatically were the German and Austrian refugees, predominantly Jewish, soon to travel to Australia as 'enemy alien' prisoners.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    School walk in German winter

    • Tracy Ryan
    • 05 July 2016
    3 Comments

    Our one star has departed. We're wholly dark. The clouds are shedding pretension to friendliness, flake by flake. Which of us guides the other across this glassine surface that blanks every letter, deadening words. Who is that figure, globe-headed, dirndl-skirted, vacant hand-holder. The street-sign makes Mother, her little familiar. When you were born the ground had taken more than a dusting. We were locked in, but not forever. Now you are thirteen, age of reversible prime ...

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    No life without if

    • Yuan Changming
    • 03 May 2016
    6 Comments

    No belief without a lie. No business without sin. No character without an act. No coffee without a fee. No courage without rage. No culture without a cult. No entrance without a trance. No epicenter without an epic. No Europe without a rope. No freedom without a reed. No friendship without an end. No fundamentalism without mental fun.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Gentle view of an Irish-American migrant experience

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 18 February 2016
    1 Comment

    Eilis' profound homesickness is evoked by the letters she composes for and receives from her long distant sister and mother. Her sense of awe at this new world is revealed in her interactions with the other, more brazen boarders; and at work, where she is chided by her manager for being too shy with customers. Gradually, familiarity and opportunity allow her to grow in confidence. Her coming-of-age is defined as gradual self-empowerment through the making of small, and sometimes large, choices.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The last year

    • Diane Fahey
    • 19 January 2016
    2 Comments

    They'd stopped by then, your half-filled crosswords with their fey surmises — inspired leaps from the backs of routine clues ... I glimpsed alcoves of dusty treasure: kris — 'Malayan dagger'; obi — 'a Japanese sash'; écus — 'old French coins'. You summoned bird names from the air: rhea, erne; had the secrets of ponds and streams at your fingertips: eft, orfe, elver ... 'open', 'small seeds'; six letters. You would have got that.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Uncle Kevin's letters home from the war

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 24 April 2015
    3 Comments

    I never met my uncle Kevin, who was killed on 9 February 1942 in Singapore. However we were fortunate to have a collection of his letters home from Malaya and reading his letters gives a brief glimpse into his life at war. His final signoff to my grandmother was: 'We’ve still to get our first shock yet but after the first few enemy "bangs" I guess there will be nothing to it.'

    READ MORE