Journal articles on the topic 'Rubber Base Impressions'

This paper reviews the role of polymers in the construction of replacements for lost and damaged teeth. It starts by linking ancient and modern materials and comes right up-to-date by describing the use of the light-activated composite filling materials used by dentists in the 1990s. The discovery and history of the vulcanite denture base [rubber made hard by cross-linking with sulphur] is described, and details are given of the production of a denture in this material. The properties sought in a denture base are considered and related to both materials from the past and those of today. The construction of a modern polymeric denture is explained, from the taking of an impression to the curing of the poly(methyl methacrylate). The setting of impression materials based on polymers is considered in detail. The lost wax moulding process for forming a denture base from an acrylic dough is clarified and the history of attempts to use moulded thermoplastic polymers as denture bases is assessed.

Mucoceles of the glands of Blandin and Nuhn are uncommon and mainly seen on the ventral surface of the tongue. This case report emphasizes the treatment approach of these mucoceles. This patient reported with a second recurrence following conventional treatment, so a novel method was tried by injecting an ultraflow rubber base impression material into the mucocele, after which a surgical excision was done. The present procedure showed a clear demarcated limit of the lesion making the surgical excision easier.

ABSTRACT Relining of a complete denture essentially involves the recording of an impression within its support surface so as to correct the deficiency that has arisen as a result of tissues changes. Relining can be done simply, accurately and inexpensively by using lining material. In relining, a new thin layer of lining material is added to the existing denture base. Due to residual ridge resorption and irreversible changes in the tissues supporting, the prosthesis become loose and patient may complaint of frequent pain and ulceration. Relining can be done in such patients by using lining. A soft denture liner which is placed in a denture base that contacts tissues provides comfort. Resilient denture liners because of their viscoelastic properties act as shock absorber and reduce and distribute the stress on the denture bearing tissues. However, there is an increased probability of fungal growth on soft lining materials. Adherence of Candida to solid surface, such as denture resin or lining material has been thought to be the first step in successful colonization, subsequent plaque formation and development of pathogenesis. This study is done to find the adherence of Candida albicans to nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) soft lining material and safe duration of its clinical usage. How to cite this article Bhandari AJ, Bhandari AJ. A Clinical Study of Improved Nitrile Butadiene Rubber Soft Lining Material and Acrylic Denture Base. Int J Prosthodont Restor Dent 2015;5(4):91-94.

Regional skin surface area and region-specific weighting factors for calculating mean skin temperature have not been determined for the rat. Therefore, measurements were made of total skin surface area segmented into five regions of 12 spontaneously hypertensive (SHR) and 12 normotensive Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats. SHR's were selected because chronically elevated core temperature and reduced ability of SHR's to withstand heat stress make them of interest for thermoregulatory studies. Area was determined by coating the skin with rubber base dental impression material, then measuring the area of the coating. The relationship between total skin surface area and mass of SHR's was not different from that of WKY's and is described by the equation SA = 8.62 M0.67. However, the ears of SHR's had larger surface area and their tails smaller surface area than those of WKY's. For the combined groups, the proportion of total surface area of the regions was as follows: ears, 0.022; front feet, 0.017; hind feet, 0.040; tail, 0.100; central skin, 0.826. These data provide a basis for calculating skin surface area, mean skin temperature, and related values for SHR and WKY rats.

This article presents Ust-Belaya ceramics of the Ust-Belaya site from the funds of the Muravyov-Amursky Irkutsk Regional Museum of Local History. The multilayered site Ust-Belaya is located 110 km northwest of Irkutsk at the Belaya River mouth (left tributary of the Angara). The considered Ust-Belaya ceramics belongs to the finds from the excavations of 1958–1964. The collection includes 1331 fragments from at least 60 pots. The vessels have a simple closed, rarely open shape and a rounded bottom. The ornament could be located both the upper part of the vessel and cover it entirely. Vessels ornamented with horizontal straight lines predominate. In three cases they are complemented by zigzag lines. The rim on the outer side or on both sides is decorated with oblique impressions of a comb stamp, rarely smooth or other varieties of serrated tools. Almost all vessels in the rim area have a line of rounded pits. The main part of the ornamental composition is represented by lines of a receding scapula or rows of impressions of comb, larval and other types of toothed stamp (rarely smooth), which are set close, separately or using the technique of retreat. Signs of making, recorded on ceramics during the study, allow us to identify several features in the production of Ust-Belaya type ceramics. The vessels were formed by the method of zonal patchwork modeling, partially or almost completely on a base form, which could be another vessel. In the production of vessels, they were knocked out with a smooth mallet, achieving dense and thin walls. Upon completion of the modeling, a rim was formed using an additional structural element such as a conditional tape or funiculus. Then the vessel was ornamented, and the walls were smoothed or rubbed from the inside. Since the finds of 1958–1964 deposited in a mixed compression layer, which complicates dating. In 2017–2018 at the Ust-Belaya site, located on the middle floodplain, Ust-Belaya pottery was recorded in a clear stratigraphic position. Based on bones from the layer, dates were obtained with a range of 6730–6306 cal BP. Also, according to one Ust-Belaya vessel from other excavations of Ust-Belaya in 1957, a date was obtained from carbonized organic residues (foodcrusts) from the inner surface with a value of 6977–6800 cal BP. By analogy with these assemblages, the age of the collection of Ust- Belaya ceramics presented by us is tentatively determined in the range of 6977–6306 cal BP.

Due to the research and design works carried out by the author of this paper starting from 1993, Armenia is currently one of the world leaders in development and extensive application of seismic (base and roof) isolation technologies, as well as this country is the world leader in large implementation of low-cost seismic isolation for construction of new and retrofitting of existing buildings. These facts brought to the idea on creation in Armenia of the World Museum of Seismic Isolation. Museum will serve as an international educational establishment to present the history of development and implementation of seismic isolation, to display expositions from countries around the world, where different seismic isolation systems have been successfully applied to various buildings and structures. It can serve as a common platform for acknowledgement of new solutions in earthquake engineering and will inspire young generations of scientists and engineers to embrace seismic isolation and to further its research and implementation. The author is planning to realize his idea and to create the Museum through his company “Melkumyan Seismic Technologies” LLC with the support of various institutions, companies and individuals across the world. Particularly, his company will invest in this project by providing the land and developing design drawings for the Museum building. It will be designed in the form of a giant seismic isolator of cylindrical type. There will be six stories in total, of which the first above ground floor will have the premises for an educational center, conference and cinema halls, and a cafeteria. Each of the rest four floors will serve as the space for exhibitions from different countries. An underground basement will be serving as a parking floor. The seismic isolation system of this building will be located at the upper part of the parking floor. The ground walking area and the roof’s parapet will resemble the lower and upper flanges of the giant isolator. Museum will include a central core for elevator’s shaft and a staircase. Outside view of the building will be architecturally solved in a way that belts provided around it will give an impression of steel shims between the layers presented by dark glass, imitating rubber layers. The bearing structure of the Museum building consists of the radial placed reinforced concrete frames. Four shear walls are envisaged in mutually perpendicular directions in the parking floor and in all floors along the height of superstructure. Other details on the structural system of base isolated Museum building are given in the paper and illustrated by the corresponding drawings. Analysis of the Museum building was carried out based on the provisions of the Seismic Code of Armenia, as well as seismic response analysis was carried out using acceleration time history of the 1988 Spitak Earthquakes. The period of oscillations of this base isolated building is equal to 2.14 sec. Displacement of the isolation system, deformed state of the building, the values of stories’ maximum drifts and of seismic forces are also given and graphically illustrated in the paper.

The research deals with the possibility to use up-to-date methods of 3D-modeling for diagnostics of piercing-cutting objects causing injuries with bilateral blade grinding. A virtual element of the wound channel is shown to be printed on 3D-printer and given to investigating bodies in order to increase the effective and objective search of a traumatic instrument. 
 Aim of the work. To apply the method of photogrammetry with further 3D-modeling of the wound channel formed by a piercing-cutting object with bilateral blade grinding for further examination of its morphological peculiarities and receiving its linear size with high accuracy in the space of graphics editor «3DsMax».
 Materials and methods. Fifteen experimental wound channels were made by means of alginate impression mass with rubber-like effect «Hydrogum 5» (firm «Zhermack», Italy), which becomes hard rapidly, remains elastic after polymerization, allows impresses to be obtained with an extremely smooth surface, most accurately preserves and reproduces characteristics of an immersed blade of the knife examined. To make experimental injury a piercing-cutting object was used – a knife with bilateral grinding of the blade 6,16 cm long, 2,6 cm wide in the base of the blade, and the blade in its middle part 0,3 cm thick. These sizes of the piercing-cutting instrument were obtained by means of sliding calipers with the error ±0,03-0,15 cm. The wound channel obtained was divided into fragments with a pitch about 3,5 cm. Every fragment of the wound channel was contrasted with a dye using 1 % brilliant green alcohol solution.
 All the fragments of the wound channel were opened parallel to its length and were placed on a rotary table located in a light cube to provide adequate illumination and photos were taken. The digital camera SONY RX 10 II was used for shooting. The object of shooting was labeled with a number, a fragment of a plotting scale 1,0 cm long was placed on it to calibrate the scale and control the sizes of the object examined in computer programs. The photos obtained in JPEG format were loaded into the computer program «Agisoft Photoscan», and 3D-textured models of a wound channel fragment were created in it. The model obtained and the texture was exported in «OBJ» format. The next stage of the work was to transfer 3D-models obtained into the graphic space of «3DsMax» program, where the scale of the model was calibrated. After that the wound channel was reconstructed in the graphics editor by means of 3D models of the wound channel fragments.
 Results. To compare differences between classical and new methods of examination at first linear dimensions of injuries were measured by means of a ruler. The depth of the wound channel was obtained consisting of two fragments according to the method of measuring the wound channel depth in the dead body by means of joining of its separate parts due to immersion and passing the blade in the victim’s body (in the skin, subcutaneous tissue with muscles, in the wall of the cavity and inside of it, in the internal organ and other anatomical structures). The width and length of the wound channel on various levels of immersion were registered in the similar way, which is an important diagnostic component during forensic expertise in case of piercing-cutting injuries.
 The next stage in our research was to examine and get linear dimensions of injuries by means of up-to-date technologies using 3D-models with the help of the graphics editor «3DsMax». In this case the computer program enabled to get the above results with a higher accuracy to 0.001 cm.
 Conclusions. The results obtained are indicative of high information value of the three dimensional methods to identify a traumatic piercing-cutting object by means of a spatial reconstruction of the wound channel fragments, which provides high accuracy in solving applied tasks in modern forensic practice and criminal law science. The method with the use of the graphics editor «3ds max» allows retrospective diagnostics of the wound channel fragments to be obtained followed by further comparison with an expected traumatic object.

Objectives This trial was designed to test the efficacy of 2 lip taping methods in modifying the maxillary arch dimensions (MADs) of infants with bilateral cleft lip and palate (BCLP) before lip repair surgery. Design Parallel-group randomized clinical trial. Setting The trial was conducted at 3 centers in Baghdad city. Participants Thirty-six nonsyndromic infants with BCLP. Intervention The eligible infants were randomly assigned to either the first experimental group that received a conventional horizontal tape (3 M Steri strip-1/4 inch) or the second experimental group that received a custom-made tape made of Steri strips and orthodontic extra oral elastics. All of the included infants in both groups had rubber base impressions taken for them at the start of treatment (T1) and right before surgical lip repair (T2). A desktop scanner was used to scan each of the generated models, creating digital models that could be used for outcome evaluation. Main Outcomes Measures Virtual MAD measurements were performed by a blinded assessor on the generated digital models both before (T1) and after (T2) treatment. Results At T2, both groups showed statistically significant changes in all measured MADs, with a mean difference ranging from 1.36 to 2.95 mm for the conventional taping group and from 1.46 to 7.96 mm for the custom-made one. The comparison of the 2 groups revealed both statistically and clinically significant differences with a P value <.05. The custom-made taping demonstrated more constriction in maxillary arch in terms of changes, which could provide easier surgical manipulation for the cleft parts. Conclusion Lip taping appears to be an efficient technique for modifying the MADs in infants with BCLP.

Abstract Background and Aims Goeppertella has been postulated as a monophyletic group, whose precise position within the Gleichenoid families Dipteriaceae and Matoniaceae, remains poorly understood. Previously described Goeppertella specimens are based on frond fragments and its fertile morphology is represented by a few, poorly preserved specimens. We describe a new species based on the largest collection of fertile specimens known to date, and discuss the evolutionary history of the genus based on the additional reproductive characters provided by the fossils described. Methods Plant impressions were collected in Early Jurassic sediments of Patagonia, Argentina. The specimens were described, and silicone rubber casts were developed to examine in detail vegetative and reproductive features. The new species was compared with other Goeppertella species. Finally, a backbone analysis was performed in the context of a previously published combined matrix of Dipteridaceae, using the maximum parsimony criterion. Key Results The new species is described based on a combination of features that have not been previously reported. The vegetative morphology shows affinities with most fossil and extant Dipteriaceae, contrasting with the reproductive morphology which is more comparable with the scarce number of fossil dipteridaceous forms and it is more spread in the sister family, Matoniaceae. The backbone analysis indicates that the position of the new species vary among different positions among Dipteridaceae and Matoniaceae. Additional analyses, discriminating the signal of reproductive and vegetative character, are provided to discuss the base of this uncertainty. Conclusions We consider Goeppertella as a member of the family Dipteridaceae since we interpret most shared features with Matoniaceae as plesiomorphic conditions for the family. In contrast, most shared features with Dipteridaceae represent apomorphies for the group. Thus, Goeppertella would represent an early diverging genus in Dipteridaceae, considering the venation characters as the most important in order to define the family.

Background: It is well known that intraoral digital impression has been widely used in the field of fixed prosthodontics and achieved good clinical outcomes. Moreover, the clinical application of intraoral digital impression to dental implant and complete denture has also developed rapidly. However, the study on the clinical application of digital impression to removable partial denture is lacking. This study sought to investigate the effects of intraoral digital impression on the clinical adaptation of removable partial dentures (RPDs). Methods: 78 patients with indications of RPDs were selected. Two RPDs were made for each patient, respectively, with the methods of intraoral digital scanning (the digital group) and taking silicon rubber impression (the traditional group). The clinical adaptation of retainers, major connectors and base plates and the occluding accuracy of RPDs were examined and scored when RPDs were inserted. The scoring results were analysed by X^2 test. Mucosa in denture bearing area was re-examined 1 week and 4 weeks after denture insertion. Results: The retainers’ adaptation of RPDs in the digital group was significantly better than that in the traditional group (P<0.05). The adaptation of major connectors and base plates of RPDs in two groups was not significantly different(P>0.05). The occluding accuracy of RPDs in two groups was not significantly different(P>0.05). Mucosa in denture bearing area was not found abnormal in two follow-up examinations after denture insertion. Conclusions: The clinical adaptation and the occluding accuracy of RPDs fabricated with the method of intraoral digital impression combined with 3D printing resin model could meet the requirements of clinical application.

Introduction: Esthetic failure is the commonest reason for replacement of restorations. Consumption of certain beverages may affect the esthetic and physical properties of the resin composite, thereby undermining the quality of restorations. Aim: To determine and evaluate the colour stability of composite restorations when immersed in socially acceptable and commonly consumed alcoholic beverages for 14 days. Materials and method: 50 composite disks were prepared with the help of a mould made of rubber base impression material and later finished and polished. The samples were divided into 5 groups (n=10) and immersed in distilled water (as control), red wine, beer, brandy and whisky for fifteen minutes every day for fourteen days. The colour change of the samples was measured using a spectrophotometer on the first (24hrs) and fourteenth day. Results: Comparing all the beverages, red wine showed the maximum colour change with a ΔE* value of 12.08. The least colour change among the beverages was seen in whisky that had a ΔE* value = 5.45. Even the control group in distilled water showed a ΔE* value of 0.89. Conclusion: At the end of this study, it was evident that alcoholic beverages do produce discolouration. The rate of this discolouration depends upon the characteristics of the beverage and the composite material as well as the time period of immersion. Hence it is imperative to educate the patients regarding the effects of alcoholic beverages on their restorations too. 
 Keywords: Composite, esthetics, alcoholic beverages, discolouration

As the name suggests, the humanities is largely a study of the human condition, in which history sits as a discipline concerned with the past. Environmental history is a new field that brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to consider the changing relationships between humans and the environment over time. Critiques of anthropocentrism that place humans at the centre of the universe or make assessments through an exclusive human perspective provide a challenge to scholars to rethink our traditional biases against the nonhuman world. The movement towards nonhumanism or posthumanism, however, does not seem to have had much of an impression on history as a discipline. What would a nonhumanist history look like if we re-centred the historical narrative around pigs? There are histories of pigs as food (see for example, The Cambridge History of Food which has a chapter on “Hogs”). There are food histories that feature pork in terms of its relationship to multiethnic identity (such as Donna Gabaccia’s We Are What We Eat) and examples made of pigs to promote ethical eating (Singer). Pigs are central to arguments about dietary rules and what motivates them (Soler; Dolander). Ancient pig DNA has also been employed in studies on human migration and colonisation (Larson et al.; Durham University). Pigs are also widely used in a range of products that would surprise many of us. In 2008, Christien Meindertsma spent three years researching the products made from a single pig. Among some of the more unexpected results were: ammunition, medicine, photographic paper, heart valves, brakes, chewing gum, porcelain, cosmetics, cigarettes, hair conditioner and even bio diesel. Likewise, Fergus Henderson, who coined the term ‘nose to tail eating’, uses a pig on the front cover of the book of that name to suggest the extraordinary and numerous potential of pigs’ bodies. However, my intention here is not to pursue a discussion of how parts of their bodies are used, rather to consider a reorientation of the historical narrative to place pigs at the centre of stories of our co-evolution, in order to see what their history might say about humans and our relationships with them. This is underpinned by recognition of the inter-relationality of humans and animals. The relationships between wild boar and pigs with humans has been long and diverse. In a book exploring 10,000 years of interaction, Anton Ervynck and Peter Rowley-Conwy argue that pigs have been central to complex cultural developments in human societies and they played an important role in human migration patterns. The book is firmly grounded within the disciplines of zoology, anthropology and archaeology and contributes to an understanding of the complex and changing relationship humans have historically shared with wild boar and domestic pigs. Naturalist Lyall Watson also explores human/pig relationships in The Whole Hog. The insights these approaches offer for the discipline of history are valuable (although overlooked) but, more importantly, such scholarship also challenges a humanist perspective that credits humans exclusively with historical change and suggests, moreover, that we did it alone. Pigs occupy a special place in this history because of their likeness to humans, revealed in their use in transplant technology, as well as because of the iconic and paradoxical status they occupy in our lives. As Ervynck and Rowley-Conwy explain, “On the one hand, they are praised for their fecundity, their intelligence, and their ability to eat almost anything, but on the other hand, they are unfairly derided for their apparent slovenliness, unclean ways, and gluttonous behaviour” (1). Scientist Niamh O’Connell was struck by the human parallels in the complex social structures which rule the lives of pigs and people when she began a research project on pig behaviour at the Agricultural Research Institute at Hillsborough in County Down (Cassidy). According to O’Connell, pigs adopt different philosophies and lifestyle strategies to get the most out of their life. “What is interesting from a human perspective is that low-ranking animals tend to adopt one of two strategies,” she says. “You have got the animals who accept their station in life and then you have got the other ones that are continually trying to climb, and as a consequence, their life is very stressed” (qtd. in Cassidy). The closeness of pigs to humans is the justification for their use in numerous experiments. In the so-called ‘pig test’, code named ‘Priscilla’, for instance, over 700 pigs dressed in military uniforms were used to study the effects of nuclear testing at the Nevada (USA) test site in the 1950s. In When Species Meet, Donna Haraway draws attention to the ambiguities and contradictions promoted by the divide between animals and humans, and between nature and culture. There is an ethical and critical dimension to this critique of human exceptionalism—the view that “humanity alone is not [connected to the] spatial and temporal web of interspecies dependencies” (11). There is also that danger that any examination of our interdependencies may just satisfy a humanist preoccupation with self-reflection and self-reproduction. Given that pigs cannot speak, will they just become the raw material to reproduce the world in human’s own image? As Haraway explains: “Productionism is about man the tool-maker and -user, whose highest technical production is himself […] Blinded by the sun, in thrall to the father, reproduced in the sacred image of the same, his rewards is that he is self-born, an auto telic copy. That is the mythos of enlightenment and transcendence” (67). Jared Diamond acknowledges the mutualistic relationship between pigs and humans in Guns, Germs and Steel and the complex co-evolutionary path between humans and domesticated animals but his account is human-centric. Human’s relationships with pigs helped to shape human history and power relations and they spread across the world with human expansion. But questioning their utility as food and their enslavement to this cause was not part of the account. Pigs have no voice in the histories we write of them and so they can appear as passive objects in their own pasts. Traces of their pasts are available in humanity’s use of them in, for example, the sties built for them and the cooking implements used to prepare meals from them. Relics include bones and viruses, DNA sequences and land use patterns. Historians are used to dealing with subjects that cannot speak back, but they have usually left ample evidence of what they have said. In the process of writing, historians attempt to perform the miracle, as Curthoys and Docker have suggested, of restoration; bringing the people and places that existed in the past back to life (7). Writing about pigs should also attempt to bring the animal to life, to understand not just their past but also our own culture. In putting forward the idea of an alternative history that starts with pigs, I am aware of both the limits to such a proposal, and that most people’s only contact with pigs is through the meat they buy at the supermarket. Calls for a ban on intensive pig farming (RSPCA, ABC, AACT) might indeed have shocked people who imagine their dinner comes from the type of family farm featured in the movie Babe. Baby pigs in factory farms would have been killed a long time before the film’s sheep dog show (usually at 3 to 4 months of age). In fact, because baby pigs do grow so fast, 48 different pigs were used to film the role of the central character in Babe. While Babe himself may not have been aware of the relationship pigs generally have to humans, the other animals were very cognisant of their function. People eat pigs, even if they change the name of the form it takes in order to do so:Cat: You know, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’m not sure if you realize how much the other animals are laughing at you for this sheep dog business. Babe: Why would they do that? Cat: Well, they say that you’ve forgotten that you’re a pig. Isn't that silly? Babe: What do you mean? Cat: You know, why pigs are here. Babe: Why are any of us here? Cat: Well, the cow’s here to be milked, the dogs are here to help the Boss's husband with the sheep, and I’m here to be beautiful and affectionate to the boss. Babe: Yes? Cat: [sighs softly] The fact is that pigs don’t have a purpose, just like ducks don’t have a purpose. Babe: [confused] Uh, I—I don’t, uh ... Cat: Alright, for your own sake, I’ll be blunt. Why do the Bosses keep ducks? To eat them. So why do the Bosses keep a pig? The fact is that animals don’t seem to have a purpose really do have a purpose. The Bosses have to eat. It’s probably the most noble purpose of all, when you come to think about it. Babe: They eat pigs? Cat: Pork, they call it—or bacon. They only call them pigs when they’re alive (Noonan). Babe’s transformation into a working pig to round up the sheep makes him more useful. Ferdinand the duck tried to do the same thing by crowing but was replaced by an alarm clock. This is a common theme in children’s stories, recalling Charlotte’s campaign to praise Wilbur the pig in order to persuade the farmer to let him live in E. B. White’s much loved children’s novel, Charlotte’s Web. Wilbur is “some pig”, “terrific”, “radiant” and “humble”. In 1948, four years before Charlotte’s Web, White had published an essay “Death of a Pig”, in which he fails to save a sick pig that he had bought in order to fatten up and butcher. Babe tried to present an alternative reality from a pig’s perspective, but the little pig was only spared because he was more useful alive than dead. We could all ask the question why are any of us here, but humans do not have to contemplate being eaten to justify their existence. The reputation pigs have for being filthy animals encourages distaste. In another movie, Pulp Fiction, Vincent opts for flavour, but Jules’ denial of pig’s personalities condemns them to insignificance:Vincent: Want some bacon? Jules: No man, I don’t eat pork. Vincent: Are you Jewish? Jules: Nah, I ain’t Jewish, I just don’t dig on swine, that’s all. Vincent: Why not? Jules: Pigs are filthy animals. I don’t eat filthy animals. Vincent: Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood. Jules: Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I’d never know ’cause I wouldn’t eat the filthy motherfucker. Pigs sleep and root in shit. That’s a filthy animal. I ain’t eat nothin’ that ain’t got sense enough to disregard its own feces [sic]. Vincent: How about a dog? Dogs eats its own feces. Jules: I don’t eat dog either. Vincent: Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal? Jules: I wouldn’t go so far as to call a dog filthy but they’re definitely dirty. But, a dog’s got personality. Personality goes a long way. Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true? Jules: Well we’d have to be talkin’ about one charming motherfuckin’ pig. I mean he’d have to be ten times more charmin’ than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I’m sayin’? In the 1960s television show Green Acres, Arnold was an exceptional pig who was allowed to do whatever he wanted. He was talented enough to write his own name and play the piano and his attempts at painting earned him the nickname “Porky Picasso”. These talents reflected values that are appreciated, and so he was. The term “pig” is, however, chiefly used a term of abuse, however, embodying traits we abhor—gluttony, obstinence, squealing, foraging, rooting, wallowing. Making a pig of yourself is rarely honoured. Making a pig of the humanities, however, could be a different story. As a historian I love to forage, although I use white gloves rather than a snout. I have rubbed my face and body on tree trunks in the service of forestry history and when the temperature rises I also enjoy wallowing, rolling from side to side rather than drawing a conclusion. More than this, however, pigs provide a valid means of understanding key historical transitions that define modern society. Significant themes in modern history—production, religion, the body, science, power, the national state, colonialism, gender, consumption, migration, memory—can all be understood through a history of our relationships with pigs. Pigs play an important role in everyday life, but their relationship to the economic, social, political and cultural matters discussed in general history texts—industrialisation, the growth of nation states, colonialism, feminism and so on—are generally ignored. However “natural” this place of pigs may seem, culture and tradition profoundly shape their history and their own contribution to those forces has been largely absent in history. What, then, would the contours of such a history that considered the intermeshing of humans and pigs look like? The intermeshing of pigs in early human history Agricultural economies based on domestic animals began independently in different parts of the world, facilitating increases in population and migration. Evidence for long-term genetic continuity between modern and ancient Chinese domestic pigs has been established by DNA sequences. Larson et al. have made an argument for five additional independent domestications of indigenous wild boar populations: in India, South East Asia and Taiwan, which they use to develop a picture of both pig evolution and the development and spread of early farmers in the Far East. Domestication itself involves transformation into something useful to animals. In the process, humans became transformed. The importance of the Fertile Crescent in human history has been well established. The area is attributed as the site for a series of developments that have defined human history—urbanisation, writing, empires, and civilisation. Those developments have been supported by innovations in food production and animal husbandry. Pig, goats, sheep and cows were all domesticated very early in the Fertile Crescent and remain four of the world’s most important domesticated mammals (Diamond 141). Another study of ancient pig DNA has concluded that the earliest domesticated pigs in Europe, believed to be descended from European wild boar, were introduced from the Middle East. The research, by archaeologists at Durham University, sheds new light on the colonisation of Europe by early farmers, who brought their animals with them. Keith Dobney explains:Many archaeologists believe that farming spread through the diffusion of ideas and cultural exchange, not with the direct migration of people. However, the discovery and analysis of ancient Middle Eastern pig remains across Europe reveals that although cultural exchange did happen, Europe was definitely colonised by Middle Eastern farmers. A combination of rising population and possible climate change in the ‘fertile crescent’, which put pressure on land and resources, made them look for new places to settle, plant their crops and breed their animals and so they rapidly spread west into Europe (ctd in ScienceDaily). Middle Eastern farmers colonised Europe with pigs and in the process transformed human history. Identity as a porcine theme Religious restrictions on the consumption of pigs come from the same area. Such restrictions exist in Jewish dietary laws (Kashrut) and in Muslim dietary laws (Halal). The basis of dietary laws has been the subject of much scholarship (Soler). Economic and health and hygiene factors have been used to explain the development of dietary laws historically. The significance of dietary laws, however, and the importance attached to them can be related to other purposes in defining and expressing religious and cultural identity. Dietary laws and their observance may have been an important factor in sustaining Jewish identity despite the dispersal of Jews in foreign lands since biblical times. In those situations, where a person eats in the home of someone who does not keep kosher, the lack of knowledge about your host’s ingredients and the food preparation techniques make it very difficult to keep kosher. Dietary laws require a certain amount of discipline and self-control, and the ability to make distinctions between right and wrong, good and evil, pure and defiled, the sacred and the profane, in everyday life, thus elevating eating into a religious act. Alternatively, people who eat anything are often subject to moral judgments that may also lead to social stigmatisation and discrimination. One of the most powerful and persuasive discourses influencing current thinking about health and bodies is the construction of an ‘obesity epidemic’, critiqued by a range of authors (see for example, Wright & Harwood). As omnivores who appear indiscriminate when it comes to food, pigs provide an image of uncontrolled eating, made visible by the body as a “virtual confessor”, to use Elizabeth Grosz’s term. In Fat Pig, a production by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2006, women are reduced to being either fat pigs or shrieking shallow women. Fatuosity, a blog by PhD student Jackie Wykes drawing on her research on fat and sexual subjectivity, provides a review of the play to describe the misogyny involved: “It leaves no options for women—you can either be a lovely person but a fat pig who will end up alone; or you can be a shrill bitch but beautiful, and end up with an equally obnoxious and shallow male counterpart”. The elision of the divide between women and pigs enacted by such imagery also creates openings for new modes of analysis and new practices of intervention that further challenge humanist histories. Such interventions need to make visible other power relations embedded in assumptions about identity politics. Following the lead of feminists and postcolonial theorists who have challenged the binary oppositions central to western ideology and hierarchical power relations, critical animal theorists have also called into question the essentialist and dualist assumptions underpinning our views of animals (Best). A pig history of the humanities might restore the central role that pigs have played in human history and evolution, beyond their exploitation as food. Humans have constructed their story of the nature of pigs to suit themselves in terms that are specieist, racist, patriarchal and colonialist, and failed to grasp the connections between the oppression of humans and other animals. The past and the ways it is constructed through history reflect and shape contemporary conditions. In this sense, the past has a powerful impact on the present, and the way this is re-told, therefore, also needs to be situated, historicised and problematicised. The examination of history and society from the standpoint of (nonhuman) animals offers new insights on our relationships in the past, but it might also provide an alternative history that restores their agency and contributes to a different kind of future. As the editor of Critical Animals Studies, Steve Best describes it: “This approach, as I define it, considers the interaction between human and nonhuman animals—past, present, and future—and the need for profound changes in the way humans define themselves and relate to other sentient species and to the natural world as a whole.” References ABC. “Changes to Pig Farming Proposed.” ABC News Online 22 May 2010. 10 Aug. 2010 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/22/2906519.htm Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania. “Australia’s Intensive Pig Industry: The Intensive Pig Industry in Australia Has Much to Hide.” 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.aact.org.au/pig_industry.htm Babe. Dir. Chris Noonan. Universal Pictures, 1995. Best, Steven. “The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: Putting Theory into Action and Animal Liberation into Higher Education.” Journal for Critical Animal Studies 7.1 (2009): 9-53. Cassidy, Martin. “How Close are Pushy Pigs to Humans?”. BBC News Online 2005. 10 Sep. 2010 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4482674.stmCurthoys, A., and Docker, J. “Time Eternity, Truth, and Death: History as Allegory.” Humanities Research 1 (1999) 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.anu.edu.au/hrc/publications/hr/hr_1_1999.phpDiamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Dolader, Miguel-Àngel Motis. “Mediterranean Jewish Diet and Traditions in the Middle Ages”. Food: A Culinary History. Eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari. Trans. Clarissa Botsford, Arthus Golhammer, Charles Lambert, Frances M. López-Morillas and Sylvia Stevens. New York: Columbia UP, 1999. 224-44. Durham University. “Chinese Pigs ‘Direct Descendants’ of First Domesticated Breeds.” ScienceDaily 20 Apr. 2010. 29 Aug. 2010 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100419150947.htm Gabaccia, Donna R. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1994. Haraway, D. “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others.” The Haraway Reader. New York: Routledge, 2005. 63-124. Haraway, D. When Species Meet: Posthumanities. 3rd ed. London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Henderson, Fergus. Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking. London: Bloomsbury, 2004. Kiple, Kenneth F., Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas. Cambridge History of Food. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Larson, G., Ranran Liu, Xingbo Zhao, Jing Yuan, Dorian Fuller, Loukas Barton, Keith Dobney, Qipeng Fan, Zhiliang Gu, Xiao-Hui Liu, Yunbing Luo, Peng Lv, Leif Andersson, and Ning Li. “Patterns of East Asian Pig Domestication, Migration, and Turnover Revealed by Modern and Ancient DNA.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, United States 19 Apr. 2010. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0912264107/DCSupplemental Meindertsma, Christien. “PIG 05049. Kunsthal in Rotterdam.” 2008. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.christienmeindertsma.com/index.php?/books/pig-05049Naess, A. “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement.” Inquiry 16 (1973): 95-100. Needman, T. Fat Pig. Sydney Theatre Company. Oct. 2006. Noonan, Chris [director]. “Babe (1995) Memorable Quotes”. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112431/quotes Plumwood, V. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge, 1993. Pulp Fiction. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Miramax, 1994. RSPCA Tasmania. “RSPCA Calls for Ban on Intensive Pig Farming.” 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.rspcatas.org.au/press-centre/rspca-calls-for-a-ban-on-intensive-pig-farming ScienceDaily. “Ancient Pig DNA Study Sheds New Light on Colonization of Europe by Early Farmers” 4 Sep. 2007. 10 Sep. 2010 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070903204822.htm Singer, Peter. “Down on the Family Farm ... or What Happened to Your Dinner When it was Still an Animal.” Animal Liberation 2nd ed. London: Jonathan Cape, 1990. 95-158. Soler, Jean. “Biblical Reasons: The Dietary Rules of the Ancient Hebrews.” Food: A Culinary History. Eds. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari. Trans. Clarissa Botsford, Arthus Golhammer, Charles Lambert, Frances M. López-Morillas and Sylvia Stevens. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 46-54. Watson, Lyall. The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs. London: Profile, 2004. White, E. B. Essays of E. B. White. London: HarperCollins, 1979. White, E. B. Charlotte’s Web. London: HarperCollins, 2004. Wright, J., and V. Harwood. Eds. Biopolitics and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’. New York: Routledge, 2009. Wykes, J. Fatuosity 2010. 29 Aug. 2010 http://www.fatuosity.net

Saturday, 24 July 1971, Tower Mill Hotel The man jiggles the brick, gauges its weight. His stout hand, a flash of his watch dial, the sleeve rolled back, muscles on the upper arm bundled tight. His face half-erased by the dark. There’s something going on beneath the surface that Murray can’t grasp. He thinks of the three witches in Polanski’s Macbeth, huddled together on the beach, digging a circle in the sand with bare hands, unwrapping their filthy bundle. A ritual. The brick’s in the air and it’s funny but Murray expected it to spin but it doesn’t, it holds its position, arcs forward, as though someone’s taken the sky and pulled it sideways to give the impression of movement, like those chase scenes in the Punch and Judy shows you don’t see anymore. The brick hits the cement and fractures. Red dust on cops’ shined shoes. Murray feels the same sense of shock he’d felt, sitting in the sagging canvas seat at one of his film nights, recognising the witches’ bundle, a severed human arm, hacked off just before the elbow; both times looking so intently, he had no distance or defence when the realisation came. ‘What is it?’ says Lan. Murray points to the man who threw the brick but she is looking the other way, at a cop in a white riot helmet, head like a globe, swollen up as though bitten. Lan stands on Murray’s feet to see. The pig yells through a megaphone: ‘You’re occupying too much of the road. It’s illegal. Step back. Step back.’ Lan’s back is pressed against Murray’s stomach; her bum fits snugly to his groin. He resists the urge to plant his cold hands on her warm stomach, to watch her squirm. She turns her head so her mouth is next to his ear, says, ‘Don’t move.’ She sounds winded, her voice without force. He’s pinned to the ground by her feet. Again, ‘Step back. Step back.’ Next to him, Roger begins a chant. ‘Springboks,’ he yells, the rest of the crowd picking up the chant, ‘out now!’ ‘Springboks!’ ‘Out now!’ Murray looks up, sees a hand pressed against the glass in one of the hotel’s windows, quickly withdrawn. The hand belongs to a white man, for sure. It must be one of the footballers, although the gesture is out of keeping with his image of them. Too timid. He feels tired all of a sudden. But Jacobus Johannes Fouché’s voice is in his head, these men—the Springboks—represent the South African way of life, and the thought of the bastard Bjelke inviting them here. He, Roger and Lan were there the day before when the footballers pulled up outside the Tower Mill Hotel in a black and white bus. ‘Can you believe the cheek of those bastards?’ said Roger when they saw them bounding off the bus, legs the span of Murray’s two hands. A group of five Nazis had been lined up in front of the glass doors reflecting the city, all in uniform: five sets of white shirts and thin black ties, five sets of khaki pants and storm-trooper boots, each with a red sash printed with a black and white swastika tied around their left arms, just above the elbow. The Springboks strode inside, ignoring the Nazi’s salute. The protestors were shouting. An apple splattered wetly on the sidewalk. Friday, 7 April 1972, St Lucia Lan left in broad daylight. Murray didn’t know why this upset him, except that he had a vague sense that she should’ve gone in the night time, under the cover of dark. The guilty should sneak away, with bowed heads and faces averted, not boldly, as though going for an afternoon walk. Lan had pulled down half his jumpers getting the suitcase from the top of the cupboard. She left his clothes scattered across the bedroom, victims of an explosion, an excess of emotion. In the two days after Lan left, Murray scours the house looking for some clue to where she was, maybe a note to him, blown off the table in the wind, or put down and forgotten in the rush. Perhaps there was a letter from her parents, bankrupt, demanding she return to Vietnam. Or a relative had died. A cousin in the Viet Cong napalmed. He finds a packet of her tampons in the bathroom cupboard, tries to flush them down the toilet, but they keep floating back up. They bloat; the knotted strings make them look like some strange water-dwelling creature, paddling in the bowl. He pees in the shower for a while, but in the end he scoops the tampons back out again with the holder for the toilet brush. The house doesn’t yield anything, so he takes to the garden, circles the place, investigates its underbelly. The previous tenant had laid squares of green carpet underneath, off-cuts that met in jagged lines, patches of dirt visible. Murray had set up two sofas, mouldy with age, on the carpeted part, would invite his friends to sit with him there, booze, discuss the state of the world and the problem with America. Roger rings in the afternoon, says, ‘What gives? We were supposed to have lunch.’ Murray says, ‘Lan’s left me.’ He knows he will cry soon. ‘Oh Christ. I’m so sorry,’ says Roger. Murray inhales, snuffs up snot. Roger coughs into the receiver. ‘It was just out of the blue,’ says Murray. ‘Where’s she gone?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘She didn’t say anything?’ ‘No,’ says Murray. ‘She could be anywhere. Maybe you should call the police, put in a missing report,’ says Roger. ‘I’m not too friendly with the cops,’ says Murray, and coughs. ‘You sound a bit crook. I’ll come over,’ says Roger. ‘That’d be good,’ says Murray. Roger turns up at the house an hour later, wearing wide pants and a tight collared shirt with thick white and red stripes. He’s growing a moustache, only cuts his hair when he visits his parents. Murray says, ‘I’ll make us a cuppa.’ Roger nods, sits down at the vinyl table with his hands resting on his knees. He says, ‘Are you coming to 291 on Sunday?’ 291 St Paul’s Terrace is the Brisbane Communist Party’s headquarters. Murray says, ‘What’s on?’ ‘Billy needs someone to look after the bookshop.’ Murray gives Roger a mug of tea, sits down with his own mug between his elbows, and cradles his head in his hands so his hair falls over his wrists. After a minute, Roger says, ‘Does her family know?’ Murray makes a strange noise through his hands. ‘I don’t even know how to contact them,’ he says. ‘She wrote them letters—couldn’t afford to phone—but she’s taken everything with her. The address book. Everything.’ Murray knows nothing of the specifics of Lan’s life before she met him. She was the first Asian he’d ever spoken to. She wore wrap-around skirts that changed colour in the sun; grew her hair below the waist; sat in the front row in class and never spoke. He liked the shape of her calf as it emerged from her skirt. He saw her on the great lawn filming her reflection in a window with a Sony Portapak and knew that he wanted her more than anything. Murray seduced her by saying almost nothing and touching her as often as he could. He was worried about offending her. What reading he had done made him aware of his own ignorance, and his friend in Psych told him that when you touch a girl enough — especially around the aureole — a hormone is released that bonds them to you, makes them sad when you leave them or they leave you. In conversation, Murray would put his hand on Lan’s elbow, once on the top of her head. Lan was ready to be seduced. Murray invited her to a winter party in his backyard. They kissed next to the fire and he didn’t notice until the next morning that the rubber on the bottom of his shoe melted in the flames. She moved into his house quickly, her clothes bundled in three plastic bags. He wanted her to stay in bed with him all day, imagined he was John Lennon and she Yoko Ono. Their mattress became a soup of discarded clothes, bread crumbs, wine stains, come stains, ash and flakes of pot. He resented her when she told him that she was bored, and left him, sheets pulled aside to reveal his erection, to go to class. Lan tutored high-schoolers for a while, but they complained to their mothers that they couldn’t understand her accent. She told him her parents wanted her to come home. The next night he tidied the house, and cooked her dinner. Over the green peas and potato—Lan grated ginger over hers, mixed it with chili and soy sauce, which she travelled all the way to Chinatown on a bus to buy—Murray proposed. They were married in the botanic gardens, surrounded by Murray’s friends. The night before his father called him up and said, ‘It’s not too late to get out of it. You won’t be betraying the cause.’ Murray said, ‘You have no idea what this means to me,’ and hung up on him. Sunday, 9 April 1972, 291 St Paul’s Terrace Murray perches on the backless stool behind the counter in The People’s Bookshop. He has the sense he is on the brink of something. His body is ready for movement. When a man walks into the shop, Murray panics because Billy hadn’t shown him how to use the cash register. He says, ‘Can I help?’ anyway. ‘No,’ says the man. The man walks the length of the shelves too fast to read the titles. He stops at a display of Australiana on a tiered shelf, slides his hand down the covers on display. He pauses at Crocodile Hunt. The cover shows a drawing of a bulky crocodile, scaled body bent in an S, its jaws under the man’s thumb. He picks it up, examines it. Murray thinks it odd that he doesn’t flip it over to read the blurb. He walks around the whole room once, scanning the shelves, reaches Murray at the counter and puts the book down between them. Murray picks it up, turns it over, looking for a price. It’s stuck on the back in faded ink. He opens his mouth to tell the man how much, and finds him staring intently at the ceiling. Murray looks up too. A hairline crack runs along the surface and there are bulges in the plaster where the wooden framework’s swollen. It’s lower than Murray remembers. He thinks that if he stood on his toes he could reach it with the tips of his fingers. Murray looks down again to find the man staring at him. Caught out, Murray mutters the price, says, ‘You don’t have it in exact change, do you?’ The man nods, fumbles around in his pocket for a bit and brings out a note, which he lays at an angle along the bench top. He counts the coins in the palm of his hand. He makes a fist around the coins, brings his hand over the note and lets go. The coins fall, clinking, over the bench. One spins wildly, rolls past Murray’s arm and across the bench. Murray lets it fall. He recognises the man now; it is the act of release that triggers the memory, the fingers spread wide, the wrist bent, the black watch band. This is the man who threw the brick in the Springbok protest. Dead set. He looks up again, expecting to see the same sense of recognition in the man, but he is walking out of the shop. Murray follows him outside, leaving the door open and the money still on the counter. The man is walking right along St Paul’s Terrace. He tucks the book under his arm to cross Barry Parade, as though he might need both hands free to wave off the oncoming traffic. Murray stands on the other side of the road, unsure of what to do. When Murray came outside, he’d planned to hail the man, tell him he recognised him from the strike and was a fellow comrade. They give discounts to Communist Party members. Outside the shop, it strikes him that perhaps the man is not one of them at all. Just because he was at the march doesn’t make him a communist. Despite the unpopularity of the cause —‘It’s just fucking football,’ one of Murray’s friends had said. ‘What’s it got to do with anything?’— there had been many types there, a mixture of labour party members; unionists; people in the Radical Club and the Eureka Youth League; those not particularly attached to anyone. He remembers again the brick shattered on the ground. It hadn’t hit anyone, but was an incitement to violence. This man is dangerous. Murray is filled again with nervous energy, which leaves him both dull-witted and super-charged, as though he is a wind-up toy twisted tight and then released, unable to do anything but move in the direction he’s facing. He crosses the road about five metres behind the man, sticks to the outer edge of the pavement, head down. If he moves his eyes upwards, while still keeping his neck lowered, he can see the shoes of the man, his white socks flashing with each step. The man turns the corner into Brunswick Street. He stops at a car parked in front of the old Masonic Temple. Murray walks past fast, unsure of what to do next. The Temple’s entry is set back in the building, four steps leading up to a red door. Murray ducks inside the alcove, looks up to see the man sitting in the driver’s seat pulling out the pages of Crocodile Hunt and feeding them through the half wound-down window where they land, fanned out, on the road. When he’s finished dismembering the book, the man spreads the page-less cover across the back of the car. The crocodile, snout on the side, one eye turned outwards, stares out into the street. The man flicks the ignition and drives, the pages flying out and onto the road in his wake. Murray sits down on the steps of the guild and smokes. He isn’t exactly sure what just happened. The man must have bought the book just because he liked the picture on the front of the cover. But it’s odd though that he had bothered to spend so much just for one picture. Murray remembers how he had paced the shop and studiously examined the ceiling. He’d given the impression of someone picking out furniture for the room, working out the dimensions so some chair or table would fit. A cough. Murray looks up. The man’s standing above him, his forearm resting on the wall, elbow bent. His other arm hangs at his side, hand bunched up around a bundle of keys. ‘I wouldn’t of bothered following me, if I was you,’ the man says. ‘The police are on my side. Special branch are on my side.’ He pushes himself off the wall, stands up straight, and says, ‘Heil Hitler.’ Tuesday April 19, 1972, 291 St Paul’s Terrace Murray brings his curled fist down on the door. It opens with the force of his knock and he feels like an idiot for even bothering. The hallway’s dark. Murray runs into a filing cabinet, swears, and stands in the centre of the corridor, with his hand still on the cabinet, calling, ‘Roger! Roger!’ Murray told Roger he’d come here when he called him. Murray was walking back from uni, and on the other side of the road to his house, ready to cross, he saw there was someone standing underneath the house, looking out into the street. Murray didn’t stop. He didn’t need to. He knew it was the man from the bookshop, the Nazi. Murray kept walking until he reached the end of the street, turned the corner and then ran. Back on campus, he shut himself in a phone box and dialed Roger’s number. ‘I can’t get to my house,’ Murray said when Roger picked up. ‘Lock yourself out, did you?’ said Roger. ‘You know that Nazi? He’s back again.’ ‘I don’t get it,’ said Roger. ‘It doesn’t matter. I need to stay with you,’ said Murray. ‘You can’t. I’m going to a party meeting.’ ‘I’ll meet you there.’ ‘Ok. If you want.’ Roger hung up. Now, Roger stands framed in the doorway of the meeting room. ‘Hey Murray, shut up. I can hear you. Get in here.’ Roger switches on the hallway light and Murray walks into the meeting room. There are about seven people, sitting on hard metal chairs around a long table. Murray sits next to Roger, nods to Patsy, who has nice breasts but is married. Vince says, ‘Hi, Murray, we’re talking about the moratorium on Friday.’ ‘You should bring your pretty little Vietnamese girl,’ says Billy. ‘She’s not around anymore,’ says Roger. ‘That’s a shame,’ says Patsy. ‘Yeah,’ says Murray. ‘Helen Dashwood told me her school has banned them from wearing moratorium badges,’ says Billy. ‘Far out,’ says Patsy. ‘We should get her to speak at the rally,’ says Stella, taking notes, and then, looking up, says, ‘Can anyone smell burning?’ Murray sniffs, says ‘I’ll go look.’ They all follow him down the hall. Patsy says, behind him, ‘Is it coming from the kitchen?’ Roger says, ‘No,’ and then the windows around them shatter. Next to Murray, a filing cabinet buckles and twists like wet cardboard in the rain. A door is blown off its hinges. Murray feels a moment of great confusion, a sense that things are sliding away from him spectacularly. He’s felt this once before. He wanted Lan to sit down with him, but she said she didn’t want to be touched. He’d pulled her to him, playfully, a joke, but he was too hard and she went limp in his hands. Like she’d been expecting it. Her head hit the table in front of him with a sharp, quick crack. He didn’t understand what happened; he had never experienced violence this close. He imagined her brain as a line drawing with the different sections coloured in, like his Psych friend had once showed him, except squashed in at the bottom. She had recovered, of course, opened her eyes a second later to him gasping. He remembered saying, ‘I just want to hold you. Why do you always do this to me?’ and even to him it hadn’t made sense because he was the one doing it to her. Afterwards, Murray had felt hungry, but couldn’t think of anything that he’d wanted to eat. He sliced an apple in half, traced the star of seeds with his finger, then decided he didn’t want it. He left it, already turning brown, on the kitchen bench. Author’s Note No one was killed in the April 19 explosion, nor did the roof fall in. The bookstore, kitchen and press on the first floor of 291 took the force of the blast (Evans and Ferrier). The same night, a man called The Courier Mail (1) saying he was a member of a right wing group and had just bombed the Brisbane Communist Party Headquarters. He threatened to bomb more on Friday if members attended the anti-Vietnam war moratorium that day. He ended his conversation with ‘Heil Hitler.’ Gary Mangan, a known Nazi party member, later confessed to the bombing. He was taken to court, but the Judge ruled that the body of evidence was inadmissible, citing a legal technicality. Mangan was not charged.Ian Curr, in his article, Radical Books in Brisbane, publishes an image of the Communist party quarters in Brisbane. The image, entitled ‘After the Bomb, April 19 1972,’ shows detectives interviewing those who were in the building at the time. One man, with his back to the camera, is unidentified. I imagined this unknown man, in thongs with the long hair, to be Murray. It is in these gaps in historical knowledge that the writer of fiction is free to imagine. References “Bomb in the Valley, Then City Shots.” The Courier Mail 20 Apr. 1972: 1. Curr, Ian. Radical Books in Brisbane. 2008. 24 Jun. 2011 < http://workersbushtelegraph.com.au/2008/07/18/radical-books-in-brisbane/ >. Evans, Raymond, and Carole Ferrier. Radical Brisbane: An Unruly History. Brisbane: Vulgar Press, 2004.