Male

• But what is the real state of young South Africans – defined as people below the age of 34 – after 30 years of democracy?
• My recent research paper tracing 30 years of analysing youth marginalisation has found that youth in South Africa, who make up 34.3% of the population, have not fared well under democracy.

Measuring marginalisation

• The survey recorded indicators like unemployment and level of education, as well as subjective views like feelings of alienation (not belonging in society).
• The results were arranged on a scale of how far some young people had been pushed to the margins of society.
• Comparing data from the 1992 and 2018 indices of youth marginalisation, the same proportion (5%) is clearly “lost” – scoring off the chart on virtually every indicator.
• In terms of how much potential South Africa has squandered, they represent an entire generation of opportunity lost to the country.

Marginalised but not lost

• As ever, they demonstrated their instrumental value to the adults controlling violence on various sides.
• Those same adults and the media spoke of a “lost generation” – specifically, black, male, urban youth.

Marginalisation over time

• In 1993, after first presenting to assembled youth organisations in 1992, we released the first iteration of the marginalisation index, Growing up Tough.
• Despite the belief of our church sponsors that no-one is ever truly “lost”, that became the central category of the index.
• In all, 5% of respondents scored high on all, or most, of the indicators in the 12 dimensions.
• Most of the items in the index were later used by the Gauteng City Region Observatory in its early Quality of Life survey, allowing analysis of marginalisation across the entire Gauteng province population.
• Only 0.3% of white youth (and 0.5% of Indian youth) showed signs of high marginalisation.

David Everatt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Why don’t female crickets chirp?
• Among crickets, males are the only ones that make noise because females don’t have sound-producing structures on their wings.
• But the female can hear very well and will come to a male who is signaling to her from some distance away.
• You can learn to recognize them with a little practice, even if you never find the actual crickets.

• She questions whether women like herself – that is, the well-educated, sexually liberated beneficiaries of second-wave feminism – are really better off than their 1940s counterparts.
• But it isn’t quite the avant-garde art crowd looking for anonymous vaginas to cast in their latest 16mm masterpieces either.

• Reconstructed from the travel diary the author kept at the time, the adventure is everything you could possibly hope for in a road trip – provided you (or your daughter) aren’t the one taking it.
• Datsun Angel proves the old adage about time and tragedy making for champagne comedy.
• It self-consciously situates itself as a cross between the substance-induced exuberance of Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, and the provincially impassioned politics of Australian novelist Xavier Herbert.

• For all her progressivism, there is a note of nostalgia ringing through Broinowski’s recollections.
• Datsun Angel harks back to a looser – dare I say, more enjoyable – university experience.
• The narrative promises, against well-intentioned assurances to the contrary, that what doesn’t kill you will, at the very least, make for a good story later on.
• Broinowski goes part way towards acknowledging as much when she ends her postscript with: “If you’re male and reading this, kudos.

Detachment

• Let me borrow one instead from the middle-aged Elmore Leonard fan whom Gordon encounters in the State Library Victoria early in the book: “dickhead”.
• Yes, that about captures it: the protagonist of Excitable Boy is an unequivocal, grade-A dickhead.
• Fortunately for Gordon (and dickheads more generally), the affliction may be chronic, but it need not be terminal.
• This denotes an overriding structure or cohesion that I felt somewhat lacking from the work as a whole.

• Detachment characterises much of Gordon’s storytelling as he kicks his younger self around the back alleys of Melbourne like a half-squashed can of Monster Energy Drink.
• To be honest, I still haven’t made my mind up if Gordon’s aversion to Aristotelian catharsis is one of the book’s virtues or vices.
• Detail has to be controlled by some overall purpose, and every detail has to be put to work for you.
• Detail has to be controlled by some overall purpose, and every detail has to be put to work for you.
• It is often difficult to gauge what overall purpose the details are serving in these essays, beyond fidelity to memory.

Luke Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• But people killed them indiscriminately year-round – sometimes for their meat and feathers, but settlers also took turkey eggs from nests and poisoned adult turkeys to keep them from damaging crops.
• Thanks to this unregulated killing and habitat loss, by 1900 wild turkeys had disappeared from much of their historical range.
• Turkey populations gradually recovered over the 20th century, aided by regulation, conservation funding and state restoration programs.
• We are wildlife ecologists working to determine why turkey populations are shrinking in portions of their range.

Fewer open spaces

• While turkeys may appear at home in urban areas, their habitat is open forest – areas with sparse trees that allow near-full sunlight to reach herbaceous plants at ground level.
• In 1792, naturalist William Bartram described the eastern U.S. as “Grande Savane,” or big savanna, a landscape with abundant wild turkeys.
• The open spaces that are left often are not suitable for wild turkeys: They need a well-developed layer of vegetation at ground level that includes mainly wild flowers, native grasses and young shrubs and trees to provide cover for nesting and raising their young.
• Turkeys can persist in these denser, shaded forests, but they don’t reproduce as successfully, and fewer of their young survive.
• Over the past 50 years, populations of bird species that live in open forests and grasslands have fallen by more than 50%.

The roles of food, predators and hunting

• For example, blame is often placed on more abundant predators that eat turkey eggs, such as raccoons and opossums.
• But these predators probably are more abundant in part due to changes in turkey habitat.
• This suggests that prescribed fire across the wild turkey’s range creates an environment that’s more favorable for turkeys than for their predators.
• Lastly, some observers have proposed that the timing of hunting could be affecting turkey reproduction.

Creating space for turkeys

• Land owners can help by managing for native grasses and wildflowers on their property, which will provide breeding habitat for turkeys.
• We have produced podcast episodes that discuss which plants are valuable to turkeys and other wildlife, and how to promote and maintain plants that are turkey-friendly.

Marcus Lashley receives funding from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, the National Wild Turkey Federation, and Turkeys for Tomorrow. William Gulsby receives funding from the Alabama Wildlife Federation, Turkeys for Tomorrow and the National Wild Turkey Federation.