personal political

moved to typepad

2005-01-04T14:38:00.000+11:00

Dear readers, I'm making good on my new year's resolution to move this blog to Typepad. (Is it crazy to move from a free service to a paid-for one? I'm hoping the advantages become clear to me eventually.)
Please change your bookmark for this site to my new address. (Actually, please bookmark me if you hadn't before!) See you over there.

sontag

2005-01-04T13:05:00.000+11:00

Susan Sontag, who died last week, was brilliant. Her response to 9/11 was a breath of fresh air. She was also a lesbian.

happy new year

2004-12-23T11:15:00.000+11:00

I know the new year is still a way off, but this will be my last blogging day for awhile, as, like a big proportion of Sydneysiders, we are off up the coast tomorrow for a week. (Actually, vehicular traffic seems to have diminished considerably today, so hopefully a lot of people have already left town.)

My personal new year resolutions are:
*to take up running once again (I bought new running shoes last week)
*to move this blog to my Typepad site, which is all set up and waiting, all I need is the time to make the move
* to un-busy my life so that I have time to do things like run, move to Typepad and make Christmas cakes (which I always vow I will do next Christmas and never have the time for when December rolls around...)
* to fully unpack (only one year after moving house)
* to create a beautiful garden like our next door neighbour's ("her garden is much more beautiful than ours" says Olle)

Political resolutions? Maybe there's no such thing. It's in the nature of new year resolutions to be concerned with personal improvement. I can only wish for positive political change in the coming year, though I don't hold out much hope ... hmm, perhaps my only tiny personal-political resolution for 2005 is to get involved with the P&C at my son's school. Education is going to be one of the key battlegrounds under the fourth Howard government and on the local level, I'm ready and willing to fight.

Thanks for reading. I hope you all have an enjoyable, safe time over the next week and manage to stay connected to the people who matter most to you.

blogtalk conference

2004-12-23T10:16:00.000+11:00

There's going to be a conference on blogs in Sydney next May. From the contact email address, it looks like it will be at or sponsored by UTS.

I'm considering submitting a paper based on my MA dissertation (I passed by the way - I now have an MA in Mass Communications.)

[I found out about this conference from a blog produced on the other side of the world.]

sans frontiers

2004-12-21T13:45:00.000+11:00

Reporters, in this case.

They even lend out bulletproof jackets.

mothering

2004-12-21T13:10:00.000+11:00

The Association for Research on Mothering, based in Canada, will be sponsoring a conference in Australia next year on maternal subjectivities.

The association's journal is currently calling for papers on grandmothers and mothering and feminism.

route 79

2004-12-21T13:03:00.000+11:00

I lived in south London and worked mostly in north-east London. Jag, a "British, European, 2nd-generation Indian" photo-blogs about his bus journeys in the west and north-west of the city.

lest we forget

2004-12-21T11:25:00.000+11:00

I'm, as always, grateful that Tom and friends are on the Fallujah case.

secular humanism

2004-12-21T10:03:00.000+11:00

I didn't notice until I read the letters in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald late last night (with one eye on the appalling but fascinating Nip/Tuck, which had a guest appearance by Vanessa Redgrave, whose hand I once shook at a party and whose daughter is one of the lead actors (what is the world coming to?)) that Adele Horin had written a column last Saturday about having raised non-religious children. She has perfectly expressed what I was trying to get at yesterday.

carnival of the animals

2004-12-20T16:08:00.000+11:00

We had a sublime afternoon yesterday at the Sydney Opera House, watching and listening to Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, along with cartoonist and poet Michael Leunig, perform the Carnival of the Animals. [We have the Ogden Nash version read by Nonie Hazlehurst on tape and often play it in the car - the Leunig poems are completely different, focusing on environmental destruction of and by animals in Australia.]

A big audience full of children (many of them, by the looks of it, on Christmas outings with grandparents) was astonishingly quiet during the concert. Olle and our five year old friend were very good too. Despite all adult attempts to direct their attention to the various musical instruments, it was the on-stage cartooning which really grabbed their attention. But it was Tognetti's playing which held me spellbound.

religious troubles

2004-12-20T15:24:00.000+11:00

I was raised and educated as a Catholic but have been totally non-religious since the age of 18. Now I'm raising a child and I face a kind of conundrum in explaining to him (he's just six) what religion is - and what race is.

Olle's best friend Joe comes from a family of practising 'cultural' Jews - and his mother is half Chinese. Joe is very brown.

The other day over dinner Olle asked 'Are we Christians?" 'No' 'Are we Jews?' 'No.'
'So we're Aussies'.

We explained that everyone who was born in Australia (I leave out the small matter of the recent court judgment that a girl born here is not entitled to Australian citizenship...) is Australian (I can't bring myself to use that word, 'Aussie'). He interjected to say that one girl from a Chinese family is not Australian. Why he chose her, when there are several Asian kids in his class, I don't understand. We assured him that she is Australian and explained that co-parent, who was not born here, had become Australian by going through a ceremony.
So everyone in his class is Australian, but some are also Jewish... I begin to name the Jewish kids: "Joe, Hannah..."

"Hannah is not Jewish, she isn't the same colour as Joe".

I insist that Hannah is Jewish and add the names of other friends of ours, reminding him of the Passover feast we went to this year.

At the library the next day I looked for simple books on religion for a six year old. Most of them were oriented more towards older kids, but I did get one called "Sam's Passover" and another on respecting cultural differences.

Yesterday, applying sunscreen, he said something about Joe being brown. I said that Joe looks more like his Chinese grandmother than his (blonde) Jewish relatives. Olle chanted "Joe is Chin-ee-ese". (And in the way of most conversations with children, which are highly fragmentary, something happened to change the subject, so I didn't get the chance to address this.)

I was speaking to a Jewish friend of mine about all this on the phone last night. She suggested depicting Jewishness and Christianity and our own non-religious household as a matter of different families having different stories that they share and enjoy. But our lack of religion also feels like a lack of tradition - and it's hard to convey a lack in a positive way...

This morning, walking to school, I decided to talk to him about not 'making fun' of other kids - I was worried that he might make a declaration about Joe's Chinese background, either to Joe or to a larger audience. I said, among other things, you wouldn't like it, would you, if someone said to you [in a singsong voice] 'Your grandad's dead'.

Immediately his face crumpled and he began to sob. We went into the schoolground, where Joe repeatedly asked me why Olle was crying. Olle kept crying, wiping snot onto his shirt and managed to tell me it was because "you teased me". I apologised and told him I was only giving him an example and that no one likes to be teased, whether it's for having curly hair or red hair or straight hair...

I really screwed that one up, leaving my lovely boy in tatters at the start of the day.

Any suggestions welcome.

christianity under attack

2004-12-20T14:40:00.000+11:00

Barista has alerted me to a kerfuffle in Melbourne whereby some Christians are protesting that 'Christ is being left out of Christmas' in an orgy of political correctness. The same accusation was made against (practising Catholic) Mayor Clover Moore in Sydney, but it turns out that it is in fact the prime minister John Howard, chief of the anti-PC lobby, who has downgraded parliamentary Christmas celebrations.

All this is strangely reminiscent of the scene in the US, where rightwing Christians are now depicting themselves as victims of a politically correct anti-religion backlash (instigated by secular Jews in Hollywood)- 'hate crimes against Christians'.

Deep sigh.

knitted womb

2004-12-20T10:13:00.000+11:00

A Californian pal (naturally) sent me this knitting pattern for a woolly uterus.

fever

2004-12-16T16:29:00.000+11:00

My boy woke up (late - 8.30am) with a mild fever this morning - 38C. He was perfectly okay last night.

Co-parent had already gone out to work when he woke. I was ready to take him to school, then go to work. We really need the money (I'm a contractor and don't get sick or holiday pay).

Co-parent and I had three different telephone conversations about what to do. In the end I took him to school at 11am. He had eaten breakfast and cooled down slightly to 37.8C. I gave him some Panadol anyway. His friends ran to greet him with big smiles. They are having a lazy day - all the schoolwork has finished for the year and the teacher is busy clearing out the room while they mostly play outdoors. She was fine about the fact that he wasn't well and told him to let her know if he needed to lie down and sleep.

Despite this, I feel somewhat guilty about not having stayed home with him. Have I become one of those parents you read about who send their sick kids to daycare, thus infecting everyone else's kids, because they have to go to work? I swore I'd never be one of them.

I'm feeling a bit brain-fogged myself.

More: In fact it's not so much about infecting other kids, as that I never thought I'd opt to send him off to an institutional setting when he was sick - I thought I'd keep him at home at all costs (which we strove to do when he was under-5). I guess he's older now, more robust in every sense; plus the 'institution' has a caring, human face, and he was happy to go there (if he'd been very sick, he wouldn't have wanted to).

The other drawback to sending him out to face the world is that we succumbed to giving him Panadol to make it easier for him, even though I decided last year to try and follow the Steiner approach to fever, not to medicate but to let it take its course naturally, as a way of building up the immune system. I get the sense that a lot of children are over-medicated these days because there is so much pressure on parents not to take time off work to care for them at home.

He made it through the day but the fever returned overnight. This time I let it burn and it's subsided this morning. Today is the school picnic and he is very keen to go. He was up at 7am, temp 38C, asking when we could leave. I've taken the day off work and will accompany him to the picnic - we can leave early if he gets too tired.

word debates

2004-12-16T16:14:00.000+11:00

Collins has launched an online living dictionary, in which readers can debate the meaning or vaidity of new words. Most of these I haven't heard before and I'm wondering if the people who submitted them actually made them up .. for example, sibling saviour (or maybe that's a word used in the British media which hasn't made it to Oz yet)...

This more general word site is interesting too. I once tried to register to play online Scrabble but couldn't download the software correctly, or something - anyway, I gave up in the end, though this makes me think about trying again.

blunkett

2004-12-16T15:48:00.000+11:00

The powerful British politician at the centre of a sex and visa scandal has resigned. (Leftwing) commentators agree he is a remarkable man, it is a personal tragedy, but that he was one of the most rightwing and authrotitarian Labour politicians of Blair's government.

name calling

2004-12-14T15:02:00.000+11:00

We had a lovely non-busy interval on Saturday afternoon - co-parent had gone out shopping, I lay down on the bed to rest (late night at the office party the night before) and Olle played on the floor.

He had some soft toys and after awhile I heard him being a character who said to a toy dog: "Are you a dog or are you a Muslim? Are you a dog or are you a Muslim?"

I sat up.

"What's a Muslim?" I asked him. He clearly had no idea at all. I don't think he even realised it was a type of person.

"Did you hear that word at school?" "Yes" "Who from?" "Aki"
"Does Aki say that to people he doesn't like?" "Yes"

Aki is a boy who often gets his name written on the board for misdemeanours. He is from a rougher area than our genteel, gentrified neighbourhood and is much more worldly wise than my son.

Before I had a chance to explain what a Muslim was, the phone rang. The moment passed.

This morning I told their teacher about this conversation. She was concerned. She said she would ask Aki what a Muslim is.

[I'm not sure if I should have told her - I don't want to get Aki into even more trouble than he normally is.]

I faintly recall that I have read or heard that 'Muslim' is a term of abuse in Sydney schools, in the same way that 'gay' can be. It makes sense, I suppose.
***********************

Fast-forward two days and we are having dinner and watching the school concert in the video-camera viewfinder. There is an autistic boy, Lew, in the year ahead of Olle at school. In years gone by Lew would have been described as a 'simpleton' and would not have been in an ordinary school, but now he is well integrated, thanks to a very hard-working mother and dedicated teachers.

Olle has never specifically mentioned Lew, though all the kids know each other (it's a small school). Lew was in one of the singing scenes on the video, though none of us pointed him out. Suddenly Olle started singing Summer Holiday, a song from the concert, but putting Lew's name into it: 'Lew is going on a summer holiday, Lew's not working for a week or two...' He giggled in that way that kids giggle when they are in a group making fun of someone, saying things which they think are very smart and funny and they giggle and laugh (and jeer) in unison. But his giggle sounded uncertain - he was seeking some sort of validation from us.

I didn't say anything, just changed the subject, but it was an 'aha' moment. Aha - so kids do mock Lew behind his back. I wonder if they mock him to his face. I doubt it - I think the teachers would be very careful not to let that happen. In fact, probably the kids who are actually in Lew's grade don't make fun of him, but support and accommodate him. Olle sounded like he was mimicking other kids, probably kids from his own class, kindergarten, who see Lew from afar and think it's clever, a bonding experience, to ridicule him.

I need to think about how to approach talking about these things with Olle. We have so far not had the need to talk to him about the possibility that other kids might make fun of him for having two mothers, but perhaps that is going to be the way in.

something about mary

2004-12-14T11:56:00.000+11:00

A new play based on the Mary Poppins books by PL (Pamela) Travers (who was originally Australian) is for children over seven only. Younger children might find it too scary.

I approve. I had all the books as a child (I still have them) and Mary gave me the chills - she was not likeable at all.

Apparently Travers saw Mary Poppins as "the embodiment of repression and the subsequent release of sexual desire. When the Disney film was released, Travers disliked it, saying it had made the nanny too sweet." I can remember being puzzled by how very different the pinch-faced, grim Mary of the book's illustrations was, compared to the pretty Julie Andrews. Mary Poppins was one of the first films I ever saw, taken by our mother in the school holidays to the King's Cross cinema - which isn't there any more.

action figures

2004-12-13T16:55:00.000+11:00

For the person who has everything: the Michael Jackson baby-drop scene.

Just one of many weird 'toys' available from a bizarre site.

on time

2004-12-13T15:51:00.000+11:00

For some reason I can't quite put my finger on, getting a child to school on time seems one of the most demanding activities I've ever engaged in. I find it hard to remember back to the pre-baby days of just getting myself to work, but I don't recall them being very complicated. I even managed to take a shower in the mornings, in fact I considered that an essential pre-requisite to the day. I gave up morning showers when Olle was a baby and now have one at night (when he is asleep). So I don't even have to fit that into my mornings. What exactly do I have to do? (Assume that each request/instruction to child has to be made at least two times and that he loiters and plays and daydreams around while I'm in a frenzy).

Today: Got up. Child still sleeping (big weekend). Co-parent has already left for work very early (after walking the dogs) so she can take time out for the school concert later in the day. The previous day I had washed and wrapped five soft toys which had been given to our son as a baby but which we had now decided we'd give as his gift to a Christmas charity at the concert. They were still unlabelled. Turn on iron, let cats out, feed cats, put small mat which one cat has pissed on into washing machine. Make boy's breakfast and prepare drink. Boy wakes up, comes downstairs with his uniform (which has been laid out for him the evening before.) He changes into his uniform, with a little assistance. Take frozen buns and bread rolls out of freezer, cut in half and hope they dethaw quickly. Send him upstairs to get his school shoes. Iron starts beeping (it's been on for 15 minutes). Make some green tea, set him up with breakfast at the table, go and iron my work clothes. Change into them. Come back and start labelling the charity gifts (first cut out labels, find tape, stick labels onto gifts). Put his socks and shoes on while he eats breakfast (not good for his independence but saves time). He finishes breakfast and tries to get himself some cashew nuts out of the cupboard. Spills a jar of almonds all over the floor. Put on some toast, make him pick up some of the almonds ("why do I always have to pick things up?"), pick up the rest, wash them (too expensive to throw them out). Ask him to bring his school bag to the kitchen. Start buttering his wholemeal scone for morning snack. Make his lunch roll. Place in his bag. Start making same for myself. Instruct him to place all gifts into a plastic bag and take it to the front dor. Send child upstairs to get his toothbrush. Supervise him brushing his teeth at kitchen sink while I finish making lunch for myself. Put on some toast. Decide to check his head for lice as he's been scratching a lot. Discover many nits. Spray his head with a tea-tree headlice preventative (he already has them, but still...) Send him to put his hat on. Instead he stands on the toilet to look in the mirror and wobble his second loose tooth. Go upstairs to visit bathroom and lock up. Find my shoes (junior dog often walks around with shoes in his mouth and deposits them in odd places). Come downstairs and lock the back door. Find boy's raincoat and help him into it. Put leashes on dogs, plastic bags into pockets, put my lunch into my own bag, make my toast, drink cold green tea in one go, put his school backpack on my back, place my bag on one shoulder, carry toast in one hand along with umbrella, have dogs on leashes on the other hand, instruct child to carry bag full of gifts, leave the house - on time (only just).

On a normal schoolday, we'd have to fit reading his school reader and supervising his spelling homework into this timeframe, but those tasks have now ended for the year.

We then walk to school. Stay for the morning assembly. Today was unusual because of the school concert. Normally I would not take the dogs, but would walk my bicycle to school and leave for work from there. Today I proceeded with dogs to the park for a walk, then took them home (had to put senior dog on a leash in the park to make her get a move on, she is so slow and stubborn now), at which point I discovered I'd forgotten to take my key. Knocked on an unemployed neighbour's door in order to make a phone call to co-parent, neighbour revealed he'd been given a key to our house by the ex-owners over a year ago (!), so I was able to get in, deposit the dogs, collect the video camera and head back for the school concert (which was incredibly sweet.) After that I came back home, changed shoes, got on my bike and rode to work to start the day.

Later: When I wrote 'dethaw' above, I was obviously aiming for 'defrost' or 'thaw' and my subconscious came up with an entirely new word.

Even later: Our cats, by the way, are well house trained but every so often one of them (I'm not sure which one) pisses on the mat at the back door when we are too late letting them out in the morning. I lock the cats in overnight so they can't hunt, so opening a window is not an option. It's a washable mat, so no big deal.

As Lori notes, this is with only one child, one who is at quite an independent age (but he is a dreamer...) But I think what adds to the pressure is getting myself to work too. And I stay there till 6pm, so that when we get home in the evenings, it's all systems go for immediate dinner and bedtime. I often put the washing machine and dishwasher on in the mornings and have to deal with that on return.

When Olle was in Stalag Montessori at age three, we had to get him to school by 9am and send his lunch. It didn't feel as difficult, because I wasn't working and because he didn't have a uniform and didn't have to do any homework.

This morning we were actually 10 minutes early! That's the end-of-year no-homework factor - although I did have to spend some time over breakfast removing dead nits from his hair.

american survey

2004-12-13T15:47:00.000+11:00

"Seventy-nine percent of Americans believe that, as the Bible says, Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, without a human father, according to a new NEWSWEEK poll on beliefs about Jesus."
And that's just the beginning.
Thanks to Francis, who is learning Swedish, for the link.

feelingly

2004-12-10T15:12:00.000+11:00

Here's a remarkable speech by Bill Moyers on receiving Harvard Medical School's Global Environment Citizen Award.

in fallujah

2004-12-10T13:42:00.000+11:00

Is it a ghetto or is it a prison? Or is it a model Iraqi city? That is the question.

ban it

2004-12-09T15:07:00.000+11:00

"What should we do with US classics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or The Color Purple? "Dig a hole," Gerald Allen recommends, "and dump them in it." Don't laugh. Gerald Allen's book-burying opinions are not a joke."

I'm not laughing.

yes men

2004-12-09T13:47:00.000+11:00

In preparing for the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, the BBC fell for a clever hoax website and subsequently did a TV interview with someone purporting to be from the Dow Chemical corporation (as does this!), but who was actually a yes-man. The yes-man announced that Dow would be setting up a multi-million dollar compensation fund.
Brilliant political theatre!

dog days

2004-12-07T16:40:00.000+11:00

As I said earlier, subsequent to my dog post on Friday, I had quite a doggy weekend, starting with the launch of the Dog exhibition in Centennial Park on Saturday morning.

This recent interest in things canine came about completely by accident. I'd had dogs in the past, but in my late 20s/30s had adapted well to the relatively carefree life of a cat owner.

All that changed ten years ago. In those faraway days, I had the kind of job which involved travelling interstate for work. I had gone to Melbourne for a few nights. Co-parent did not usually work at night, but because I was away, she did an evening shift at the cafe she then managed, which was in one of inner-Sydney's grungy but groovy locales. At midnight, enter a band of young people with a young staffy on a leash. They explained that the youth hostel they were staying at (not the YHA type of hostel, one for homeless people) would not allow dogs. They said they had obtained the dog earlier that day on the streets of said grungy locale from a child who reckoned his mother had been sent to prison that morning.

Co-parent, who is, after all, semi-English, adored staffies and English bull terriers and fell for the dog on the leash. She agreed to take her.

I was not at all pleased to discover that we had acquired a dog in my absence, but within a short space of time I fell madly in love with the Lotster. She's a remarkable dog, full of joie de vivre and with a wild streak in the great outdoors which has made our lives exhilarating. She has more than lived up to her origins on the mean streets of the inner city. Domestically she is perfect - not a chewer, not a barker, not a food obsessive - a lapdog par excellence.

Staffies need a lot of exercise and we were fortunate in living close to Sydney's great Centennial Park. Here we struck up conversations with the other regular dog walkers, as well as the professionals.

When I'd last owned a dog in my early 20s, no one was much interested in him. My housemates saw him as a nuisance. So it was a revelation to become a dog owner at a more settled time of life and discover a lot of other middle aged people - often women - meandering through the beautiful paperbark woods with their dogs, willing to stop for a chat along the way. [This includes our mayor Clover Moore, who herself owns two staffies.]

When baby Olle came along, many of our dog pals drew closer. Lesbian mothers are not common in our neck of the woods (there are gay men by the dozen and clubbing lesbians too, but the mothers tend to move further out into the suburbs). We had a tiny premature baby who brought out the goodwill in all our neighbours and acquaintances. We began to be invited to parties outside of the park by people we'd met in the park. We developed friendships with the most unlikely people (who probably thought we were the most unlikely people.)

I was reminded of this on the weekend. We knew a lot of the people at the launch, from the park ranger who has arranged birthday parties for Olle, to the exhibition events organiser who lives near to us with her dog. We knew the professional dogwalkers, as they had taken care of our Lotster when we went overseas one year and we often walk and chat together. We of course knew the other staffy owners, including our now-friends Cherry and David, whose lesbian daughter lives in America. Every year they invite us to come and decorate their Christmas tree and celebrate hannukah with them.

Later, taking our dogs for a run, we ran into a gay man we've got to know through his dog, another staffy (it's a popular breed). He told us that he [the man, not the dog] has developed a mysterious illness, possibly lymphoma. He had been in hospital having tests all last week, but said that he was deperate to get out - "I just wanted to get to the park and play with my dog". I've been feeling sad about this news ever since... [Lymphoma is on the increase worldwide, probably due to environmental changes. I know three women who have developed lymphoma in the past decade - one of them died.]

On Sunday evening, as dusk fell, I took the dogs back to the park for their second walk. At the dog drinking tap, we encountered a woman, her teenage son and their unusual fawn-coloured staffy - Jerry. I asked how old he was - she replied that they did not know, as he had come from Staffy Rescue . So did Harry! Jerry had been rescued in very poor condition, but he's looking good now. We walked through the darkening paperbark grove together, the dogs who shared a history studiously ignoring each other.

2004-12-07T15:15:00.000+11:00

We were walking home from the mini-concert when Olle said "I know what comes next".

"Oh, what does come next?" I asked.

"3004".

nothin' but a hound dog

2004-12-06T15:56:00.000+11:00

Via carolinkus , I found the what dog are you? quiz and I turn out to be a Hamilton hound. Never heard of them but they're quite nice-looking (in a non-staffy kind of way).

I had quite a canine weekend, including the launch of the DOG exhibition in Centennial Park. But I have to rush off now to an end-of-year concert, more later.

cats and dogs

2004-12-03T14:54:00.000+11:00

Speaking of blogs, it is apparently a blog tradition (if such a new medium can be said to have traditions) to post a picture of a cat on Fridays. I never post pictures of anything, mainly because I haven't figured out how to do it on Blogger (I am working on my Typepad site, but it all takes time, which is in short supply). Natalie did post a cat photo but then promptly switched to talking about dogs. I am both a dog and a cat person - we've got two of each.

Like the very gorgeous Beanie, our dogs are staffies (staffordshire bull terriers).

It's probably just as well Natalie isn't in Sydney, or she could be tempted to browse the Staffy Rescue website, which is where I found our second dog, dirty Harry. In an idle moment at work last year, I began perusing the photos (unfortunately Anthony and Mina haven't the time to update them at the moment, but if you look through Mina's updates you will get a sense of what used to be there). The words "pint-sized" caught my eye. I'd been thinking of getting a second dog, as our first girl grew older (she's 11 now). It had to be a boy (same-sex staffies are not a good idea), relatively young and small (to suit our tiny house). Harry fit the bill and was cute as well (he's white and 'red', like a Jack Russell). So pint-sized is Harry that some unkind people have even described him as 'stunted'. So pint-sized is Harry, he has difficulty jumping onto the bed. He has a big staffy head on a muscular little body. But he has a huge staffy heart and grin and like all staffies, more than 101 uses.

blog

2004-12-03T11:41:00.000+11:00

The definition of the word "blog" was the most requested from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary this year.

reporting from iraq

2004-12-02T14:21:00.000+11:00

Darh Jamail is an American unembedded reporter in Iraq. He keeps a weblog of his personal and hard new dispatches.

{I notice that Fallujah has been off the front pages for days now...]

radio play

2004-12-01T13:00:00.000+11:00

For those in Australia, a new radio play (written by a lesbian mother) will be broadcast soon:

'The Woman Who Knitted Herself a Child' by Catherine Fargher will be on ABC Radio National's AIRPLAY programme, on Sunday Dec 19 at 3pm. Producer Jane Ulman, composer Matthew Fargher. It will also be available as audio on demand.

About the radio play:
'The Woman Who Knitted Herself a Child' follows a woman scientist as she does an extraordinary thing: she is knitting herself a child. The piece explores the reveries of a woman as she tries to make sense of a changing and highly technological world of new genetic futures. Working at the 'coalface' of genetic research, cloning transgenic organisms, she explores the possibilities she is creating through her work and the miraculous futures promised by cloning, IVF, stem cell technology and dolly the sheep. In her inner world, she knits together the ancient knit and purl stitches, and the constantly evolving strands of DNA double helix until memories of her past emerge, as a child, a pregnant teenager faced with reproductive choices and finally the growing wish for her own child.

The play incorporates original composition and soundscapes by Matthew Fargher and Jane Ulman. Sounds include live recordings from the Symbiotica Wet Biology workshop, exploring tissue cell culturing and DNA extraction as part of Bienalle of Electronic Arts, Perth 2004.

Catherine Fargher - WRITER
As a writer, Catherine has had sixteen scripts produced for radio, contemporary performance and community theatre groups, including Terrapin Puppet Theatre (Tas), 'The Listening Room', ABC Classic FM, Vitalstatistix National Women's Theatre, Sidetrack Performance Group, Death Defying Theatre(now urban theatre projects), Theatre of the Deaf, Musik Kabau (Bris) and StreetArts Community Theatre (Qld) She has also worked extensively as a community writer for migrant, youth and union groups including Newcastle's Workers Cultural Action Committee.

In 2001 she was the recipient of the Playworks/Varuna fellowship and also received two New Media Fund (Australia Council) grants to create new works. In 2004 she received the Playworks 'In Gestation' award to assist in development of three new works. She is currently undertaking a Doctorate of Creative Arts at Wollongong University under the supervision of writer Merlinda Bobis, developing performance texts from her series of bio-ethical fables. Catherine recently travelled to the SYMBIOTICA WET BIOLOGY WORKSHOP (Bienalle of Electronic Arts Perth 2004) with the support of ANAT (the Australian Network for Art and Technology) Playworks, and the University of Wollongong, to learn tissue cell culturing and DNA extraction, and explore 'hands on' ethical issues in biotechnology.

more from donna mulhearn in baghdad

2004-12-01T11:48:00.000+11:00

I get email from Donna Mulhearn via a peace group - here is the latest:

Dear friends

There‚s a gun battle outside. It has been going ferociously for 20 minutes. There‚s been several large and fatal bomb blasts today.

It is cold without electricity. I, and most families in Baghdad, now sit in the dark. My Iraqi friends are anxious and sad about everything.

But there is good news in Baghdad.

In a narrow street in the crowded Al-Doura neighbourhood, the sound of children singing escapes from a large, brown building.

Go inside and there‚s colour, laughter and learning. There are big smiles on little faces.

Welcome to Peace Bird Art School!

This is a place where children can come to learn the arts and express their creativity. The aim is that they can begin to heal from trauma through their play.

They train in music, ceramics, art, computers and theatre. Pursuits they do not have access to at home or school.

Our Home - Iraq established Peace Bird Art School in response to the nation-wide crisis in children's health caused by post-traumatic stress disorder.

Almost half of Iraq‚s population is below the age of 16. This staggering statistic means last year‚s apparent war on kids, and the current violent occupation, has left the next generation of Iraqis broken and traumatised.
Child psychologists here have reported that the physical symptoms of trauma are increasing at an alarming rate. They say the best way to detect and heal trauma is through play therapy. Being in the present moment and thinking only about the leggo, the crayons, the swings ˆ and expressing feelings with art and music etc.

Peace Bird Art School is a beautiful haven of healing managed and staffed by Iraqi people ˆ teachers who are trained professionals, child psychologists and volunteers.

It was established in April with donations from Australia, the US and the UK. It is now sustained by independent grass-roots fundraising from ordinary Australians who care about Iraqi children.

About 700 children, aged from five to 15, have come through Peace Bird Art School. On the day I visited, it was humming with activity. The children are from various backgrounds: neighbourhood kids, children with disabilities and children from orphanages.
As I walked through the rooms I could feel the healing.

It was in the gentle touch of the teachers, the pride of making a beautiful house of clay, the satisfied clapping after a song, seeing your drawing displayed on the wall.

I handed to the children a bag of bright, coloured ribbons and beautiful cards collected by a 95 year-old woman from Sydney as well as some drawings sent from primary-school children in America.

The children‚s eyes sparkled at the sight of the gifts from people from across the world.

There was healing there, in that moment.

On the footpath outside I told a gathering of staff and neighbours that Australian people care about Iraqi children and want to help.

"Shukran" (thank you), they replied. "Will they continue to help?
"Insha‚allah", I answered. (God willing).
"Insha‚allah", they said in chorus. There was healing in that moment too.

Your pilgrim, Donna

PS: I have many wonderful pictures of my visit to Peace Bird Art School which I will send in separate e-mails because of the sizes.

PPS: For those not aware, Our Home - Iraq is a small aid group, formed to assist disadvantaged children in Iraq. It is the vehicle through which I do my work. Australians can make donations by cheque to: Our Home - Iraq, P.O Box 3126, Redfern, NSW 2016 (enclose return address details if receipt is required.) By credit card by phoning 1800 100 786 (tax deductable) Or by direct deposit into Commonwealth Bank account number: 223 110207377, account name Our Home ˆ Iraq. Those outside Australia can send a transfer to the bank account, or direct to me in Baghdad (details on that soon).

PPPS: Peace means valuing other children as much as our own Mary Hunt.

the weekend

2004-11-30T11:45:00.000+11:00

It was a hectic weekend. Saturday afternoon was my son's birthday party, held jointly with one of his schoolmates who was born the same week. Sunday was my 30th high school reunion. Both days were very hot, but Sunday was hotter, especially out in Sydney's western suburbs where I went to school.

I am still thinking over the reunion. It was a relatively small gathering - 20 women, out of the 120 in our year. One of them I had seen six months ago. Nearly all the others I had not set eyes on since we left school. We wore name tags - we needed them. Although some women looked vaguely familiar, it wasn't until I looked at their tag that I realised who they were. Even then, not everyone was familiar. One hundred and twenty is a big class - clearly not an intimate group. Some girls I barely knew then, let alone now.

When I first walked in I was horrified - who were these frumpy, dumpy middle aged women? No doubt they were thinking the same of me.

Actually, a few women looked sensational. Staying slender is a big help in the ageing process.

Someone who I hardly have any memories of - in fact, I have no memories of her at all - told me how she remembered how much I liked Bob Dylan. (True.) Someone else, who left school at 16, recalled visiting my home (I have no memory of this), playing records by The Monkees and The Beatles and waging a 'war' between ourselves as to which group was better. (Unfortunately I was on the side of The Monkees.)

It's odd to feature in other people's memories like this when I have wiped them out of mine.

No one mentioned husbands (at least, not in my hearing), which I suspect was out of sensitivity to the fact that some people are now divorced. Divorced! Unthinkable to us Catholic schoolgirls in 1974.

However, quite a few photos of children were passed around - teenagers and even adult children. A couple of women are grandmothers already. But apparently I don't have the youngest child - someone knew someone else who didn't attend whose youngest is a toddler. Someone else, who wanted to be a nun while we were at school, has ended up with 12 children (a different form of matyrdom). I wanted to know what happened to our classmate who was the oldest of 12 kids and who swore she herself would never have any. No one knew what had become of her. One girl, whose name I didn't even recognise, was said to have died of breast cancer. Later I was wondering, what would the mortality stats for 120 women in their late 40s be? Is one death by now the statistical norm? My mother's friends started dying from gynaecological cancers in their 50s.

I had thought that what divided me from my past - and possibly from these schoolmates - was my sexuality and rejection of the 'conventional lifestyle' (although my lifestyle these days is pretty conventional). I was unprepared for the realisation that socioeconomic class/status had been a big divide at school - and continues to be. This is what caught me off guard and what I am still reflecting on. I'll need to write more about this later.

scandal

2004-11-29T14:55:00.000+11:00

I like a good sexual/political scandal and this one has the best ingredients. Such scandals intrigue me because of how revealing they are of the hypocrisy of just about everyone involved and the way they indicate just how much is probably hidden from our view. Senior Labour politician has affair with rightwing publisher just months after she gets married (for the second time). He possibly fathers one or both of her two babies. Wronged husband (who had a vasectomy reversal that may or may not have worked)declares that he has forgiven her. Sheesh.

I don't see why these people bother getting married in the first place. Why don't they just declare a belief in 'free love' and get on with it.

who's wally?

2004-11-26T11:22:00.000+11:00

My son is in love with the Where's Wally? books. I don't know why. I find the drawings ugly and have very little patience for searching for any of the characters in them. I was thinking his fascination for such intricate adventure drawings was 'a boy thing', but a woman friend of mine tells me that she likes them and so does her daughter - and her son. But in the US, where my friend lives, they are called Where's Waldo? instead. Why is this so? Martin Handford, the author/illustrator, is English, but you can see that the American websites about the series Americanise the author - or at least, carefully don't mention his real geographical origins (though I reckon his Englishness is evident in his childhood love for toy soldiers).

[In the US, they re-voice both Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine, presumably because American children mustn't be allowed to realise that anything good comes from anywhere else in the world. The thought of Bob and Thomas with American accents is almost too much to bear. I always liked Neil Morrisey, who voices the original Bob, in Men Behaving Badly and especially as Maisy Mouse.]

In England, and Australia, a 'wally' is a bit of a nerd or everyman. My American friend says 'waldo' has no such connotations. So this re-naming is a mystery to us.

Doing some web research on this, I discovered this article which offers one account of the origins of the phrase 'where's Wally?' I'm willing to believe it. But it still doesn't solve the Waldo mystery.

bikes and scooters

2004-11-25T13:37:00.000+11:00

I think I've gone and replicated something from my own childhood with my son. I can't tell if it's coincidence or not...

I grew up in a house which was on a busy road and the side of a steep hill. We had a large flat carport where we used to ride our trikes and scooters. My father refused to buy us bicycles when we got older (say 10) because there was too much traffic. I resented him for that (probably unfairly). However, I did love my scooter, which I rode all around the neighbourhood.

The first bike I ever rode belonged to one of my cousins, who lived way out west on a sheep and wheat farm. My twin cousins, four years younger than me, had proper bicycles. I can still remember the wonderful sensation of gliding across the red earth.

It wasn't until after I left school and moved into the somewhat flatter inner city that I got my first bicycle. I've only had about three bikes in total - the one I ride now is 24 years old! Cycling has been one of the loves of my life. When I moved to London in my 20s, my only luggage was my bicycle and pannier bags. I moved house a few months later with all my worldly possessions on that bike.

When I had a child I was keen to welcome him into the world of bicycles. I bought a child seat for my bike when he was a toddler and cycled him to preschool. He got his own first bike for his third birthday, one with training wheels of course. He could ride it around in our small sloping patio garden within days, standing up to pedal uphill.

But here things began to go awry. We live in a hilly area. The nearest level bike track is a 20 minute walk/ride or five minute car-drive away. We didn't make it to that track very often. So Olle rode the bike along footpaths and took it to other kids' birthday parties, but as he grew bigger, the bike got less and less use.

As a bicycle purist, I wanted the training wheels to come off as soon as possible. (The man at the bike shop had told me they should only stay on for a few weeks.) Yet it was almost two years before I took them off. Olle did manage to ride a little way without them on that first day. Then ... months passed without us ever having the time or opportunity to get it out for a proper ride. By this time he was beginning to outgrow the bike, which was meant to be the right size for only two years. (As with all things for little children, when you buy it, two years seems like an eternity. Two years later, that time has gone in a flash and you're wondering if you got your money's worth.)

For the past year, I've been vaguely thinking of buying him a new bike for either his birthday or Christmas. We even went to the bike shop recently and tried some out - in order to get our money's worth this time, I decided we'd skip the next size and fast forward to a really big bike, so it would last longer.

Meanwhile, some friends whose kids are now teenagers passed on a rusty old scooter, with broken brake cables. Olle loved it. We do a lot of walking, with our two dogs, and he began to ride the scooter every time we went out for a walk. At the bottom of hills, he'd have to jump off to 'brake'.

With his birthday rapidly approaching, it finally crystallised for me that a new bike could be a complete waste of money - something that would have to be transported by car to a safe flat riding area. But scooters were a different proposition. They could be used every day. I suggested to Olle that his birthday gift could be getting the brake cables fixed on his old scooter. He agreed.

We tok it down to the bike shop and the repair man immediately told me that the solid back tyre was so worn that the scooter was dangerous. Plus the brake repair would be $50. He said it would be better to buy a new scooter.

We went upstairs to look at some that were on special. They were big enough that I could see one lasting at least another four years. I put a deposit on the only blue one (he chose blue over black and red) and we went home to think it through. I felt slightly guilty at the prospect of spending money on a shiny new scooter when we'd been given a perfectly useable scooter (and one with sentimental associations)... except that it wasn't safe and Olle was getting to the point of being able to use the hand brakes - and needing to use them.

Two days later we went back and got the shiny new scooter (seen here in its pink version). We even bought a small lock, as it seems an eminently stealable scooter. (It is a rare item, in these days of the ludicrous razor scooter.)

Olle is thrilled (especially with the lock). He takes it out even when we're just walking the dogs around the block.

I know that he'll go through phases of not using it much. But it will last him for years and he can walk out the front door and ride it immediately. And it fits in our small car and doesn't need a special rack for transportation.

In retrospect, I think bicycles for little kids are a con. Little kids should ride tricycles, not bikes with training wheels. Most of them leave the training wheels on, which defeats the purpose of a two-wheeler.

Perhaps Olle will beg for a bike for some reason when he's eight or nine - perhaps not. The roads are so dangerous, steep and curved and crowded where we live that riding on them is out of the question. Even the footpaths are narrow and steep. So waiting until he's old enough to be a safe rider and not just a 'special events' rider seems the best way to go. Just as it was for me. And I am glad he has a scooter like the one I had as a child.

donna mulhearn

2004-11-25T11:02:00.000+11:00

Another Catholic woman, Donna Mulhearn, returned to Iraq this week. It's a cliche to wonder if she is brave or foolhardy, but wonder I do. And I'm not sure what to think of her journey being inspired by her christianity ... ironic, to say the least. Here is an account of her arrival in Baghdad:

The corkscrew, the 'red zone' and the certified terrorists

I’m naming it the ‘Baghdad corkscrew’. I reckon crowds would fork out at least $10 a go at Luna Park for a ride like this. Spiralling downward in a small plane at a rapid rate, almost vertical, through a sea of brown dust towards a war zone.

What a ride! Welcome to Baghdad!

So it was with a queasy stomach that I arrived into a very cold, occupied capital.

It was a surreal experience to share the corkscrew plane with a variety of well-dressed businessmen and heavily weaponed mercenaries. Very few people visiting Iraq these days aren’t there to make a buck, very few.

I got a few raised eyebrows answering the most commonly asked question from the suits: ‘No, I won’t be staying in the Green Zone’, I replied politely.

“Well why on earth are you here?” I could see their confused eyes ask silently.

I put on my disguise on the footpath outside the main terminal of Baghdad airport using the windows as a mirror. Long black dress/coat thingy, matching black head scarf with maroon trimming (very stylish) black wrist covers, red gloves, dark sunglasses. Yes, that’s it. I got a few nods of approval from locals as I completed the transformation.

The only give-away: my chunky, brown, dusty hiking boots sticking out of the bottom of the dress. I always wear my hiking boots when I fly because they are so heavy and send my luggage weight sky-high. But today they did not suit my outfit which obviously required a stylish pair of black shoes, so common with the ever-stylish Iraqi woman. Oh well, I would just hope my feet did not attract attention.

I hopped on a shuttle bus and headed towards the military checkpoint which connected the heavily fortified airport area with the rest of Baghdad. The signs upon leaving the compound were ominous: “You are entering a red zone, have weapons loaded and ready at all times.”

My God, what is this place - the red zone - that deserved such serious military offensive action?

What is it? Simply the rest of Baghdad.

The town, the neighbourhoods, the streets, the schools. The parts where ordinary people live. Those ones who, understandably, aren’t amused at having their country occupied by strange, foreign people.

The red zone is any part of Iraq which is not a US military compound. It seems the whole country is threatening to the occupiers who came to bring ‘freedom’.

When I arrived at the military checkpoint about 15 kilometres from the actual airport, my disguise caused confusion. As I approached some official looking Iraqi people for instructions I could hear them chatter under their breath: “Is she an Iraqi woman?” Yay! I was thrilled to hear my disguise was working….but a moment later my heart sank as another replied, “No, I think she is American.”

At this point, I had to intervene. “I am not American,” I said with a smile, my accent giving away the fact that I was not Iraqi either.

“I am,” a tall sharp-faced US mercenary said to me slinging his terminator machine gun over his over-sized armoured chest in a move that clearly said “I’m in charge.” His logo told me he worked for Global, an international security company contracted to provide a private army in Iraq.

“I am definitely not American.” I repeated to the curious crowd. He knew exactly what I meant.

My lift had not arrived, so I hung out in the tent where security staff conducted body searches of people entering the airport. I needed to hide from the freezing cold wind.

I asked an Asian mercenary if I could use his phone to call my friend. He handed it over, with the proviso: ‘please be quick, I don’t have much money’. I turned my face so he could not see my raised eyebrows at his poor $1000 a day salary!

As I found a corner in the tent to sit, the ‘I am American’ mercenary felt to warn me about my chosen posse.

“We call this the dirty side of the checkpoint,” he explained.

“This is the side where weapons and bombs could appear at any moment…

“On the other side, they’re actually allowed to have them,” he added.

I couldn’t help myself respond…

“Oh, I see, so they are legal terrorists and any others are the illegal terrorists?”

“Yes, exactly,” he said. “The ones in the uniforms are the certified terrorists.”

I was surprised and impressed by his matter-of-fact assessment of the situation.

I looked around the tent where there was a cheerful group of Iraqi workers ready to offer me a seat and a place out of the cold.

I’ll stay on the dirty side with the potential, illegal terrorists, I decided.

I asked Mr America what the problem was that closed the airport for three hours earlier, causing our plane to circle in the air for an extra hour.

“Dunno,” he said, “there’s a problem here every day.”

“Here” being the precise place at the checkpoint where the suicide bombers explode their cars.

“Here” being the place I spent the next three hours.

I conversed with the group and they cheered and laughed at my Arabic…

And I was stoked when one woman going to the airport presented her bag to me for inspection, thinking I was an Iraqi security worker. But I was disappointed when I saw others point at what was obviously a foreigner dressed up. But on the whole they were impressed with the effort.

I also noted several unsolicited offers by the Iraqi staff – on a tenth of the wages of the mercenaries - to use their phones to call my friends. Some were so worried about me waiting in the cold, they offered me to go home to their place.

But that was not necessary. I eventually headed off onto Airport Road, also known as the ‘highway of death’, considered the most dangerous route in Iraq.

I made it to the hotel without incident where I now sit in front of a heater feeling a little disbelief that I am finally back in Baghdad. Hang on, the lights just went out. The generator has begun to hum and a low flying chopper swoops overheard. I’m definitely back in Baghdad!

Your pilgrim
Donna

PS: Thanks to all for helping me to have a safe and uneventful drive from the airport.
PPS: “War is the terrorism of the rich”.

religion and politics

2004-11-25T10:48:00.000+11:00

Tucked away in the online part of the SMH I found a parliamentary speech by Julia Irwin about the influence of right wing Christians on contemporary politics. You would never know, from reading the rest of the media, that things like this are being said in our political debating chamber. But thank goodness they are.
[Though personally I find it hard to understand how someone like Julia Irwin can continue to call herself a Catholic and yet not attend church every week and not agree with church policy on, for example, contraception. I mean, I don't understand why she doesn't just leave the church. I guess she must have some primal religious belief and the church acts as a kind of community for her. It didn't for me. I was able to find other communal focal points in my life and so I left the church with not a backwards glance.]

apologies

2004-11-24T13:47:00.000+11:00

After the Sorry site, comes the apologies accepted site.

oldest man

2004-11-22T14:36:00.000+11:00

The world's oldest man, who was born in the same year as my grandfather but lived 30 years longer than him, has died.

journalists

2004-11-22T10:53:00.000+11:00

We cannot possibly be getting anything like the full picture of what's going on in Iraq, given the atrocious conditions for journalists, as described by Hannah Allam:

Treacherous roads and kidnapping squads restrict travel. "Embedding" with the military or going with Iraqi government officials is the safest way to leave the capital. Our ability to uncover and tell the truth about Iraq - good and bad - has suffered terribly. At least 36 journalists have been killed covering this war. Everyone seems to know someone who's been taken hostage.

and Harry Jaffe:

The odds of running into a hostile situation in Iraq have become so great that reporters rarely venture from their hotels unless they are traveling with a military unit or with their own armed escort.

the boy luck club

2004-11-19T17:32:00.000+11:00

The actress from the Joy Luck Club writes about why she wanted to have a second son. She writes extremely honestly about her relationship with her mother. Fascinating.

fallujah again

2004-11-19T10:32:00.000+11:00

Here's confirmation that Australian personnel were directly involved in planning the attack on Fallujah. And here's more very difficult reading about the state of devastation in that city.

queer eye 2

2004-11-18T15:45:00.000+11:00

Lushlife made an interesting comment on my Queer Eye post:

I remember when my son announced that he thought he was gay ... and he told me that it was about boys who liked boys. I tried to explain the feelings had to be stronger than those feelings he was having now in terms of preferring the company of boys as friends over girls and that this didn't necessarily amount to being gay. I said that if he were gay he would want to live with and marry another boy - then I felt guilty because I didn't want to present marriage as the only serious relationship a person could have. In the end I decided to say that really now isn't the time for him to think about whether he is gay or not and to just enjoy being a boy who liked playing with his friends.

Five year old boys (and presumably five year old girls, going in the other direction) do prefer the company of other boys. I recently bought my son a new t-shirt with a picture of a cowboy and the words 'Howdy partner'. He had avoided wearing it and when I asked him why, he said he did not want a girl partner. I explained that cowboys say 'Howdy partner" to other cowboys. Oh, that's okay then! He's been wearing it ever since.
It's interesting for me to trace the evolution of his awareness of adult partnering and parenting arrangements. Since babyhood he had spent a lot of time with other kids in our lesbian mothers group. We also have some very close het friends with three kids who are now teenagers, who we see at least weekly. Co-parent and I each have sisters with kids in (unmarried) heterosexual relationships - his cousins. Because singleness is now so prevalent, he has grown up with many neighbours and friends who live alone (usually people aged 50+) and also has an uncle who is single (and gay - but the boy doesn't know that yet).
It wasn't until he went to preschool aged three that I saw the realisation that most other kids have a "Dad" hit him. Although he had spent time with many children and their fathers, these men, our friends, tended to be referred to by first name. So he knew "John" but did not think of John as Elle's Dad. But in the preschool environment, the other three year olds simply referred to their dads as Dad. Suddenly he was in a universe of 'mums and dads'. I noticed that he very quickly began to refer to us as "my parents" which I thought was a rather clever linguistic tactic to avoid drawing attention to himself as unusual. (He also at times refers to us as "my mums" - although he only calls one of us Mum.)
At Mardi Gras time the year he was four, it occured to me that he didn't completely realise what his friends in rainbow kids had in common - they all had two mums. (Actually, some of them only have one mum.) As far as he was concerned, they were just his friends and Zac's parents Anne and Julie were just Zac's parents Anne and Julie. This was his normality (and Zac's normality). So I pointed out that the rainbow kids all had two mums - and that even though Indy only has one mum, Jan, if Jan fell in love with someone, she would probably have a girlfriend, not a boyfriend. (Recently one of the rainbow mums has set up house with a man ... that's more explaining to do (or not - children just take this in their stride.))
On the other front, when he was four we had gay next-door neighbours who often used to mind another little boy for the day. So my Olle would go in there to play and the two boys could be found late in the day sitting in Pete and Dave's bed watching videos. So that year his normality expanded to include Pete and Dave sharing a bedroom and loving each other. (Unfortunately Pete and Dave seperated amicably shortly afterwards when one moved to another city for work. So Pete has now moved into the category of people who live on their own and are not married, a category I sometimes draw his attention to.)
When he was four, he also encountered for the first time kids at preschool whose parents had "split up". He told us that one boy's father now lives in America because "he was mean to his mum".
Last summer we spent a weekend with (het) friends and their two kids. One day Olle and Maggie had been playing in a room together for some time when Ol came running to me: "Can Maggie and I have sex?" No, I told him straightaway (though I was almost too stunned to answer), only grown ups have sex. A few minutes later they both came to me and Olle asked the same question, with Maggie hovering in the background. I repeated what I'd said. Olle turned to her in relief and said "See, my mum says we can't".
I discussed this with Maggie's mother, who told me she had already talked about sex with her just-five daughter. I, the libertarian lesbian, was slightly shocked. We had never mentioned sex to our child. Discussion of his conception had remained on the level of "sperm meets egg" (in no specific location).
This year, a five year old girl we know, G, started to declare that she wanted to marry my son. At social gatherings with this group of friends, all the girls would chase him around giggling and demanding he kiss his would-be bride. He hated this. "I am never going to get married" he would tell me. Never a great fan of marriage myself, I sympathised with this point of view. So we would have discussions about the many options that would be available to him as a grown-up - to live on his own, to share a house with friends, to have a girlfriend or a boyfriend.
After a couple such conversations, in which he mostly repeated his hostility towards G's plan to marry him, it occured to me that discussing adult household options was completely beside the point. G of course doesn't want to marry him. She's just saying she likes him (though I wish she could find a less stereotypical way to express that). Olle's anger and, yes, fear of her marriage fixation stemmed, I realised, from him not wanting to have to consider partnering with anyone else except us. He just wants to be a five year old boy who lives in his house and has us as his parents. He doesn't want to think about how he'll live when he's grown up and he doesn't want to dream about getting married. As long as all the adults around him carry on the adult component of their lives out of his view, it is completely inconsequential to him who they sleep with (and he still has no idea about sex of any description.)
I still don't know how to explain to him that gay men have better taste in clothes and furnishings than straight men, but I think I can safely leave that till he asks.

back pages

2004-11-18T11:15:00.000+11:00

On its first birthday, Christopher Sheil has decided to close down his blog, Back Pages.

Like a lot of readers (thousands of them in fact), I'll miss it. Not just for Chris's posts on (mostly) Australian political shenanigans, but for the intense, crazy and often hilarious comments threads, especially those which ran (and ran) during the election. My first reaction was to think 'oh, but where am I going to find that bunch of people again?' Of course many of them have their own blogs, which I look in on from time to time, but it won't be the same.

fallujah continues

2004-11-17T13:52:00.000+11:00

I am ashamed that I haven't been following, except in a cursory sense, events in Fallujah. I have noticed that it is all proclaimed an easy military victory for the US (deja vu - we'll be reading that again in another year's time) and has largely been off the front pages for the past few days (Jeff Shaw's blood samples are so much more important...)
Fortunately David Tiley is giving Fallujah and its people their due.

At one point, he looked out and saw a cousin in the street who had been wounded. "I could not do anything for him, I could not move," Dr Ghanim said. "He died. There was no mercy."

No mercy.

abortion

2004-11-16T16:22:00.000+11:00

Well, the abortion debate which some people thought we had to have seems to have been closed down. It would have been fascinating to have been a fly on the wall in the PM's office as he discussed this with various members of his party - women and Catholics (I don't know if there are any Catholic women Liberal MPs - if so, they haven't been prominent in media reports.)

The best piece I read on all this was this one by Julie Robotham, which points out that possibly "at least one in four Australian women at some time aborts a foetus" - which tallies with my own personal observations. I haven't myself had an abortion but a lot of women I know have had one or more and as Robotham points out, most of them have also had children, usually, in the case of women I know, years afterward. No one I know goes through abortion lightly but neither does it necessarily make them emotional wrecks forever, as the pro-life brigade wants to assert.

Coincidentally, today I came across this fascinating blog which is apparently written by two doctors at an abortion clinic somewhere in the USA. The emphasis on God and religion is not something you would encounter to the same degree at clinics in this country, which is thankfully not wracked by the same degree of religious torment as the US.

usa: the future?

2004-11-15T15:19:00.000+11:00

Immanual Wallerstein's latest reflection on the US after the re-election of Bush is very sobering reading. He analyses Bush's three core constituencies - the Christian right, big business and the militarists - and what each will seek from the second term.

The Christian right is basically concerned about issues internal to the US. They have concentrated their fire on two current questions: gay marriage and abortion. ...
But this is only the beginning of the Christian right agenda. They wish to undo the entire liberalization of mores that has been one of the marks of the twentieth century, not only in the US but also in Europe and much of the rest of the world. In the United States, were they to get their way on gay marriage and abortion, they would next work on banning contraception, making homosexual sex illegal, limiting or even ending divorce and for some of them forcing women out of the workforce and maybe even the vote. Another part of their agenda is pushing the clock back on racism and reestablishing the United States as a country socially and politically dominated by white Protestants. They would begin by ending all forms of affirmative action and proceed from there to immigration issues and then perhaps to voting rights. This would undo the entire social evolution of the United States since the beginning of the twentieth century.

This may be the agenda of an extremist group, but Wallerstein points out that this group controls many structures of right wing Christianity (especially southern Baptists) and is powerful within the Republican Party.

It seems almost inconceivable that such ideas could prevail again, but when you think about it, is is within living memory (not mine, but my parents' generation) that nearly all of the above was the norm, supported by legal and governmental authority. Things have changed dramatically and speedily in the past fifty years - it's not impossible that there could be a big change back again, although it would result in enormous social struggle and upheaval.

Of course, all of that is in the USA. Australia is a different kettle of fish, although here we have our own issues with rightwing Christians - Catholic, in this case.

queer eye

2004-11-15T15:04:00.000+11:00

I have to confess we have let our little boy come down in his pjs recently to watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I don't know how it started, but he's hooked. [His other 'adult' tv viewing is Strictly Dancing, an end-of-the-week treat. At first I didn't much care for SD and the dancing is not always as good as it should be, but now I'm hooked too.]
He makes us laugh when he refers to "Queer Eye" as a program about "those straight guys". Co-parent corrects him and tells him it's about "gay guys".
Yesterday we were out driving when his little voice announced "When I'm grow up I'm going to be the gay guy in Australia". Narrowly avoiding a major accident, I enquired "And what would you do then?"
"I would improve people's lives by making their rooms beautiful and buying them nice clothes".

blog comments

2004-11-12T16:00:00.000+11:00

When I started this blog, I fully intended to reply to each and every comment, either within the comments threads or in a new blog item. I wanted this to be as interactive as possible.
But I have to admit that I don't.
When I get comments from people I know (or at least, people I know via email), I usually email them privately in response (or I intend to do this - sometimes my inbox gets too full and life takes over).
But Blogger is frustrating - commenters who don't have their own Blogger account sign in as Anonymous. So I often have no way of contacting them, no email address or even a name. In those cases (I'm thinking of a woman who wrote a long comment after the Australian election) I really should respond here in the blog, but admit I haven't been as diligent about this as I'd hoped to be.
I have a friend who is a computer programmer - (at least, I think that's her job description - she programs websites) - who has an online interactive diary (which she wrote the software for) in which reader's comments are displayed next to the diarist's own entries. So the discussion is much more interactive and egalitarian.
But that's more of a diary than a blog and I have come to like the blog form in many ways. The personal part of this blog is not really a diary.
I should look into Moveable Type. I read several blogs in that software and the comments seem to be easier to manage.

web of influence

2004-11-11T16:23:00.000+11:00

Also sent to me by an e-pal, but a much less strange essay, this one is all about the political blogosphere.

narco news

2004-11-11T16:06:00.000+11:00

The Internet is a wondrous thing. An American e-pal sent me an essay called Power: Building It Without Taking It, that leans heavily on the Zapatista strategy of not trying to seize state power, but rather, of replacing it by strengthening the positions of civil society outside of and over the state.

The desire to conquer the state maintains the illusion that the state is the foundation of sovereignty and autonomy, the authors reflect. But in the networked world of global capital, the state is merely a node in a web of power, woven between the banks, stock exchanges, corporate headquarters, and multilateral institutions.

For example, in seeking a better journalism, do we merely want a column of our own in the New York Times or our own half-hour on a major TV network? Or do we create a more compelling newspaper, even if only online, that answers to different motives and principles than the money-driven mission of media that is dependent on advertising dollars?

Or, take the drug war: Many reformers are obsessed with the laws against drug use and the use of state power that ruins millions of lives through its prohibitionist policies. And yet what of the private sector ruination of the lives of peaceful pot smokers through, for example, compulsory urine tests and loss of livelihood for those who don¹t comply? Not all the threats come from the state, nor can the state protect us from all drug prohibitions.

The obsession with the state detours us from creating the world and community we desire.

This essay was on a site I've never come across before, the Narco News Bulletin - a more than odd title. This turns out to be a website reporting on 'the drug war and democracy' in Latin America. Curiouser and curiouser. They are funded by the Fund for Authentic Journalism. There were some interesting snippets on the site but it also made me a bit nervous ... I can't exactly say why.

consumer kids

2004-11-10T13:36:00.000+11:00

When your grandfather was a baby, he probably slept in a simple cradle - or even a dresser drawer - by his parents' bed. The most entertainment he could expect was his mother's occasional rattle waving. When you were born, your parents turned your bedroom into a baby palace with crib mirrors, mobiles, gyms, and matching sheets, comforters, and bumpers. Music from Baby Genius Series, maybe "Bedtime Beethoven" or "Breakfast with Bach" (just $4.99 per disc on the company's Web site), played on your nursery CD player during your early morning diaper change, where you can also watch your changing table mobile with the Disney characters on it. In your baby carriage, wearing your Tommy Hilfiger jeans, you watch your stroller bar with the Winnie the Pooh characters. At naptime, mom turns on the audio soother, so you can listen to the relaxing sound of rainfall, and watch your crib mobile with the Finding Nemo fish on it. Though you probably don't know the URL yet, you may have your own Web site with dozens of pictures of your first days. By the time you are a few months old, you are living the life of baby bountiful with more stuff, more entertainment, more stimulating fun than Walt Disney ever dreamed possible.

And it builds up from there. By the time you become a teenager your cluttered bedroom has become an archaeological site whose many layers yield up the forgotten must-have fads of your short life: Jurassic Park plastic dinosaurs, Pokémon cards, Beanie Babies, Hip Hop Barbies, X-men action figures, Harry Potter books, Spiderman PJs, Gap boxer shorts, Hello Kitty lipsticks, Britney Spears CDs, apricot mango lip gloss, bead kits for making jewelry, Limited Too lava lamps, shin guards, cleats, ski goggles, bike helmets, ballet shoes, Gameboy games - and a few empty piggy banks. More than likely, inside your bedroom, you have your own television and perhaps a VCR - this is in addition to DVD players in the family room and in Mom's Ford Explorer, so that you don't need to suffer a second of boredom on the way to Grandma's house.

This is from an article about kids in the USA, but some of it is familiar to me, when I look at my own kid and the other children we know. Being a thoughtful parent these days means being a vigilante against consumerism. And increasingly, a vigilante against other parents' consumerism for their own or for my kids.

We were in an Australian Geographic shop the other day and I realised that my son already owned a lot of the objects on sale - mostly given to him for his fifth birthday last year. We are classic older parents of an only child, which doesn't necessarily mean that we shower him with toys, but it does mean that we have lots of older childless friends, plus friends whose adult children have not (yet?) procreated. So he is a substitute child and grandchild for a lot of people. I don't begrduge their interest in him or their generosity and he always gets 'quality', educational gifts. And I think, so far (knock on wood) he is relatively unmaterialistic. He watches no commercial tv, virtually never goes shopping (because we don't) and spends a great deal of time outdoors - he isn't a car kid. Where the other kindergarteners bring toys as their "news", Olle has a purist mother (aka me) who insists that he takes 'educational' news each week - books, photos, musical instruments from Vietnam, that sort of thing. A great many of the items that came in the front door went straight out to St Vinnies again, without him even noticing.

But he does have a Tommy Hilfigger t-shirt (sent by godmother extraordinaire from the USA, natch). He did have the Winnie the Pooh pram string. I confess that we even had the 'Baby Einstein' video.

However, he also reads the real (not Disney) Winnie stories and the AA Milne poems and listens to many stories on tape.

Sometimes I feel as if all my efforts are like a rearguard action in a war I can't possibly win. Still, I'll keep resisting - he's only just heard about Gameboys but certainly won't be getting one for the forseeable future. He's never been to McDonalds and ditto about the forseeable future...

domestic help

2004-11-10T10:31:00.000+11:00

I've had friends who've done aid work in Thailand and Laos and had domestic help to look after their kids and house. It's an uncomfortable reality (uncomfortable for me, at least - I don't think I could do it, though I have stayed in a house where the 'maid' cum nanny did all the housework and cared for the one year old).
This article is by a man who tries to make a connection with the Afghani woman who looks after his daughter in Paklistan where her mother is an aid worker. He makes a bit too neat of a comnection at the end - but at least he tries for a connection.

rescue an american

2004-11-10T10:22:00.000+11:00

Some Canadians have had a good idea - marry an American liberal and provide them with an escape from Bushland. I passed this on to my colleacgue, who has dual Australian/Canadian citizenship - even better.

fallujah

2004-11-10T10:00:00.000+11:00

While Australian former SAS commanders, the Governor-General, Major-General Michael Jeffery, and the Australian Christian Lobby's executive chairman, Brigadier Jim Wallace, moralise about abortions and gay marriages, Australia's military ally is about to destroy a living city and its families.

Tony Kevin declares the assault against Fallujah to have all the makings of a war crime and likens it to the Wehrmacht in Warsaw in 1944 and the Russian Army in Grozny in 1999.

home alone

2004-11-09T14:58:00.000+11:00

Two articles on children caught my eye today. This one is about the new generation of only children in China. Are they all obese 'lttle emperors'? Doesn't seem that way, in Shanghai at least, but they do seem to be under enormous stress to succeed academically, in order to look after their extended older relatives.

My only child will have to cope all by himself with two ageing parents (that's if we survive into old age) and perhaps an ageing childless uncle as well, probably in an era of little or no pension. I'd be fibbing if I said it hadn't crossed my mind that a highly paid occupation would help him in that task. It's crossed my mind ... but not been translated into anything other than mild sorrow that he might face that prospect.

I came from a big family with a mother who did not work outside the home. My father, the sole income earner, managed to send us all to Catholic schools, pay for extras like piano lessons, support us through university and still bequeath us a reasonable sum of money after he died. With just one child, and two working parents, we wouldn't have a hope in hell of sending him to a private school and he'll be lucky if we leave him enough money to take a brief holiday in Coffs Harbour after we're gone. So has the world changed. (Of course, my parents never spent any money on restaurants or flights, overseas holidays, therapy or a large mortgage.)

Anyway, at least academia suggests that as a child of lesbian parents, our boy will be 'socioemotionally' okay.

I knew that already.

In fact, I'm quite happy to read that "boys in father-absent families showed more feminine but no less masculine characteristics of gender role behaviour." (And I think that's observable in my boy's case.)

When they say that "Mothers raising their child without a father reported more severe disputes with their child than did mothers in father-present families" they don't make it clear if this is the single (het) mothers studied or the lesbian mothers. I'd bet it was the single mothers. I already see this at work in the single mother households that I know and I can well understand why that is - the relationship between mother and child is so much more intense without another adult to defuse things.

more on voting

2004-11-09T13:22:00.000+11:00

Before computerised voting appears in this country, we'll probably have to deal with the renewed push to make voting non-compulsory. As is blindingly obvious from reading any analysis of the US vote, non-compulsory voting brings with it multiple opportunities for exclusion and discrimination. It changes the entire focus of election campaigns away from policies and towards the basic push to 'get out the vote'. Voting becomes a sheer numbers game - and those with the most money and resources tend to win that game.

In Australia, for example, who would bother enabling remote aborigines to vote if voting wasn't compulsory?

and another...

2004-11-09T13:14:00.000+11:00

Another couple of articles (on someone's blog) which discuss the possibility of the US election being rigged. As the blogger says,

I believe it is only responsible journalistic practice to point out what 'some people say.'

more on the US vote

2004-11-09T13:13:00.000+11:00

And another voice which claims that Kerry actually won.
This rings true to me (but then, I am a verifiably loony lefty).

vote rigging?

2004-11-09T11:40:00.000+11:00

Was the computerised US vote hacked into? Some people think so. And they aren't just far left conspiracy theorists. All I'll say is that I'm very glad we still vote by pencil and paper in Australia and any move towards computerised voting should be strongly resisted.

tv be gone

2004-11-09T11:33:00.000+11:00

San Francisco electrical engineer Mitch Altman has come up with the nifty object, TV-B-Gone, a plastic $14.99 keychain fob that "turns off virtually any television!" TV-B-Gone quickly spits out roughly 200 infrared codes and, within customary remote-control range, turns off most televisions in a few seconds.
"Restaurants and the Laundromat, those are the big ones for me," Mr. Altman told the New York Times. "Whether TV is on or off is a choice, and I would love for it to be a conscious choice," he said. "All over the place, TV's very often are just on, and no one put a lot of thought into whether to put it on or not. And then people don't really have a choice of turning it off. TV-B-Gone is about giving people that choice."

I need one for the lunchroom at work.

post-election spam

2004-11-08T16:31:00.000+11:00

My American e-pals have been busy forwarding all sorts of post-election humour and analysis. I don't have room or time to re-post them all here. This one by Mark Morford, written when it was still not completely clear that Kerry would lose, was one of the earliest and most tragi-comedical (if that's a word):

And this election, it might be all be very amusing, in a Mel Gibsony,
blood-drenched hamburger-of-Christ sorta way, were it not so sad and
dangerous. It might all be tolerable and cute, in a violence-engorged,
sexist, video-gamey sorta way, were it not so lopsided and wrong.

Some friends who know I blog sent me this, so I'll post it here:

To the citizens of the world: PLEASE FORWARD NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY

America is not united.

We, one half of the American people, are shocked and angered by the re-election of George W. Bush as our president. We are immensely disappointed. Yet our resolve remains steadfast.

This is a new day. Our half of America - we who oppose Bush -- has woken up. We now know that we have more in common with many other citizens of the globe than with the other half of our country who cast votes for Bush. We realize now that we are unified with others across the planet in a worldwide battle for thoughtfulness, critical thinking, human rights, and protection of our common planetary resources. We are clear now that the other half of our nation supports an American brand of fundamentalism, which preaches a gospel of fear and hate founded on ignorance. This gospel disregards the humanity of innocent citizens of other nations; it marginalizes the poor and preaches intolerance for the "different" within our own nation.

America is not united.

This is a new day for our half of America. We have realized that the other half of our country is not guided by reason. The other half knew Bush lied to us about Iraq. They knew that Bush has burdened our economy with insurmountable debt. They knew that Bush's party intimidated voters. They knew that Bush is destroying our environment. They knew that Bush might lead us into other unprovoked and endless wars. Still they voted for Bush. Exiting the polls, they explained that Bush stood for "moral values," that he is "a man of God."

But half of America voted against him.
World citizens: know that America is not united.

Our nation was founded upon principles of reason, not fundamentalist ideology. We have reached a turning point. We are alienated from many of our fellow Americans. We are citizens of the world. Understand that we have put our souls into the defeat of Bush - and remember us as we continue to strive to create a better America. Our half of America will not rest until reason and humanity prevail.
Jose Miguel Trevejo
jmtrevejo@yahoo.com

baghdad girl

2004-11-05T16:06:00.000+11:00

The girl blogger in Baghdad has some amusing 'Hallmark' ditties for the US electorate. I especially like (not) this one:
Cheer up...
Your son was too young for Afghanistan.
And it's still a bit early for Iran-
But there's plenty of time for Syria...
And he'll definitely serve in North Korea!

the us election

2004-11-04T13:39:00.000+11:00

What is there to say that hasn't already been said?

Actually, I'm not feeling too bad, as I defended myself pretty successfully from feeling optimistic. So I didn't have far to fall. This British article is amusing - because of the time difference, most Brits went to bed Tuesday night before a victor had emerged, when it looked like Kerry had a chance of winning. They woke up Wednesday morning to the realisation that he had not. My good friend in London did that, although she hadn't at any point thought Kerry would win. She rang me last night to commiserate, although actually neither of us was especially gloomy. I have been trying to stay centred in my own life, though I slept fitfully last night. As I put Olle to bed yesterday, I couldn't help but think of those melting polar icecaps and wonder what sort of world he will live in 2050.

blumenthal

2004-11-04T13:04:00.000+11:00

The full implications sink in.

more religion

2004-11-02T14:07:00.000+11:00

Two American (non-Christian) mothers I know have reported that their children were given Christian leaflets as part of trick or treating.

I went to the names-of-the-dead reading at St Mary's cathedral. There were only about 50 people there. A woman in religious vestments was one of the officiates. Because of the religious overtones, I thought about what it meant to me to listen to the names of the dead, who I think of as completely dead and gone. Those who are religious would see this as a prayerful occasion, perhaps a time to pray for their souls. I saw it as a public recognition of the value of each human life, a value which is important - or should be - to the living. Hearing names read out made me think about the process of naming a baby, thinking about what name they will carry through life. No mother wants to go through that joyful process of naming a baby, to have that name read out as part of the war dead.

I went to the reading with a close friend of mine who is also an ex-Catholic non-religious. (I'm not sure whether I can describe her as an atheist - probably.) I asked her what she thought of my response to the invitation to a christening. She said she thought it could be interpreted as either provocative or honest. I think it was a bit of both.

She said it reminded her of being invited to weddings as a gay person who cannot legally get married and who wouldn't if she could, anyway. Even if you wouldn't get married yourself, you can go along and feel happy and supportive for friends or family who are getting married, because it means something to them. I guess I could have seen the christening in that way. I have participated in Jewish ceremonies with a close friend of mine. Yet somehow this christening felt different to me. I couldn't have happily attended it. Sure, I'm glad that they have a support system in their church and get something out of it. But I can't honestly say that I want to validate their embrace of christianity by attending an affirmation of that.

A few days before all this came up, I was sitting on a bus thinking about how calm I feel about being a non-believer. There is nothing tortured about my status as an atheist. I do often think about the 'meaning of life', especially now that I'm a mother. Perhaps that's part of the legacy of having been raised a Catholic, I don't know. Intellectually, I don't think there is any 'meaning' to life in general, though of course we all find and create meanings in our own lives and as a connected humanity. I suspect that if humans were able to be assured of long healthy lives, then the need for religion would subside. I can envisage accepting the inevitability of death more gracefully the older I get. The concept of a natural life cycle is more and more meaningful to me, especially having lost one parent too young and seen the other parent reach old age.

religion

2004-11-01T16:46:00.000+11:00

Speaking of getting away, I was raised and educated as a Catholic but left that behind when I left school. It is a matter of surprise to me that religion has such a high profile these days.
Most people I know closely are not affiliated with any religion although some of my dearest friends surprise me by saying they believe in God and/or an afterlife. I don't.
I have had a few friends along the way who were/are committedly religious - a few gay Anglicans (who all became disenchanted) and a close friend now who is an active member of her reform synagogue.
Some people we have got to know this year are recent Christian converts. You wouldn't guess this from looking at them or their kids ;-)
We were at a party last week and I was chatting to J, when he invited me to come along to their entire family's christening at a beach this weekend.
My reply: "Well, sorry, we can't come, one because I am not at all religious and two, because we have friends from Melbourne coming up for the weekend."
We talked about the 'not-religious' part. I told him, "You know what they say, once a Catholic, always a committed atheist". He said "You know what they say about atheists, by saying there's no god, they still have a relationship with God". Oh puh-leeze.
He then appeared rather miffed that I had told him I wouldn't come on the basis of not being religious - he thought I should just have said we had guests and leave it at that.

I'm not sure what to think of that. I thought that by being honest with him (honesty is a Christian virtue, isn't it?)I was indicating that we are friends and I don't need to make polite white lies. I admit there was an element of covert aggression, though.

Should I have just politely lied?

school friends

2004-11-01T16:30:00.000+11:00

I am still working on organising my high school reunion. I spoke today to a classmate who I haven't seen or spoken to since we finished school. She seemed to have quite a few current contacts from the class. She mentioned someone who I had been good friends with in the middle years of high school, who got married two years after finishing. I went to her wedding and that's the last time I saw her. Well, apparently she is now divorced and has three adult sons. Yikes! It's so weird that other people my age have adult children and even grandchildren and I have a kindergartener. It's also quite weird to me that so many others from my school apparently still live in the general vicinity they grew up in. I moved as far away as I could possibly get and feel as if I have led about three different lives since those very long ago years. Even though these days I'm much more integrated, in the sense that I don't shun my own past and origins (I'm helping organise the reunion, after all), I'm glad to have 'got away'. (I'll be glad to go back, too, but just for the day.)

who's afraid?

2004-11-01T16:09:00.000+11:00

I was in a solicitor's office today and heard one secretary say to the other, "You know what was really scary about that Osama bin Laden tape? He mentioned Australia".
It depends who wins in the US tomorrow as to how high my own fear factor will be rising. If it's Bush, we may all have to get along to this forum on Manufacturing Fear.

rudd slams howard...

2004-11-01T16:04:00.000+11:00

Hear hear. Thank goodness Kevin Rudd doesn't believe what you can read in the press about the Labor Party being dead. Someone has to say this kind of thing, if only so that some of us can keep our self esteem.

daisy chain by the sea

2004-10-29T13:37:00.000+10:00

We usually visit the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition at Bondi - haven't been so far this year, but now that I've finished the dissertation I can actually make plans for such frivolous outings. This year there's a daisy chain by a girl whose father is the Remo of the Remo general store that used to stand on a major intersection on Oxford Street - my co-parent used to complain about how cutesie that store was, while regularly buying cute items from it. (We still have some of the old t-shirts and in fact, some of the new t-shirts since the store reappeared in a much smaller version in Bondi Beach.) I think the daisy chain looks like a similarly cutesie concept which in practice is irresistible.

next Tuesday

2004-10-29T13:12:00.000+10:00

I had a long talk last night with my best friend in London. She's an American but left that country 40 years ago. She and her elder son have voted in the presidential election (for John Kerry), but because of an odd US law, they had to vote from the last address she lived at when she resided in the US. That was in Greenwich Village, NYC. So their vote won't count for much (it's solidly Democrat).
She told me of two other Americans she's heard of who didn't receive their absentee ballots in time and so they are flying to the US to vote next week (from Europe). She also heard of one couple who were due to come to Europe and delayed leaving the US until next Wednesday so they could stay and vote.
From all this, we can guess that the percentage of Democrat voters will be much higher this time. However, the Bush evangelicals will also be out in force.
My friend is convinced Bush is going to sweep back in.
We talked about how hard it is to not succumb to the free-floating anxiety which is just around, ready to settle on us in any unguarded moment.
Media critic and academic Jay Rosen seems to be feeling some of it, as he indicates in this blog entry.
This report on the separate realities of Bush and Kerry supporters gives a clue as to why some of us feel so anxious - if so many Americans are willing to live in the land of denial and put their faith in ... well, faith, what are the rest of us to do?
Ignoring them is not an option when they pursue such aggressive policies all over the world and when they are unilaterally responsible for so much of the trend towards global warming which none of us and especially not our children will be able to ignore.

goddess

2004-10-28T11:51:00.000+10:00

I once interviewed Nigella Lawson for a tv program in the early 90s. This was before she became mega-famous. She was undoubtedly the most beautiful person I've ever met. [Hanif Kureishi was extremely charismatic and attractive, but not beautiful in the same way...]

We happened to buy 'How to Eat' around the time baby Olle began eating solids. There is a long section at the back about feeding children, which really influenced me. Nigella is a proponent of the 'let them eat smoked salmon' school of motherhood. Encourage your children to enjoy good food, the same good food that you think is good food. Don't give them 'children's' crap. This fitted in well with my outlook and reluctance to buy or cook anything twice ie he had to eat pretty much the same as we ate - and we eat lovely food.

So off he goes to school with his smoked salmon and ricotta rolls, with lemon juice of course. Why should smoked salmon be seen as anything qualitatively different to ham, which it's assumed children will readily eat.

He is thrilled this week because I caved in (in a fit of post-dissertation elation) and bought some organic 'Orangutang-O's' at the macrobiotic shop, which are essntially organic cereal loops with a lot of raw sugar on them. Hilariously, while in the shop we ran into a man we know with his two little boys and they immediately saw the Orangutang O's and told us they were "unhealthy" - so they had obviously been through the same discussion about why not to buy them as we have in the past....

I feel very fond of Nigella, even though her father was the Thatcherite equivalent of Peter Costello. Here is a recent interview with her.

cats

2004-10-28T10:45:00.000+10:00

The cat that lives alone is a happy cat, according to veterinary research into feline stress in Britain.
But the next best thing to living alone is living with a cat-relative, I reckon.
I'm onto my second pair of related cats. For 17 years I had Stevie Smith and her son Bill, an odd pair of furry pyjama-case pussy cats who flew from Brixton in London to a sunny life in Sydney and lived happily ever after ... until they both died within three weeks of each other almost three years ago.
I immediately, after the first had died, went and got a new kitten from a cat rescue vet. I'd felt an intense urge to get a new young animal in the face of old age and death. When the mother cat died soon after her son (in a classic case of 'giving up'), we went back to the vet and found that our kitten's sister was still there, waiting for a home. Of course we took her.
So now we have a brother-sister pair.
In the long ago days when we only had two cats, the house was silent but the cats were a constant visual source of quiet amusement and aesthetic pleasure. Then we got a dog and focus shifted, although the cats stood their ground and insisted on sharing the hearth with the dog.
Then we got a baby and I'm afraid the cats were semi-banished to the outdoors, especially as the by-this-time 14 year old mother cat had taken to weeing in the house.
So they got far less laptime than ever before, probably at the time they needed it most. Well, only the female cat needed and wanted it, the boy remained a scaredy cat till the day he died, shy and timid and a lover of hot tin roofs.
The two new kittens came into a household with a three year old child and a dog and we went away to England for a chunk of their kittenhood ... so they developed into cats almost unnoticed by me. They live on the periphery of the household, especially since we got a second dog.
That dog, Dirty Harry, has status anxiety and tries to reinforce his position above the cats by harassing them when he thinks he can get away with it. Typically, the female cat stands her ground, but the boy cat is nervous and runs away, with Harry snapping at his heels. That Harry [insert eye-roll here]!
The other day I was looking out at the garden and saw a beautiful large black and white butterfly. Then I saw the boy cat, sitting still. I barely had time to think 'I'll go and shoo that cat away before he notices the butterfly' when he leapt vertically four feet in the air, with his body a straight line, and caught the butterfly in his mouth.
Oh. This is why my Greens-member brother always scowls at mention of our cats.
I do religiously bring them inside each night. Now I'm thinking of belling them, not that I think that does much good, but it would be something, especially in relation to birds. As far as I know he has only ever killed two baby birds (at the same time) which I think he stole from a nest.
There is a huge literature about cats which I will not attempt to add to, but what I will say here is that although cats do not like living with stranger cats, they enjoy the company of their kin. My two cats spend a lot of time together, lying together, licking each other, watching each other. It's nice to have a pair.

sydney - naming the iraq dead

2004-10-27T14:19:00.000+10:00

Naming the dead in Iraq, a global ceremony on November 2, the 'day of the dead' or 'all souls' day
Tuesday, Nov 2, 12 noon - 1 pm
St Mary's Cathedral Square, Sydney
MC: Rev Dr Ann Wansbrough
There will be a display of the names of those killed since March 20, 2003 until October 19, 2004 in Iraq - civilians and Coalition soldiers.
The tally is: Iraqi civilians - 37,000. Coalition soldiers - 1246; Iraqi military - 30,000. We have the full names of 2737 Iraqi civilians killed and the names of all Coalition soldiers killed. As many of these names as possible will be read.
Please join the event if possible.

The Sydney Peace & Justice Coalition will be one of the first groups in the world that day to Name the Dead in Iraq.
Check the global event through the Stop The War Coalition UK.

walk to work day

2004-10-26T13:34:00.000+10:00

Friday November 5 is national walk to work day.
Speaking of physical locomotion, I haven't ridden my bike since I had the flu a month ago. I was wiped out for about two weeks afterwards and feeling too distracted in the past two weeks. I'm hoping to get back on it tomorrow.
Does it count if I ride to work on the walk-to-work day?

parents of soldiers

2004-10-26T11:46:00.000+10:00

Absolutely gut wrenching account by a mother (the same age as me) whose son is an American solider in Iraq. And here are some letters in response, which are equally harrowing. I used to wonder how I'd feel if my son grew up to be voluntarily in the military. Then it occured to me (when I met a mother whose teenager had become one..) that it could be equally awful if he became an evangelical Christian. Then there would be the other hell - conscription.
[Read these letters and think about the 'relaxed and comfortable' Australian electorate voting Howard, Downer and Hill back into power - makes me want to spit at someone (which I assure you is very unlike me.)

normal service resumes

2004-10-26T11:42:00.000+10:00

I'm back. I finished the thesis. I sent it off this morning. I'm still in a state of near-hysteria and twitching brain, having stared at a computer screen non-stop (it feels non-stop) for the past 12 days. I've only had a few hours sleep each night for the past few days, partly because it now gets dazzlingly light at about 5am each morning.
But it's finished.
When I collect my thoughts (or have some thoughts that aren't academicspeak), I aim to try and renew this blog, probably move to Movable Type. Meanwhile, I'll post a few links to things which have come in while I was otherwise engaged.

values

2004-10-15T17:19:00.000+10:00

The election result made me feel all at sea. I don't think anyone, including John Howard, expected a swing to the conservatives. I've been thinking about why this result has made me feel especially depressed - and scared. I lived in England for the 1991 election, when we hoped that Labour would finally win, Thatcher having been thrown out by her own party. Instead, the grey man, John Major, won. Poor likeable Neil Kinnock was defeated. It was enough to fill the left with despair.

But at least there was a swing to Labour.

And at least in Britain then there was a strongly progressive cultural movement - there was plenty of alternative media, oppositional music, socialist council bastions (no matter how crazy some of them were), feminist and gay movements which were on the front foot.

Australia 2004 doesn't feel like that. Sure this is a prosperous time and most people benefit from that, me included. But in a lot of other ways I feel vulnerable. Vulnerable to being dismissed as a loony leftwing lesbian. Vulnerable to having my son exposed to so much crass commercialism and purely acquisitive values. I've overheard children of about 10 discuss house prices in the affluent part of Sydney where we live. I don't want the subject of property prices to even cross my child's mind until he's left school. I don't want him to grow up with a dog-eat-dog mentality nor to be a loser if he's a thinker rather than an aggressive competitor and taker.

A couple of weeks ago we were walking home from school and he suddenly stopped and said, "Have you got 5c for that man?" I had not even noticed that we'd passed a homeless man begging on the street, but Olle had and wanted to return and give him some money. I was proud of him - not that I think such charity solves deep seated social problems, but at least my kid, who is being raised with no religion, has developed compassion for people who are clearly in a bad way.

If the election has done anything, it's strengthened my resolve to keep on parenting according to values which emphasise the social connectedness of all people, our interdependence as humans in a world which greed is too-rapidly damaging, a sense of openness and generosity to other people, rather than suspicion, fear and rivalry. This is the least I can do.

iraq iraq and more iraq

2004-10-15T13:23:00.000+10:00

I've been in correspondence with American friends who are despondent about Howard's victory and the message it sends about Iraq. And Howard himself has been out there sending a completely un-mandated message - that the "overwhelming majority" of Australians "very strongly" support keeping troops in Iraq until "the job is done". What the job is, is never specified. What being "done" is, is never specified.

Australians might think they can ignore Iraq now - they won't get away with it. It will come back to bite us, as we are in fact in the 'coalition of the willing' for the long haul, and the Americans are in Iraq for the long haul, in fact they are in the process of building 14 permanent bases in that country.

As a reminder of what was ignored by half the Australian population last weekend, have a laugh - or cry - at this.

desperanto

2004-10-15T13:16:00.000+10:00

Paul van Reyk has tried to capture some of the emotions swirling around (at least among we 'inner-city elites') since the election.

their sad(dam) obsession

2004-10-15T13:08:00.000+10:00

Brennan Houlihan videoed speakers at the Republican Party Convention in the NYC and then edited together all the references to Saddam Hussein.

Everything was as they said it. There were no repeated clips either. They really said those things that many times. In fact, there were even more instances of these words that I didn't use because the camera had cut away to audience reactions. My video was limited to the prime time speakers: Bush, Cheney, Laura Bush, Pataki, Giuliani, Miller, McCain, and Schwarzenegger. Bin Laden was mentioned ONE time by Gov. Pataki, but that was it.

Propaganda, anyone?

soldier writers

2004-10-15T13:03:00.000+10:00

Two very different projects encourage US soldiers returning from Iraq to write about their experiences: one is under the auspices of Michael Moore, the other under the auspices of the US Department of Defence and Boeing Corporation. Take your pick.

return to vietnam

2004-10-15T11:54:00.000+10:00

After my recent holiday in Vietnam, I was especially interested to read this account by an American man who made a documentary film there in 1972 and finally returned this year.

hostage

2004-10-15T11:51:00.000+10:00

The final killing of Ken Bigley in Iraq made me especially sad. Here's a discussion thread about how to try and understand hostage-taking in Iraq. "A vile reaction to a vile invasion"?

dear american...

2004-10-15T11:36:00.000+10:00

Letters between an Iraqi woman engineer and blogger, a mother as well, and an ex-US marine who fought in the first Gulf War.

fear itself

2004-10-15T11:32:00.000+10:00

Here, fear of an interest rate rise determined the election outcome. What an oh-so-suburban, oh-so-down-under-and-remote fear!

The US election is about other fears.

Listening to the two candidates debate the issues, it is clear that they are talking to pervasive fears about the future. What Bush underlines is fear of an enemy. And he justifies everything he does as the way to respond to that enemy. What Kerry underlines is fear of decline. He argues that Bush has diminished the status and power of the United States in the world by his incompetence in foreign policy, by "fighting the wrong war at the wrong time and the wrong place." He argues that U.S. jobs are disappearing, especially for those in manufacturing, pointing out that Bush is the first president in seventy years (that is, since the 1929 depression) during whose term of office jobs have actually decreased. He argues that Americans need to fear for their pensions and that Bush's proposals on social security will make matters still worse. And he argues that Bush's fiscal irresponsibility endangers the country's solvency and the future standard of living of the children of America.

To all of this, Bush responds by saying that he is optimistic about the "march of freedom throughout the world." But having said that, he returns immediately to the theme that the U.S. is in great danger, a danger whose solution lies primarily in U.S. hands, and that Kerry will be weak in facing the dangers.

So, it's fear, fear, fear. With so much smoke, is there fire? The last time the American people were so afraid was during the depression that started in 1929. And when Franklin Roosevelt was elected president, he famously said in his inaugural address in 1933: "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

blogging

2004-10-15T11:27:00.000+10:00

My readership is dwindling, as I write fewer posts. I write fewer posts because I'm writing my MA thesis. Another nine days of thesis-writing lie ahead of me before the deadline and probably after today I won't blog for another 10 days. Will anyone still be reading by then ;-) Dear readers, do come back after October 26! Meanwhile, I offer some reading to tide you over.

blogosphere

2004-10-11T16:40:00.000+10:00

Into the Blogosphere, a collection of academic articles about this activity.

the library books

2004-10-11T13:25:00.000+10:00

The last term of the school year began today.

Last night at bedtime, after I had turned out the light, I heard a soft whimpering noise. Olle was crying. I asked what it was about. "You haven't posted the books and I'm going to get into trouble" was the plaintive reply.

He hadn't mentioned the books for the past two weeks, but knowing he would be going back to school triggered his anxiety again.

The books have been sitting in our hallway in a padded envelope. This morning he reminded me twice not to forget about them. With his voice breaking he said "I just can't keep my mind off those books". Oh my dear sweet little person.

I carried the books to school and went into the classroom where his teacher was hanging out before the bell. I told her about Olle's anxiety. She was perplexed, as it's not unusual for some kids not to return library books for months at a time. The librarian is part-time and was not at work today, so she took the envelope and will give it to him. Hopefully she will also chat to Olle about it and reassure him that he isn't in any trouble.

Where does his fear and guilty conscience come from? I'm not clear. I suspect he did overhear the librarian telling another child that he should bring books back sooner. The idea of being "in trouble" obviously deeply upsets and scares him - is this because he so much wants to please or be liked? He's such a 'good' child that he is never in trouble at home, so he hasn't got much experience of it. Is it something particular about the librarian, a man in charge of books, which are Olle's favourite things? Maybe the idea of this librarian being cross at him is too much for Olle to bear. I'm just not sure.

post election

2004-10-11T11:35:00.000+10:00

Words almost fail me. Australia has voted John Howard in for a fourth three-year term. There was a small but significant swing to the conservatives, enough to probably cement them in place for another six years, because the swing needed to get them out is too much for any opposition party to achieve in one election. [For any international readers who don't understand the Australian political and electoral system, you can read about it somewhere here.]
I've lived through a large number of conservative election victories, both in Australia and Britain, and I can't remember feeling this bad. I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I feel like accosting strangers on the bus and asking if and why they voted for them. So far everyone I've seen post-election has shared my point of view, though I didn't necessarily know they would. Walking to school this morning, we ran into the early childhood nurse who was so supportive to me when Olle was a new baby - she asked how I was and I said 'in a post-election funk'. She immediately started ranting about the selfishness of people who vote for a government on the basis of selfish materialism. On the beach yesterday morning for Nippers (junior surf life saving), I mentioned the election to some of the other parents and received a similar response.

What is it that's making me feel so terrible? It's not just that the Liberals campaigned on one big lie. Not just that it was a lie, but that it was a smokescreen, a distraction. They hardly discussed any other issue.

Howard's victory speech was nothing more than a string of cliches, vacuous in the extreme. It was almost empty of content. Yet he has plans.

So Australia has voted for denial. Not only have people decided to ignore all the lies and deceptions of the past few years, they have decided to shut their eyes to the future. No contemplation of what "seeing the job through" in Iraq actually means. No contemplation of what not signing the Kyoto Protocol will mean for all of us. No contemplation of what the destruction of the Tasmanian forests will mean in 20, 30 years time. No thought about what aligning ourselves so strongly with the Bush/Cheney agenda could mean, if they get re-elected in November.

Our journey down the road to a US-style unregulated system of healthcare, education, the media, is about to escalate.

I dread it, especially on behalf of my child.

something I read today

2004-10-06T16:20:00.000+10:00

Probably only of interest to parents of young children or babies, although fear, denial, and control are universal issues in human relationships.

the news continues to be bad

2004-10-05T15:13:00.000+10:00

One of the things which will be most galling if John Howard wins this election (among many many galling things) is that it will look like a vote of confidence in having Australian troops in Iraq. I say 'look like' as I actually don't think most people will equate their vote for Howard with a vote for occupation of Iraq. But it will be.
Reports like this don't make the light of day in the Australian press and the deaths of 30+ children in Baghdad last week barely made it into the news for a couple of hours.

not happy john

2004-10-03T13:22:00.000+10:00

Walking home from the park after a long walk with the two dogs, I noticed that irritating mosquito-sound of a skywriter at work. Looking up, I saw a very big N in the deep blue cloudless Sydney sky. We walked another block and passed a couple pushing a stroller who were looking up and smiling to each other. I looked too. It now said NOT H. I instantly knew what the finished words would be: NOT HAPPY JOHN, which is the title of a book by journalist Margo Kingston, as well as the title of a blog and a campaign against John Howard.

I could forgive the sound of the aeroplane for the sight of that statement so large over central Sydney.

This time next week we'll know just how many people are unhappy enough with John Howard to vote against him. Despite my intention of saving my anxiety for election night, I've found it hard not to get wound up during the campaign. The polls have been on a rollercoaster - the suspense is awful.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to write my MA dissertation while still not fully recovered from the flu. I'll be very pleased when November arrives.

regret

2004-09-29T16:52:00.000+10:00

It's school holiday time. And we forgot to return our school library books last week. I reminded Olle on Tuesday night, but on the walk to school the next day, he suddennly realised he had forgotten them.
After school, when I asked, he said his teacher had told him that it was okay with Mr C, the libararian, for the books to be brought back after the holidays.

But on Sunday night, Olle got up from the lounge to walk into the kitchen, and suddennly burst into tears and ran back to me, sobbing. This literally came out of the blue. He was deeply upset because he had forgotten to take the books back and Mr C might never let him borrow books from the school library again. Between sobs there was the skeleton of a story about another boy in his class who'd been told off for forgetting to bring books back. It's very hard to get exact details with this sort of thing - impossible to know if something sharp was actually said or the mere fact that the librarian reminded them not to forget is enough to cause a guilty conscience and tears.

The tears went on, despite our assurances that the librarian was on holidays and not thinking about the books; that the teacher was correct when she said it was fine not to bring them back until after the holidays. From these vague reassurances we moved on to firm assertions: the librarian had renewed the books. The teacher, who is in Queensland on holidays, has been telling everyone what a wonderful pupil she has at her school in Sydney. No one is cross at him.

Eventually the sobs died down.
But the next evening, the same thing happened. Heartfelt tears again. One minute things okay, the next minute heaving sobs and "oh I wish I'd never borrowed those books".

We went through the impossibility of taking the books back to the school - it was locked. He wanted us to climb over the fence.

Time for strategic thinking. I announced that we would post the books back with a letter.

The next day he reminded me to write the letter. So I did. I told the full story, of Olle's tears and fear that he would be banned from borrowing books because these ones were late back. I signed it and he signed it and then he drew a book and wrote the alphabet with three fullstops.

We've put the books and letter in an envelope in the car and will deliver it to the school office on the first day back. (Postage would cost too much!)

The tears have stopped.

These were the first tears of anguish and regret I have seen in him. I recognised them all too well - that self-flagellatory, if-only-I-could-reverse-time-and-undo-X impulse. Not that I've had many of them in my life, and they are usually about things which to outsiders seem trivial, but which to you seem overwhelming - the sense of being caught out in a wrong move, exposed as a naughty or bad person. It's hard to see my little child developing this kind of human emotion, although I think it's part of getting older. It's not quite guilt, but verging on it. Maybe this is part of the apporach of 'rationality' - the loss of innocence.

logic

2004-09-29T16:41:00.000+10:00

From what I've read, six is the beginning of the age of rationality. Olle is a couple of months off six, but somehow I doubt whether he'll be ready to give up life as a fantasist by the time he gets there. Though some small cracks are appearing. Take this conversation first thing the other morning (by first thing, I mean first thing, about a second after opening his eyes):
"It's just as well witches are not real - are they?"
"No they're not".
"Witches aren't real, so they can't create dragons, because witches, even if they were real, which they aren't, their spells are not strong enough to make a dragon, so that's just as well."

unwell

2004-09-29T15:06:00.000+10:00

Sorry not to have written in awhile. I've had the cold/flu from hell and beyond. I kept hearing rumours of its existence all winter and had recently congratulated myself on escaping it. [Insert laugh of bitter irony here.] When it finally did appear, it snuck up on me in a most deceptive manner. Day 1: vague sense of unwellness. Day 2: stronger sense of unwellness, sore throat, glands etc. Day 3: even stronger sense of unwellness, foggy head, glands, mucous build-up begins. Day 4: head cold from hell - sneezing, coughing, nose-blowing. Four-hourly medications. Day 5: head cold increases in intensity, if that were possible. Feeling truly rotten. Three-hourly medications around the clock. Day 6: wake up with a fever. Stay in bed. 11am partner drives me to our GP, one of the few who still bulk-bills* all her patients. This makes her very popular. After two hours trying to remain upright in the waiting room and no appointment in sight, I leave and catch a taxi straight home to bed. Decide to stop the medications (as my liver must be suffering), embrace the fever, take zinc and vitamin C, eat a lot of garlic and ginger (should have done this from day one, of course). I remain in bed from 1pm till 9am the next day, sweating, aching, not breathing easily, fearing pneumonia. Day 7: Fever has gone. Head cold has gone. Get out of bed. Day 8: to work for first time in a week. Still feeling mentally hazy and weak - all wrung out. Thank goodness partner and child haven't caught it ... yet.

*bulk-billing, for international readers, means that the doctor does not charge the patient anything, but instead charges the government-run national health scheme, Medicare. The current conservative government has tinkered with the scheme in such a way that fewer and fewer doctors bulk-bill - the majority of GPs now charge their patients a fee on top of what Medicare pays them. So we no longer have a truly universal national health scheme.

boys/girls/teachers

2004-09-24T13:48:00.000+10:00

We've had an idyllic first year in the education system, all things considered. Essentially, that's because Olle has a very nice, young, firm but fun teacher. And from all accounts, his class of 25 kids is relatively trouble-free.

Yesterday another mother of a boy in the class told me that she'd been told by someone else who has a boy in kindergarten and a girl in grade one that the grade one teacher, Ms M, spent a lot of time "yelling at the boys". The maternal consensus seemed to be that we'd be better off with the other grade one teacher, Ms B.

Today I spoke to another mother who has a boy in Ms B's class and a girl in kindy. This mother told me that Ms B also spends a lot of time shouting at the boys, particularly her boy (who is "challenging"). She doesn't want her daughter to have that teacher next year.

Hmmm. Call me naive, but it hadn't even occured to me that teachers yelled at their young pupils in public primary schools.

From what I can gather, the mother of the girl in Ms M's class seems to think Ms M is biased against boys and that her daughter's days in class are disrupted and disturbed by the teacher's disciplinary tactics.

The mother of the boy in Ms B's class, while admitting her son is "oppositional", seems to think much the same.

I'd guess that the mothers who only have girls blame it all on boys.

As the mother of a quiet, compliant, sweet-natured boy, I've had plenty of opportunities in his short life to speak up against the stereotype of boys as rambunctious troublemakers, a view which is relentlessly regurgitated on all sides - and becomes self-perpetuating, I'm sure. I worry about him being 'tarred with the same brush'. Even with the learning-to-read issue I've been assured that boys are slower than girls, when by far the most advanced reader in his class is a boy. Sure there are probably generalisations that can be made, but I find it endlessly frustrating that so many people persist in seeing children through such totalising gender categories.

I guess we'll just have to take our chances in next year's teacher lottery and hope for the best.