TheBanyanTree: Introduction, reintroduction, and stepping back inside

[Jim Miller]

Robin,

For different reasons, I too have been mostly silent for the last ten
years. I've thought of you often.

Its wonderful hearing your voice again.

Jim Miller
On Feb 4, 2012 8:29 AM, "Theta" <tybrent at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm so sad you met with hostility in this place - that was never the image
> I have of the people who hang out here.  I'm glad you have stepped through
> the doors again.   The atmosphere here is quieter than the Spoon was, but
> the tone is always positive.  And my dog, Gypsy, will gladly romp with your
> dog and the rest of the pack of furkids who hang out here with us while we
> are sharing a cup of coffee and some tales, tall and otherwise.  Welcome
> home.
>
>
> Theta
>
>
> On 2/4/2012 3:09 AM, Robin wrote:
>
>> You know when something changes in your favourite café and you don’t like
>> it? Maybe the best barista in town moves on; or the management makes some
>> stupid rule about leaving your dog outside; or the chef is replaced and you
>> don’t like the new menu; or the owner says something offensive. So you just
>> stop going there. That was me and The Banyan Tree.
>>
>> For several years I hung out here with Roger, the Spousal Unit, telling
>> stories and sometimes just shooting the breeze with everyone else. It was a
>> good place and many a good tale spun under its branches.
>>
>> I’ve been away thinking now for a while, and perhaps I should start here
>> by telling you why I’ve been away so long.
>>
>> Roger and I signed up to the forerunner of TBT, a little café just off
>> the internet superhighway called The Spoon, in about 1997. We’d just
>> ventured into this place we know as cyberspace and which has, over the past
>> 16 years become a second home to some of us, and The Spoon seemed like a
>> convivial place to rest up while we caught our breath. We made some great
>> friends and I am forever grateful for those connections. When The Spoon
>> morphed into The Banyan Tree we went with it, as did our cyberfriends, and
>> things cruised along happily until one day in September, 2001, when a
>> Terrible Thing happened.
>>
>> The Terrible Thing was unlike any other thing any of us had witnessed.
>> News of it reverberated around the world and for days after it people
>> clustered around televisions and computer monitors and shook their heads in
>> disbelief and spoke in hushed tones. I was working in the political science
>> department of a major university in Australia at the time, and many of my
>> colleagues were called upon by domestic and international media to comment
>> and give expert opinion as to why this Terrible Thing had happened, and how
>> governments would/could/should respond.
>>
>> In the immediate aftermath of the Terrible Thing everyone, regardless of
>> where they were in the world, tried to make some sense of it in their own
>> heads. Why? Who? What next? Did they know anyone among the thousands of
>> dead and missing? Where was cousin Jim who had travelled to that city just
>> three weeks ago for a holiday? That nice girl down the road who had a
>> scholarship to a university in that city, had her parents heard from her?
>>
>> The Banyan Tree, too, became an outlet for people’s questions: a conduit
>> for collective grief and outrage. Into the outpouring that day, Roger sent
>> his own thoughts about the Terrible Thing. I don’t recall what it was he
>> wrote, but I was not prepared for the reaction that came from several
>> people: abuse, hostility, and, perhaps most bafflingly, accusations. “I
>> suppose you Australians are probably having a great laugh at this” shot one
>> response. Others suggested we had no idea what anyone was going through and
>> had no right to comment.
>>
>> I needed to get away and think about this. How could anyone think that
>> just because the Terrible Thing had happened on US soil that we here in
>> another country were having a laugh? When the fence at the US Embassy in
>> Canberra had become a makeshift memorial and we all knew our lives would
>> never be the same? As for what others were going through, everyone was
>> going through something slightly different so did anyone understand enough
>> to be truly empathetic?
>>
>> On a wider scale, I was saddened and confused to see a great country I
>> admired suddenly slam its shutters and fold in on itself and I realised
>> that what I witnessed in a few individuals, who I had considered friends,
>> was being repeated at a national and global level. Where would it end?
>>
>> I stepped back to think about it all for a while.
>>
>> I’ve been thinking about it now for over 10 years and I’m no closer to an
>> answer, except to know that Terrible Things have always happened and will
>> continue to happen and that we all must search for meaning in our own ways,
>> and if that means hurting or alienating others, that's just the way it
>> goes. It, too, will pass.
>>
>> So my road had led me back to The Banyan Tree. I now work in the
>> political science department of a different university, I write a lot of
>> opinion pieces for various (mostly online) journals, I’m in the final
>> pre-publication stages of a book documenting the history of solar energy
>> research in Australia and starting a new one on the social and political
>> legacy of the ultra-conservative government of one Australian state in the
>> 1970s and 80s.
>>
>> I like to tell stories, though, and that’s something I hope to do more of
>> around here. If you’ll have me back. But I won’t be leaving my dog outside.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Robin
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>
>