I've only just learned about Joe Lane's passing.
It has affected me deeply because I've known Joe
for as long as I've been on this forum. We have disagreed often, however he was always a gentleman and I admired him greatly. I'll miss him very much.

I'd like those who can - share their memories with us of Joe.
I feel that he deserves that from this forum. He was a valuable contributor, a good friend, a great guy, great sense of humour.

Thanks Foxy. I hadn't known about that. I had some interesting conversations with Joe off the forum as he also wrote for On Line Opinion https://onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=6005.

We agreed on a lot of things to do with indigenous affairs, and I always thought he was very brave to take the position that he did. Which meant I respected him those times when we disagreed because I knew any disagreement was genuine.

He'll be missed on this forum, as well as a lot of other places. This is the funeral notice https://www.mytributes.com.au/notice/death-notices/lane-joseph-james/5649430/.

Thanks for such a prompt response Graham.

I remember when Joe and I first made contact. It was at the
time of his wife's death and Joe was making his feelings known
on the forum about grief. I responded to his loss. And our
friendship on the forum began. He was a lovely, genuine, gentleman
to whom family was everything as was his firm belief in Indigenous
tertiary achievements. He worked in Indigenous tertiary support
from 1981 to mid 1990s (as indicated in the link you gave).
He was too young to go - and my prayers and sympathies go out
to his families and children - Inessa Maria Lane and Malcolm Karl Lane.

cont'd ...

Thanks also for the links. Deeply appreciated.

Big Nana informed us of his death almost a month ago.

Dear Foxy,

Yes it was indeed sad news. Joe and I had many a robust discussion and while his way of clipping people around the ears was far more subtle than mine it was pretty effective.

He put an enormous amount of work into his First Sources site and it is one of the many things he should be acknowledged for.

ttbn,

Not all of us were posting at that time and therefore were
not around to read Big Nana's comments. Even Graham Young did
not know of Joe's passing. I am glad that she
did let people know. Any comments on Joe from you?

Dear Steelie,

I agree. Joe's work should be acknowledged.
Thanks for that.

RIP Joe Lane AKA Loudmouth.

Mission accomplished.

Very sad news.

Dan

We are talking about a name on a screen here, not a bosom buddy. Posters come and go. In my time - around the time OLO started - lots of posters have disappeared, and there has not been any fuss made about them. This departure was no different, apart from the fact that someone took it on herself to tell us. Joe was 78 years old. Same age as I am. He died. We all die.

I cant say anything about someone I cannot possibly know or feel for; but his posts revealed an issue with race; they contained the words "Nazi" and "moron" quite often directed at dissenters, and nobody not an Aborigine or married to one knew anything about them. I never knew the real Joe, so I don't judge him. People say all sorts of things they wouldn't say face to face.

One of Joe's derogatory posts directed at me wondered if I would be missed from OLO. I didn't answer because I neither knew nor cared. I hoped nobody feels the need to pick over my bones when I finally fail to turn up.

ttbn,

Thank You for your honest response.

To me, Joe Lane is more than just a name on a computer
screen.

He shared his thoughts with all of us for more than a
decade

Well, we're all just names and opinions on a computer screen aren't we,
-But there's real people behind those names.

I'm sad to hear about Loudmouths passing, the same as I would be with any of the forums members.
This holds true regardless of whether I agree with peoples opinions or not.

I hope Joe went peacefully and with dignity and that he had friends or family in his life who were there for him.

And in case you were wondering ttbn, you'll be missed too.
I may not know any of you personally, but you're all more than just 'words on a screen'.

Rest in Peace Joe,
Thanks for sharing your time and opinions.

Hi Joe,

Sometimes we agreed, on Donald Trump for one, sometimes we disagreed Bruce Pasco 'Dark Emu' was a classic disagreement, but it was enjoyable to argue the point, particularly about the many Aboriginal issues that popped up from time to time on the Forum.

Yes Foxy

Its so sad Joe's gone and can no longer enrich discussion.

We mostly agreed, but even on disagreement I respected his sincerity.

Bye Joe. Greatly missed.

Pete
http://youtu.be/PkSp8wc8lKw?t=55s

Joe will be missed by so many of us on this forum.
One of the reasons so many of us keep coming
back is because we connect with so many here and regard
them as friends.

Rest in Peace Joe. Our prayers and thoughts go out to your
children and family during this difficult time.

ttbn, your words and sentiment ring far truer and more relevant than those of seemingly more emotionally invested than they truly are, simply to appear caring to a point well beyond the realms and limitations of that expected by anyone having an "un-attached connection" to someone.
I appreciate YOUR version of respect and reverence far more than someone who overplays their hand in an attempt to be seen as a more caring person than they are, or should be, by any measure of societal expectations.

Goodbye Joe,

Thanks for all your input over the years, you leave a gap that will be hard to fill.

ALTRAV,

Different strokes for different folks I suppose. I hope Joe has gone to a better place, but he was a pain in the butt in this one.

.

Dear Foxy,

.

Thank you for informing us of the decease of Joe Lane, alias Loudmouth and Loudmouth 2.

Joe was an exceptional personality and a stalwart participant on OLO. He wrote in a “Quadrant Online” article in 2014 :

« My wife and I made the first Aboriginal flags, back in 1972, and more than a hundred of them up to 1981 or so and sent them all around Australia. We were ardent supporters of land rights and self-determination and used to devour any new book on the subject. Invariably these books were based on secondary and tertiary historical sources, but they fitted in with our way of thinking at the time. Later, I was to find that without attention to primary source documents, indigenous history will remain seriously defective.

« In the 1980s, I found the journals of George Taplin, the missionary who set up the Point McLeay Mission on Lake Alexandrina (where my wife was born) and managed it between 1859 and 1879. The journals were (and still are) in the State Library in Adelaide, in an old typewritten copy. At the time, I thought that some fool should type them up again. As it turned out, I was that fool. But I had discovered a goldmine of information, much of which did not conform to the dominant narrative.

« A friend gave me some old letter-books from the mission, covering up to 1900, which I carefully copied. By then I was hooked on searching out first-hand sources and went on to type up the thousand pages of the various Royal Commissions “into the Aborigines”, of 1860, 1899 and 1913–16. Many other documents have now suffered the same fate. More recently, I have been typing up the correspondence of the Protector of Aborigines in South Australia, more than 13,000 letters in, and 8500 letters out, 1840 to 1912.

« All in all, I’ve transcribed around 6000 pages of primary-source material and put it all on a website: www.firstsources.info. »

.

(Continued …)

.

.

(Continued …)

.


I had many long discussions with Loudmouth – usually about Aboriginal affairs. We rarely agreed on anything. More than once he told me I should come home to Australia and catch up with reality. But, of course, my reality as a Queenslander was a little different to his as a South Australian.

Adelaide was the only capital city in Australia that was not settled by convicts. It was also the first city to give women access to voting, recognise Indigenous land rights, and criminalise sexual and racial discrimination.

I’m afraid Queensland was a bit of a laggard when it comes to most of that. It was the penultimate state to grant voting rights to white women and the last state to remove restrictions on male and female Indigenous voting in state elections in Australia.

Joe spent most of his life studying Aboriginal affairs, colonisation and the so-called “first” settlers. His (first ?) wife, Maria Rigney (1949- 2008) was a Ngarrindjeri woman.

While I had many long debates and disagreements with Loudmouth here on OLO, strangely enough, I cannot recall ever having had any direct discussions of any sort with Loudmouth 2.

I guess it was because we had nothing much to argue about.

An anecdote that amused me was that Joe (Loudmouth) had mentioned during one of our exchanges a few years ago that he enjoyed singing in his local church choir and, more recently, that he (Loudmouth 2) was a convinced atheist.

Perhaps like a few of the rest of us here on OLO, he was a man of contradictions or, perhaps he simply mellowed with age and became wiser as he became older.

Maybe there’s still hope for us yet.

.

Thanks for that BP, Joe would tell me he was named Joe after Joe Stalin, his parents were ardent communist. I would tell him I was named after St Paul, the true founder of Christianity.

It's good to see people responding to Joe's passing.
Joe was unique and I'm sure he would enjoy reading
the various views expressed.

cont'd ...

Thanks BP for reminding us about Joe's extensive work
and for reminding us about his and his late wife's contribution
to the Aboriginal flag. I notice that the Aboriginal flag
is featured in all of the death notices - with the words
"Love you dad."

It appears that this Memorial to Joe has now run its
course. So as a final say I'd like to add a few
paragraphs from W.H. Auden's poem " Stop all the clocks,
cut off the telephone..."
To me it represents overwhelming grief and the themes of
grief and loss which his family must feel. I'm sure that its
an elegy Joe would know:

" Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone
Silence the pianos and with a muffler drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come...

He was my North, my South, my East and West
my waking week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my say:
I thought that love would last for ever:
I was wrong."

Rest In Peace Joe Lane!

.

Dear Foxy,

.

Mourning, the sense of sorrow and emptiness is perfectly human and terribly true but declaring “I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong” is neither human nor true.

In my view, he (or she) who no longer loves never did and death is not the end of love. It is the end of life.

While some may consider Auden to be one of Britain’s great poets (I personally prefer T.S. Eliot), what his poem says to me is that he obviously never had the good fortune of experiencing true love – otherwise, he would have written a very different poem.

Please forgive me for saying this, Foxy, but Auden’s poem strikes me as the epitome of self-pity, not the sublimation of true love.

.

.

Dear Foxy,

.

Shakespeare wrote :

« No longer mourn for me when I am dead.
Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.

Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe.

O if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay;

Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone. »

[“The Triumph of Death”]
.

He also wrote :

« Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love,
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove;
O, no! it is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth ’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love ’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. »

[“Wedded Love – Sonnet CXVI”]
.

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote :

« Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken;

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the belovèd's bed:
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber »

["CCLXXXVIII]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0MkpcI3khY&ab_channel=SoundOnVision

.

Hi Bp. My internet has been down. I agree with. Your assessment. Thank. You for the. Lovely poems. Hopefully I scan. Get my internet to work soon.

Dear. BP,,

Sorry for the. Typos. My. Computer. Is. Not. Working. And. I. Am. Not. Used. To. My. Son,s. iPad.

I. Agree about. W.H Auden. His poem is. Rather pessimistic. It was the best I could. Come up with at the time. Youth. Selection. Is better.

.

Dear Foxy,

.

Thanks for the typos.

If machines were really designed to write like humans, Foxy, they would make a lot more mistakes. Typos are not just human, they are also very personal. There’s a disconnect between brain and fingers that is particular to each one of us.

Your typos are peculiar to you and you alone, Foxy. It means that it really is you who is writing to me, not somebody else, or just the application of algorithms and artificial intelligence.

By the same token, I’m sure Joe would have appreciated Auden's elegiac poem, not so much for any intrinsic quality it may (or may not) have but, rather, for the sincerity and heartfelt expression of your personal sympathy and condolences.

.

Thank. You. For. Your. Kind. Words. They. Are. Appreciated.

You. Have. Given. Me. Frequent. Attacks. Of. Smiling. Through. The. Heart.

Thank You. BP.

Dear BP,

The internet has miraculously come back just now
and it feels like an old friend has returned.
I much prefer my old computer to the ipad my
son bought for me. Anyway, it's good to go back to my
old style of posting once again.

Thank You for all your poems once again. They and
your posts are deeply appreciated.