An Obadiah Slope Column
Drawing to a close: Can you change the world with paper and pencil? The answer is yes if you consider the work of the visionary architect Léon Krier who died this month. He hardly built a thing, but his work has transformed the built environment – though not so much in Australia, which is a problem for us.
As an architecture student Obadiah was captivated by the drawings Krier produced imagining cities built in traditional forms with real streets with colonades and classical facades. They seemd fantastical but Krier has sparked a world wide movement called the New Urbanism that will become stronger in his absence.
The Guardian’s obituary describes his work as the master planner for then Prince Charles’ new town: “A colonnade of doric columns flanks the entrance to the neoclassical Waitrose building in Poundbury, Dorchester, in Dorset, facing on to the congested car park of Queen Mother Square. Across the plaza stands a creamy yellow palazzo, crowned with a royal crested-pediment, and a Palladian hotel named the Duchess of Cornwall. A gigantic brick campanile rises above the Royal Pavilion from a triumphal stone arch, looming over the square.”
Credit: diamond geezer /Flickr
The Town of Seaside in Florida, made famous by the movie The Truman Show was inspired by Krier. “Krier has a very ordered, formalistic, historical style in the things he likes to do, and so a lot of the designs he’s done for the center of town are much more elevated than some of the other things around Seaside,” Ty Nunn, Seaside’s Town Architect told their channel 7. “So, there’s always this intentional balance in Seaside of how do you allow it to continue to develop but not lose its roots, not lose its funky foundations.”
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Nazi’s started it: Reading the text of the Re:Devlin judgment by Family Court Justice Strum, which is highly critical of the transgender medicine practiced in Melbourne, Obadiah discovers that transgender critical people are just following on from the Nazis.
That’s according to the evidence of Associate professor Michelle Telfer, director of the Department of Adolescent Medicine at The Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) Melbourne, who is also the director of the RCH Gender Service.
Telfer was anonymised as “Professor L” in the family court case, but The Australian sucessfully sought for her name to be public. The professor gave evidence using a Scientific American article that “describes three waves of oppression of transgender people internationally over the past century.”
Her expert witness evidence included: ”According to these authors, the first wave occurred in 1930s when the Nazis rose to power, burning books containing LGBTIQ+ information and stopping medical research and clinical practice in trans health care…
“The second wave, occurring in the 1970s once trans health care had been re-established, coincided with trans health care becoming “mainstream” across the US. Trans people became ‘visible on television, talking about their bodies and fighting for their rights’. In response, a psychiatrist known as Dr Jon Meyer, published a short academic paper in 1979 assessing gender affirming surgery that ‘“’ushered in the second wave of historic backlash to trans medicine….’
“During the early 2020s, described as the third wave, we have seen the rise of distrust in science. We have also seen the rise of the “culture wars” and the impact this has had on trans healthcare … The opposition to trans medicine today is described by the authors as being reactionary against the normalisation of LGBTIQ+ people, with increases in trans acceptance, trans visibility and movement towards equality. … The policy announced by the NHS England and the Cass Review appears consistent with this, reducing access to social transition and medical interventions due to stated concerns of rising numbers of trans children presenting to the NHS.”
Justice Strum hit back in his judgment: “The emotive suggestion, by an expert witness, that the Cass Report forms part of a “third wave of transgender oppression” commencing with the Nazis has no place whatsoever in the independent evidence that should be expected of such an expert. It demonstrates ignorance of the true evils of Nazism and cheapens the sufferings – and mass murder – of the millions of the victims thereof, which included, but were most certainly not limited to, transgender people, as well as gay and lesbian people, amongst other groups of people. I consider there to be no comparison whatsoever.”
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P and P: the “Wee Flea” David Robertson, the Minister at Scots Kirk Presbyterian Hamilton in inner city Newcastle, held a joint service with another church last Sunday. What caught Obadiah’s eye was that this was a joint service with a Pentecostal church. Obadiah has obviously lived a sheltered life because he has not heard of this happening before. Two “P” churches, together?
But it has happened and Robertson told Obadiah this was the second joint service when Obadaiah asked how it went.
“Superb – it is the second one we have done. Ironically we did the first because their power was out and I offered it to them. It went so well they wanted another one! We are on different sides of the same street and we work together well. No great fuss….great fellowship and supporting one another.”
Scots Kirk Hamilton and Generation City Church, both on Tudor Street Hamilton, both on a corner with Murray Street, congatulations.
Years ago, when Obadiah stayed a few blocks down Tudor Street on visits to Newcastle for disability sport he prayed what he thought was a pretty hopeless prayer for a Biblical witness in Hamilton. Its been twice answered!
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