What will keep me going in 2013?

Just gathering my wits at the moment to make a blog post. I managed to get through 2012 with a few wobbles in the middle surrounding mis-haps in the arts and the inability to intervene in the fate of a beautiful cat. Around Christmas things were better than the previous year due to a win in the arts, brought swiftly to earth by an abrasive encounter at a pre-Christmas party.

On the upside, I managed to recover from the abrasive encounter with the support of dear friends and family, plus juggling my pills and vitamins! Currently I feel pretty good and I’ll do my best to continue along this trajectory.

Several things lying around the house (never tidy, but usually not a pigsty) have reminded me that reading has been a good tonic in the past, so I am glad to have a large pile of reading to look forward to this year too. Sonia Faleiro‘s book Beautiful Thing. Portrait of a Bombay bar dancer, is still sitting on the edge of the coffee table, reminding me how surprisingly moving some books can be. I was captivated by this tale of the knife-edge existence of a young woman with the “ambition” to be a genuine dancer, not just a roughly used barmaid. Convinced that her life was quite positive compared to others in India, she made me realise how different circumstances shape different personalities and how everyone has their own frame for their dreams of a “better life”.

While there is nothing in my “to-read” pile that promises to be as inspiring as that book, there are plenty that will keep me occupied with mayhem and mystery!  eg. Michael Connelly‘s The Black Box. He’s always a good read.

Spotrick gave me for Christmas a little book of poems titled I Could Pee on This and other poems by cats.(Author Francesco Marciuliano). On the cover is a cheeky ginger & white kitten who looks similar to our Bendix. The contents are hilarious and are good cheer-ups if I’m feeling a bit meh. Here’s the beginning of “Unbridled love”:
I knead your chest with my sharp claws
To show you my affection
I bite your arm and don’t let go
To show you adoration…

That is sooo characteristic although I wish there was something I could do about the biting! My forearms sometimes get gory teeth-marks from those “adoring” chomps- ye-owww.

I could pee on that

Books are generally for bedtime reading for me, whereas I often get occupied with online courses during the day while Spotrick is at work. While in 2012 I was finishing my Masters degree, with that merely needing some corrections this month, I’ll have more time to concentrate on other things. Last year I did some online courses through EdX and Coursera including “Listening to World Music”, and “HarvardX: PH207x Health in Numbers: Quantitative Methods in Clinical & Public Health Research” , gaining course credits that could be used in real life if I wanted that. Several other courses I sampled, but didn’t complete formal assessment were Computing for Data Analysis (4 weeks of learning to progam in R), CalTech‘s Machine Learning and Community Models of Public Health . I have just started “Economics for Scientists”  as I think it will help me understand more about health economics and the political economy of health, with the hope of enrolling for a PhD connected with those later in the year.

Incidentally, I was stunned to hear of the death of the man who practically invented the “political economy of health” . Gavin Mooney was murdered in Tasmania, along with his second wife Del Weston, whose son from a previous marriage is being held in connection with their cruel slaying. I only met Gavin late last year at a seminar and he seemed a great believer in making the best health facilities available to the most disadvantaged people. He was a lovely guy, and was obviously held in very high regard by people throughout the community as seen by the tributes in Melissa Sweet’s Croakey blog.

Not ruminating about things like the previous paragraph is something I have to develop this year and I have become sufficiently motivated (I think) to get back to some of my art & craft activities, like knitting and quilting. I meant to make some cushions for several friends for Christmas, but time flew by too fast while I was finishing off the degree. Though Christmas is almost a distant memory, I’ll keep going on the cushion project, starting with a log cabin pattern in greens for a friend who has an unusual green leather lounge suite.

Green theme

These fabrics are in the mix and I am putting my new electric scissors to work cutting the strips just right as my wrists and thumbs are wrecked for working with manual ones.

There’s a lot of fabric hanging around here that needs to be made into clothing as well, but I’ve been very slack on the sewing for many years- I can’t get moving on it. This year I’ll get out some projects and see what happens- maybe inspiration will stay with me for a while. I really like these bright, lightweight cottons for making summer dresses and tops:

The garden is starting to look more lush than it has since we moved in, largely due to Spotrick’s efforts in tidying up old plants and pots. I’ve also been blitzing the plants with plenty of fertiliser and misting water under the larger ones on hot days. My ambition is to almost obscure the courtyard walls!

 

These Were a Few of Their Favorite Things – and a few of mine

These Were a Few of Their Favorite Things – NYTimes.com.

I’ve been interested in science, reading & discovering things since I was tiny, but never had any of those wonderful construction toys that boys seemed to get for Christmas. I had plenty of dolls that I loved to dress up with clothes I had sewn & knitted for them & I was always pestering my mum for “scraps”.

At about 4 or 5 I received a wind-up train set and rails for Christmas, but never really got to play with it the way I wanted because my father immediately commandeered it and made long guided rail things from plywood around the rooms. He would usually take the wind-up bit out of my hands saying “don’t overwind it”.

Wimmer-Heinrich-HWN passenger train set

I quickly learned about the remedy for “over-winding” by taking the little engine apart while dad was at work in the South Island (NZ; he was a government statistician in the 1950s and actually went around and collected some of the data, as they did in those days!). After figuring out clockwork motors, I proceeded to take apart music boxes and wind-up monkeys & put them back together again without anyone noticing. What fun!

No chemistry set ever came my way, in spite of pleading every year, but I did get to play with the usual household substances like vinegar & baking soda, making terrific froth plumes out of soft drink bottles. Developing films in the laundry was vaguely chemical, but you couldn’t experiment with that stuff.

I WAS really interested in stars and space, due to my father showing me the Southern Aurora and tracking the first orbiting space satellites, like Sputnick I & II. He kept an ear out on shortwave radio to find out what times to expect them and we always went out on the front lawn with his old German Field Ambulance binoculars that he had acquired from a mate when he was younger. I can remember the first space dog Laika and the poor monkeys & chimpanzees that were sent up to perish in plumes of fire on re-entry.

Laika – Russian space dog

We kept track of many space objects and star and planetary happenings, and when I was a young adult (at least in years), the appearance of the comet Kouhoutek was quite a colourful spectacle low over the Pacific Ocean in front of my parents house. There was a phase I went through when I was around 14, wanting to be an astrophysicist & work with the Parkes radio telescope (The Dish). I would try to figure out the speeds and heights of orbits necessary for satellites of various weights to circle the earth and where they ought to appear at certain times – what a mess of maths that was!! No computers to help me then.

One thing that really cemented my interest in science was a children’s encyclopedia “of everything” that I received when I was eight. I read that thing to death, over and over. The parts I remember best are the chapters about the solar system and “how the body works”. I knew then that I wanted to be a doctor “when I grew up”.

From my encyclopedia

However, the book puzzled me for years because it didn’t explain exactly what happened to food-waste, once it went past the stomach: I spent years thinking that the solid waste went out through the large intestine and somehow got separated from the liquid waste that exited via the small intestine! It took some exploration of mum’s nursing textbooks to get a handle on the kidneys, which ultimately fascinated me with how they could extract the liquid from blood without letting it all leak out in your pee!

I was a pretty weird little kid at times, with allocating all my little friends in third grade a strange “disease” out of my list from the Pears’ Cyclopedia (1960 edition; I was 8) when we played hospitals! My pals got sick of it before we’d even finished “A”: they’d had achondroplastic dwarfism, asthma, acromegaly and ataxia thrust upon them before I was outvoted on what to play at lunchtimes! Incidentally, the poinciana thorns in the playground (horrors they’d say these days) got a good work-out as “needles” for the play-nurses to prick their victims!!

 

Day 25 NaBloPoMo:THAT Gift-exchanging Public Holiday

It’s very odd- my Day 23 Post hasn’t appeared- what happened?

Not a lot to say today- Christmas Day- we had a quiet day. Last night there was a huge feast with friends round the corner- about 20 or so people- and the host, John, prepared enough food to keep us for a week! He’s like that- cooks a monster stack of prawns, chicken, lamb and steak, plus there is a giant ham prepared earlier by his wife. I folded after the entrees followed by the chicken and skipped straight to dessert. Dessert was an agonising choice (well, not for some, who had both), between a chocolate peanut butter cheesecake of a mango trifle/tiramisu hybrid, which was very light and tasty. Cheryl is the dessert supremo- she won’t ever let anyone bring sweets to their place! I do some great desserts, but I can’t share them there!

Tomorrow we have another feast at another friend’s house nearby. She is almost as prolific as our other friend with the huge amount of food she dishes up! I know these days which courses to skip so I can fit in the ones I like best. One year she made a traditional French bouillebaisse and it was so delicious- the best I’ve ever had, even in Marseille. I wish she would do it again, but she hasn’t for about 10 years! I always take some of my homemade dukkah and olive oil which we eat using crusty bread for dipping. You can have the recipe if you wish! It’s based on one by Claudia Roden, but mine is more anise-flavoured. We used to go olive picking with a gourmet group in winter and have our own olive oil crushed at a small commercial mill. That oil was so terrifically tasty and sort of buttery- commercial oil doesn’t hold a card to it. These days the olive-picking has been cornered by people with lots of money, so the shares to join the picking group cost too much for us. We’ve gone back to Woolies!

On the 29th we’re having our previously homeless friends around for a Christmassy feast at our place. There will be ourselves and 3 guests so we’re having a Turkey Breast Roll roasted with apricot sauce and macadamia nuts. We’ll have traditional roasted vegies and a green salad with our own pickled and spiced olives. For those olives we were allowed to pick at a commercial orchard the winter of 2009 because they had lost their contract with a major hotel and had no other market left. So we got them free, I used the fresh water method to pickle them and then froze them for a while before putting them into oil with herbs and garlic. They are mostly delicious black olives, except a few containers are still bitter from not having been leached enough in the rainwater.

For dessert we will have lemon-lime delicious pudding which is really quick and yummy, plus vanilla icecream. I have already cooked the miniature Chunky Christmas Cakes for people to take home with the, afterwards.

Spotrick and I exchanged presents this morning- mostly a big heap of rectangles. We giggle about all the rectangles under the tree every year, we’re both such terrible bookworms! Spotrick gave me Sarah Gruen’s ‘The Ape House’ and ‘Them & Us’ by Will Hutton. The latter was on my wish list and having skimmed a few chapters, it is a great read- of course not half because Will Hutton’s views on the political economy closely coincide with my own! He also gave me a very welcome laptop cushion to replace the collection of magazines (Winsletts we call them) and a heat shield pad that I balance on my lap usually. In a tiny package which was wrapped like ‘pass the parcel’ in multiple layers of bubble wrap and tissue paper, was a tiny glass perfume bottle with long glass stopper for dabbing. This came from the local university and community glass works where lots of artists rent facilities and time on the furnaces. I wish I could do that style of glass work, but I couldn’t afford the fees, so I just use my kiln. Lastly was a tube of lavender hand cream for my housewife’s hands (mainly from gardening lately, in fact).

I gave Spotrick 4 books including one that had me absolutely cacking myself in the bookshop- ‘The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo’, with principal character Lizbreath Salamander!!! rofl I also gave him a new pair of lounging trousers (happy pants?)- they are just like light cotton pyjama pants. I made them from some batik-printed dark blue Swiss cotton with a red waistband and stitching- he really likes them and is wearing them already!

So I hope everyone had the sort of Christmas/Hanukkah [or whatever you were celebrating], that you wished for- we did!

 

They would do the same with kids if they could

 

Sourpuss owner dumps kitten

 

Dumped for playing with Xmas decorations

David Jean reports, from: The Advertiser January 01, 2011 12:00am [Adelaide, South Australia]

The kitten from hell, now residing at the RSPCA after it’s owner decided she couldn’t have it destroying her Christmas decorations. Picture: Dean Martin
Source: AdelaideNow

A KITTEN abandoned for playing with decorations is among 70 pets dumped at shelters since Christmas.

And the excuses are flowing in almost as quickly as the animals themselves, as frustrated shelter workers predict more than 500 animals will be dumped on their doorsteps by the end of January.

A 10-week-old kitten was dropped off at the RSPCA’s Lonsdale shelter on Boxing Day because its owner was upset that it had played with the decorations on her Christmas tree.

Another was surrendered to the Animal Welfare League because it had a urinary tract infection, while two dogs were abandoned because they were thought to be hyperactive.

RSPCA SA spokeswoman Tracey Taylor said the organisation had also received a call from someone wanting to abandon their pet cat because it had given birth to six kittens on Christmas Day.

As of yesterday afternoon, 29 kittens, one cat, nine dogs and three puppies had been surrendered to RSPCA SA.

Twenty-five animals had been been handed in to the Animal Welfare League.

Animal Welfare league spokeswoman Brenda Champion said the number of surrenders was actually much higher, because there was no way to keep track of the number of people who let their animal stray.

She said 280 animals were surrendered by owners at the Wingfield shelter between Christmas and the end of January of 2010, with indications a similar amount would end up on its doorstep next year.

“People are not really considering the lifetime commitment of owning a pet,” Ms Champion said.

“Buying a pet needs to be an informed decision, not an impulse. We hope these handover numbers will decrease but, sadly, the reality is people are still buying pets without due consideration.

“It is essential that pet owners consider all of the lifestyle and financial aspects of pet ownership.”

“Many issues can easily be pre-empted by going through the pre-adoption counselling with one of our animal experts when you adopt from an RSPCA Shelter,” Ms Taylor said.

“We ensure the needs of the owner and the animal are complimentary so both can live safely and happily.”

Day 25 NaBloPoMo: Feasting, reminiscing

It’s very odd- my Day 23 Post hasn’t appeared- what happened?

Not a lot to say today- Christmas Day- we had a quiet day. Last night there was a huge feast with friends round the corner- about 20 or so people- and the host, John, prepared enough food to keep us for a week! He’s like that- cooks a monster stack of prawns, chicken, lamb and steak, plus there is a giant ham prepared earlier by his wife. I folded after the entrees followed by the chicken and skipped straight to dessert. Dessert was an agonising choice (well, not for some, who had both), between a chocolate peanut butter cheesecake or a mango trifle/tiramisu hybrid, which was very light and tasty. Cheryl is the dessert supremo- she won’t ever let anyone bring sweets to their place! I do some great desserts, but I can’t share them there!

Tomorrow we have another feast at another friend’s house nearby. She is almost as prolific as our other friend with the huge amount of food she dishes up! I know these days which courses to skip so I can fit in the ones I like best. One year she made a traditional French bouillebaisse and it was so delicious- the best I’ve ever had, even in Marseille. I wish she would do it again, but she hasn’t for about 10 years! I always take some of my homemade dukkah and olive oil which we eat using crusty bread for dipping. You can have the recipe if you wish! It’s based on one by Claudia Roden, but mine is more anise-flavoured.

 

We used to go olive picking with a gourmet group in winter and have our own olive oil crushed at a small commercial mill. That oil was so terrifically tasty and sort of buttery- commercial oil doesn’t hold a card to it. It made the dukkah taste even better [not strictly possible]. These days the olive-picking has been cornered by people with lots of money, so the shares to join the picking group cost too much for us. We’ve gone back to Woolies!

On the 29th we’re having our previously homeless friends around for a Christmassy feast at our place. There will be ourselves and 3 guests so we’re having a Turkey Breast Roll roasted with apricot sauce and macadamia nuts. We’ll have traditional roasted vegies and a green salad with our own pickled and spiced olives. For those olives we were allowed to pick at a commercial orchard the winter of 2009 because they had lost their contract with a major hotel and had no other market left. So we got them free, I used the fresh water method to pickle them and then froze them for a while before putting them into oil with herbs and garlic. They are mostly delicious black olives, except a few containers are still bitter from not having been leached enough in the rainwater.

For dessert we will have lemon-lime delicious pudding which is really quick and yummy, plus vanilla icecream. I have already cooked the miniature Chunky Christmas Cakes for people to take home with them afterwards.

Spotrick and I exchanged presents this morning- mostly a big heap of rectangles. We giggle about all the rectangles under the tree every year, we’re both such terrible bookworms! Spotrick gave me Sarah Gruen’s ‘The Ape House’ and ‘Them & Us’ by Will Hutton. The latter was on my wish list and having skimmed a few chapters, it is a great read- of course not half because Will Hutton’s views on the political economy closely coincide with my own! He also gave me a very welcome laptop cushion to replace the collection of magazines (Winsletts we call them) and a heat shield pad that I balance on my lap usually. In a tiny package which was wrapped like ‘pass the parcel’ in multiple layers of bubble wrap and tissue paper, was a tiny glass perfume bottle with long glass stopper for dabbing. This came from the local university and community glass works where lots of artists rent facilities and time on the furnaces. I wish I could do that style of glass work, but I couldn’t afford the fees, so I just use my kiln. Lastly was a tube of lavender hand cream for my housewife’s hands (mainly from gardening lately, in fact).

I gave Spotrick 4 books including one that had me absolutely cacking myself in the bookshop- ‘The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo’, with principle character Lizbreath Salamander!!! rofl. I also gave him a new pair of lounging trousers (happy pants?)- they are just like light cotton pyjama pants. I made them from some batik-printed dark blue Swiss cotton with a red waistband and stitching- he really likes them and is wearing them already!

So I hope everyone had the sort of Christmas/Hanukkah [or whatever you were celebrating], that you wished for- we did!

Day 16 NaBloPoMo: Dealing with Xmas emotions

Several people I know have talked about Dialectical Behaviour Therapy recently. It doesn’t really matter what the technique is, only that it is designed to help those who have strong emotional reactions to situations which leave them hurt and upset for a long time afterwards.

 

Christmas is traditionally a bad time for people with mental illness or emotional and personality disturbances. This is usually because Christmas has been the time when families are meant to get together as a whole to try to demonstrate to each other that are a loving unit. Many of us are brought up to think that harmony is the norm and we feel guilty or disappointed when our get-togethers are less than satisfying. Other people think that Christmas OWES them something, somehow and when it isn’t all cupcakes and sparkles they are hurt and let down that “they” didn’t make them happy.

 

I remember Christmas as a pretty mild occasion- as the only child of older parents with no other family for hundreds of kilometres. We usually had a tree collected from the bush- a she-oak was the most common. We decorated it and I made decorations for it as I got older. Under the tree was a small pile of presents and my only complaint was that I never really got what I wanted and nothing seemed to be “grand” enough- I’m still rather greedy!! My parents were actually trying to keep the “tall poppy” down to size by not giving me a huge pile of presents like the streotyped “spoiled only child”. This didn;’t help me at the time and I still like to get a small pile of presents now!

 

However, Christmas was not a time of conflict and high emotion. It was predictable and calm and we got to eat yummy things. Mum made fantastic Christmas cakes and home-made icecreams and we always bought some expensive stone fruit to eat which was off the menu the rest of the year. There were no special rituals in which I had to participate under threat of death or worse- like the kids over the road had to go to Midnight Mass or whatever, even though the whole family was non-practising Catholics! There were so many yelling matches as the kids got older, trying to get out of going to church! My father was a church-goer, but he never insisted we go on Christmas Day, but sometimes we did for the nice singing and the lovely decorations in the church. For the kids over the road and some of my current friends, Christmas is a FORCED social confinement with people they would rather not spend time with.

 

So the setting for Christmas emotional difficulties comes from early childhood and people continue to repeat those patterns because they are tied to “tradition”. They seem to be blackmailed by the other members of the family’s expectations and are unable to break the cycle. Cooped up together every Christmas for years and years, emotions become more focused and magnified, until some families come to blows- or even shots! When they talk to each other they inevitably go over the same old ground which provoked trouble the previous year, the emotion racks up in the closed environment and under the influence of alcohol and insufficient sleep. Younger members of the family are added each year and usually include babies and toddlers who are naturally unable to control their emotions. This sets the adults off as well until there are three-ring circuses wherever you look (or hear, if you are neighbours!).

 

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy lets people address the different aspects of themselves and their social situations within their families, making it more obvious how futile and over-the-top certain reactions are. People can then learn to reconstruct the habitual “conversations” they get caught up in and go in different directions that they can choose. It is amazing how differently you can interact with your family members if you just don’t “take the bait” which set you off into a mad rant last year. With experience and skill you may come to choose NOT to mix with certain people at Christmas, or to see them in small chunks that you can control, eg. having a picnic away from the household with just your brothers and sisters. Eventually you can use your emotions constructively and regulate how much you react when “baited” topics come up. When you truly “own” your reactions and stop blaming them on others (they are inside your head), you can be the best social engineer in your family. It’s interesting to see whether anyone notices – maybe years later- and attributes the change to you.

 

NB. I am NOT a therapist and have little knowledge of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy in practice. If I am grossly out of line, please educate me. I am merely relating my interpretation of what people have told me about their experiences in DBT.

Day 15 NaBloPoMo: Seeking asylum in Oz

We just came back from a pub where we had the Wednesday $12 steaks, which were pretty good, although not the tastiest. Naturally, as we were eating, the topic of the latest asylum seekers came up. <img width=”200″ src=”http://api.ning.com/files/LMM2grJekVascwitLpc73mWCbu1aUQK4WhRiZv59cX*9WGAGJ8t*QBtMh2k-X-XYYj28OeobBEvNyoXw5*-28vji7FlBBUc0/ChrisIs.jpg?width=200″ style=”padding: 5px;” />

It was horrifying when they announced today that a boatload of women and children had smashed onto rocks on Christmas Island while trying to land during a storm. Spotrick had pointed out how thick and cyclonic the weather looked on the satellite map just this morning. These poor people had travelled thousands of kilometers, mainly over land, to have their hopes dashed and possibly half their lives taken, without quite reaching the land of their dreams.

You can see the flimsy boat and wild seas in this piece from an Australian report.

Inevitably, one of the people at the table asked why these asylum-seekers had not arrived by aeroplane, rather than via a smugglers boat from Indonesia. This is an ongoing topic here- if you arrive by air and have fake papers, you can immediately ask for asylum. You can then receive a temporary Visa and make your way into the Australian community- all according to international law. You don’t get any money to live on or anywhere to live- but you get the visa. Our friend always says this and I say the same in reply as well- these poor women and children couldn’t buy a ticket to Australia from Iran or Iraq; they come mainly from small towns, many unfamiliar with air travel, let alone to countries they have little knowledge of. All they know is that they want to get away from the constant threat they feel they are living under- they escape across a border, people hide them, feed them and send them on; maybe they are packed into a container or truck, or bundled onto a freight train to travel through unknown regions, meeting people they cannot understand. Eventually they arrive in India or Sri Lanka and discover there are men there who will get them to Australia if they can pay all the money they have. They may be lucky enough to get on the first boat they meet, but mostly they will be sent from pillar to post, living in primitive conditions and not knowing where their next meal is coming from. At last they all board a miserable looking fishing boat, captained by some down and out fisherman who needs the money, because his fishing grounds are not yielding any more, or he usually fishes illegally in Australian waters and the patrols are fierce that week.

It must be extremely anxiety provoking for the Iraqi and Iranian women, who don’t know how to swim, placing the lives of their precious children in the hands of some scruffy fisherman on his raggedy boat- but they do it with hopes for a secure future in that lovely empty land in the sun, Australia.

Unfortunately, distant conflicts bring desperate people to Australia. Some of them have heard about the country via relatives who have come here legally as part of an annual migrant quota or illegally at first, then granted asylum and gaining citizenship. Evidently Australia sounds rather attractive- there is no religious or regional conflict here, apparently most of the people are middle class and friendly and we have a democracy and an army that does not police the local community. What asylum seekers don’t know is that although Australia is huge, its 20 million people live in very small areas within the country where there is sufficient water (or there used to be) and where communities have been growing quite slowly over the years. They don’t know that Australia has its own poor people who are fully or partially dependent on the State for income and housing. They also don’t realize that our health and social services are linked to our taxation system, so that they can only provide enough largesse to cope with the numbers of people who are already reliant on them locally- we haven’t got the income or tax basis to cater for a lot more people at the same standards.

Some Australians are very hostile towards asylum seekers because they perceive them as Muslim hoards, representing the likes of Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and the Twin Towers atrocity. Obviously this is rather frightening for some people- you can hardly blame them when THEY don’t have the full picture either. However, most Australians are fairly willing to welcome newcomers, regardless of neither where they came from nor how they arrived. We find that as long as new migrants are friendly and curious, they are just as welcome as our friends and relatives who might visit from overseas. In my university classes this year, there were far more students from overseas (more than 50% Muslims) than there were Australians! Yet our lecturers said we were one of the best and most involved groups they had ever taught! So our section of the population seems to be able to live and co operate with non-Australians quite usefully.

Given that we probably welcome foreigners quite easily compared with many other countries, why am I still apprehensive about the continuous small stream of asylum seekers arriving offshore at Christmas Island and along our Northern coastline? I worry because I know that Australia is struggling to provide housing, appropriate utilities (like electricity and water supplies), health care and social welfare benefits to the Australians who are already living here. Migrants never seem to be told that public housing applicants might have to wait 10 to 15 years for a suitable dwelling to become available- hardly any new ones are built, compared with the numbers of needy people. Also, our rentals are starting to become quite expensive and are certainly out of the range of affordability for someone on the dole (unemployment or disability allowance, aged pension or supporting parents’ payment). My friends who arrived at my front door homeless last year had tried to obtain public housing or some assistance with paying the rent for private accommodation. One was on the dole and her daughter was waiting out a qualifying period after being sacked from her job as a miner. They were rejected completely from putting their names on the list for public housing because there were no children less than 18 years involved. When they sought out private rentals they discovered that they could only be subsidized to live in a dwelling that cost only $70 per person per week; over that price and they couldn’t get a cent!

The harsh reality is that people who arrive with nothing and no job don’t get a good deal in Australia at all. Sure- if you are genuinely ill, you can go to any doctor or hospital and you will be treated and you will NOT be given a bill. However, if everybody and his great grandmother goes expecting the same treatment, the system can’t cope and falls apart. Then everyone complains that the government they voted for isn’t doing what it promised, they throw it out, and then get a worse deal from the next lot who don’t know how to make good the promises once they see the state of the economy!

The situation with utilities has been getting quite serious over the last few years, especially water supplies in Southern Australia. There has been a drought for many years and several large cities have built desalination plants to extract fresh water from the sea, rather than relying on rain and reservoirs. South Australia is at the end of several thousand kilometers of slow-flowing rivers and gets very little rain. For many years the city of Adelaide (1 million people) has pumped water 80 km from the Murray River to fill reservoirs in the Hills just above the city. The reservoirs have reached very low levels at times, yet the river hasn’t been able to supply any more to top them up at the end of summer. We have been on severe water restrictions, causing the death of thousands of beautiful, big trees in public areas and uncounted numbers in private gardens. Most private gardens have withered and street trees became spindly and brown, houses have cracked because the ground has contracted and people have been putting as many water tanks onto their properties as they can afford- we haven’t got any!

So you can see that although we generally have a good reputation for taking in asylum seekers and integrating most of them into our society, there may come a time when that is no longer feasible. How long can Australian workers produce enough extra income to support both their own non-working family members, plus all the extra jobless living in the community and in migrant detention centres? I think it’s a crazy idea to try to deter asylum-seekers by “processing” them (ie. their claims for refugee status) off shore in Nauru, East Timor or Christmas Island. Asylum seekers don’t know anything about our local processes or ability to provide financially for additional people so it’s not going to “deter” them- they’re desperate and fear death or suffering in their own countries. They just want to live quiet lives, working hard in a decent job, providing for their families and taking their part in a community. They certainly don’t want to kill Australians or blow us up- they’re just people like us who have been placed in impossible life circumstances.

Can anyone find an acceptable solution for us all without cruelty to locals or migrants?

 

Day 10 NaBloPoMo: Getting ready for Christmas

As usual I have left if fairly late to do special things in preparation for Christmas.

Dangle moose

As a kid, there wasn’t much preparation and I didn’t learn to get into a routine more than a few days before the day! My parents and I lived in a coastal town hundreds and thousands of kilometres from any family- so I didn’t know about “Big Christmases” with several generations of family or piles of friends.

We generally have a little Christmas tree, mainly decorated with reindeer and mooses!

Chrismoose

We have a potted pine in the backyard which has served us well for may years,

Tripod Christmas tree with mooses

but the elements devastated it during the heat and drought of 2009. Instead we had my photo tripod decorated with tinsel and the mooses!

Over the past ten years I have done less and less for Christmas, firstly because of my deep depression and secondly because our household income has halved over that time.

Before that time, I would prepare Christmas edibles several weeks ahead and pre-buy ingredients that might become out of stock in the shops before Christmas- things like fruit-cake ingredients, summer berries, cherries, seafood and turkey breast rolls. In recent years I have rarely done any of these things, including failing to make my “famous” chunky individual fruit cakes. I used to bake several batches of these every year and give all my friends and colleagues at work an individual Christmas cake! They are yummy things and I should try to make them this year- onto the list they go! [I’ll put in the recipe if I can find it].

Other things I used to do were: making some assembled jewellery, eg. earrings, necklaces and bracelets, to give to female friends and random extra drop-ins; some lavender wreaths to hang on doors (made from our own lavender spikes from the garden tied to round twig frames from Spotlight); small framed prints of suitable photographs as presents; a few larger prints of things people had admired during the year; patchwork or knitted cushion covers for a few friends and similar stuff.

This year I have a list, but haven’t made many things on it! Perhaps I’d better do more than just start on two things and attempt to finish a few, LOL! I have the makings of a sewn vest for one friend (it is rather odd, but it’s her thing!); a sewn clothing item for my partner- can be made in 2 hours; wheat bags for warming and soothing aches ( I have the wheat, some special dried lavender to scent some of them plus bamboo velour, furry fabric for the outside casings!)- I’ll make some long snake ones for the neck and some rectangular ones for miscellaneous sore spots. Both men and women will like those! I also have some felt that I made myself, to be incorporated into a cushion cover for a friend with a new green-themed lounge room addition to her home. I also have several sewing projects to do for myself, which can be organised around other activities- one is a sort of fancy T-shirt with bamboo jersey and flock-spot voile in panels- all cut out and ready to stitch! Then I’m going to dye it yellow because I want to. It’s a bit like a Marcy Tilton design, but not- definitely NOT a copy of anything exactly either…

Tomorrow I will buy the ingredients for the mini Christmas Cakes, provided the shops still have some of the glace fruits involved. I’ve found the recipe, which is adapted from one in Gourmet Traveller magazine many years ago- he exact source lost in the mists of time! (Da-da da-dahhh…):

Grumba’s Mini Chunky Fruit Cakes

Basically heaps of fruit and nuts stuck together with a little cakey stuff!

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups of slightly chopped cashews, macadamias and hazelnuts. You can use brazil nuts also, but some people find them too hard when they cook.

½ cup of whole raw almonds, skins on

1 cup of dates stoned and chopped
1/3 cup roughly chopped glace peach
½ cup roughly chopped glace apricots

½ cup roughly chopped glace figs

Glace pineapple is optional- a few chunks won’t hurt!

1/3 cup glace ginger
½ cup raisins
1 1/2 cups plain/baker’s flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup dark brown sugar

60gms melted butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

 

Method:

Preheat the oven to slow … around 140 deg C.
Place some patty-pans or cupcake papers in a 12-hole muffin pan.

 

 

Cream the softened butter and dark brown sugar till light coloured. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat for a minute or two.

In a bowl mix all the fruit and nuts together, sprinkling lightly with some of the flour to stop them clumping.

 

Sift the remaining flour and baking powder together and mix them into beaten egg/butter/sugar bowl.

 

Take this bowl off the mixer stand and add the bowl of fruit and nuts. Stir with a sturdy metal spoon- very tough on both wrist and spoon handle, so DON’T use a wooden spoon- I’ve broken heaps over the years!

If the mix seems runny, add some more raisins and maybe a teaspoon or two more of flour. If it is crumbly and won’t stick together, beat another egg and add it gradually- stop when it all clumps and sticks.

 

Wash your hands and nails thoroughly as this is where it gets really messy! Now pick up lumps of mixture, mould into rough balls and press into the paper cups/whatever. Make sure they heap up above the paper as they won’t really rise. Use all the mixture on the 12 holes.

 

 

Slap it into the oven- don’t use fan-forced for very long as it will dry them out too much. After 20 minutes, take a look. Turn oven 5 degrees up or down to get them finished in roughly 30 minutes total. ·They burn easily because of all the fruit and brown sugar. You can go to around 40 minutes if your oven is a bit dodgy but be careful or you’ll end up with something you cannot cut or bite!

Serve them on their own with tea, coffee and optional whisky or sherry! We sometimes serve them chopped in half as a whole one can be difficult to eat in one sitting, especially when you’ve been indulging in all the other Chrissy stuff!

NB. Don’t give them to great grandmama who has false teeth!

Day 5 NaBloPoMo: Zeitgeist! Zeitgeist?

Zeitgeist is a difficult word for me to get my head around. I’m sure it’s got that semantic trick of meaning more in its original language than in English. To me it’s the prevailing mood or background to significant events- whether they be part of one person’s life, a community’s or a nation’s shared experience.

I can’t say my whole life has been infused with one particular Zeitgeist things come and go, I change, living circumstances change. At the moment I am realising what a material person I am. Most things I want to do involve acquiring something that costs money. This must be because I am having a terrible time adjusting to not having a half-time to full-time professional job with good pay. I haven’t had full-time work since 1999 and was looking for it until 2007, when I gave up, defeated. At first, when I worked around 30% to 50% of the time, the household seemed OK, we even had some short holidays; however, when I got the boot in mid-2007, we suddenly had to tighten our belts in a way I hadn’t done since I was a student. It’s tugging at me now, this mood of not having what would satisfy me and I think it’s because Christmas is approaching.

Christmas shouldn’t really be material- at least for Christians, although it seems to be on the surface in most directions I cast my gaze! Christmas was never religious to me and has come to mean a time for relaxing, catching up with friends and exchanging presents. To me it’s a time when people give physical gifts in appreciation of a person’s contribution to their lives- not just for the custom of giving things to all and sundry. The last few years, presents in this household have been pretty sparse. My partner always gets me things and puts them under the tree and I always try to get him some things too- although last year and this one it will be pretty much using his money.

Now there is a definite zeitgeisty sort of thing I’ve discovered while writing that last sentence- since I have been conscious of what people do for each other (or NOT), I have been fiercely independent. The dependency for money and shelter on someone else is something I have avoided ever since I was a teenager, and independence of feelings and thoughts is something I have hung onto since about the age of ten- and probably unconsciously before that.

So now I see that the parts of the zeitgeist of my life are all about being an individual and always having an “opt-out” clause due to my (formerly) maintained ability to be independent when I feel I must. Now I feel trapped in my collection of habitual thoughts and I can’t adjust properly to my changed circumstances. Other people think I am OK or just smile blandly when I say I dislike being dependent, but really I’m sure they don’t appreciate the depths of my despair at not being able to break free and be me again.

Boxing Day Reflections

Well, Christmas Day was very calm and cheerful, except right at the end when our worn out neighbour couldn’t really welcome us for a little party…the less said.
Now we’ve awoken to a gorgeous-loooking Boxing Day (promises of 27degC and no wind), and we’re mulling over all the worst things in the world!
First, our house guests had been to Evangeline’s old childhood friend’s for some Christmas dinner. Sounds OK, but it didn’t exactly work out- it turns out that this friend had been suffereing for many years with Parkinson’s Disease and Evangeline had given up cleaning her house for her every Christmas because things were just getting worse from year to year. Omitting the tales of two mentally challenged offspring (one a huge “oaf”) and one who is rather a sadistic father to his three year old, A-J and Evangeline were “welcomed” into a total cesspit of a house. Apparently there was rotting garbage and dirty clothes from wall to wall, such that the “dinner” was being served in the barren and neglected backyard. The man of the house was a long, skinny, haggard streak of misery, frozen into a similar state to his wife and completely oblivious to the impression the place created in his guests- or maybe ashamed??
I could go on forever about the failings of society as a whole, our health and social services system- but where will it get me. WHy can’t we live in a world where citizens can help a little in being responsible for their less fortunate neighbours, where the health system is funded to care and not to cut and where social services are provided by people with practical minds and tough hearts- not emotionally over-wrought do-gooders?
I wrote to the state’s Public Advocate about a similar situation where a 93-year old woman (blind, with maggots in a spider bite in her leg) was living alone in absolute squalor, having given up fighting her way to the outdoor toilet, which could only be reached by crossing a backyard strewn with palm fronds and other vegetable debris (and past a talking parrot in a tiny broken cage). I haven’t even received an acknowledgment- and this guy used to be a friend and colleague!
Why have we come to this, in our apparently “affluent”, “civilised” society- one of the highest AVERAGE standards of living in the world? We spend the money on fighter jets and Abrams tanks and make experienced and worldly older people give up their jobs so we can employ young, naive idealists who wear out in 6 months when confronted by the realities. In response, public servants and politicians make rules- but nothing gets any better.
I’d better give up for now and catch my breath… but SRSLY- I wish there was something I could do that is within my physical capabilities, which could influence some of these things! Arrgghhh…!!!