Something to try at home

Hello Possums. As you know, education is one of my passions and I currently work as a science educator. I have a new gig starting next term in a primary school here in Melbourne. Working with the classroom teachers, I’ll teach a series of science lessons to every grade in the school. This is intended as professional development for the teachers and also as a fun learning experience for the kids.

I’ve just come from a planning meeting with one group of teachers, who were very enthusiastic about my involvement. That they could engage in such lively discussion with me today, instead of giving in to end of term fatigue, is a credit to them.

I have lots of equipment to order before next term. Prior to leaving I fossicked around in their science storage area amongst forgotten tubs filled with equipment for programs that were running one or two curriculum changes ago. Just on curriculum change, I have a friend who cynically thinks that frequent curriculum change brought about by the government is a plot to occupy teachers to the extent that they have no energy left to become activists (of any kind).

Any way, I found some useful stuff. I have boxes of bulbs and batteries etcetera to sort through and my clothes are now covered in dust.

I love teaching science to primary school kids. They become so excited when they get the chance to explore things. Actually adults do too. Here is something for you to try at home:  Get a wire coat hanger and tie a piece of string or wool to it so that the string can easily pass over your head and the coat hanger can hang down in front of you like this:

Plug the string into your ears and bang the coat hanger on a solid object by swinging it. The sound travels to your ears through the string and the result is remarkable!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Melbourne vs Chicago.

Hello Possums. If you asked pretty much any Victorian child what the three R’s of sustainable living were, they would be able to tell you.Reduce the amount of waste you make. This includes sensible packaging choices. I like to shop at the fresh fruit and veg markets because things don’t come on foam trays and wrapped in plastic (also the food is generally fresher).Reuse stuff instead of buying something new to do the same job. My parent’s generation were excellent at this. They have the skills to repair virtually anything. The skill to sew was passed down to me, but not my sister. There are fewer and fewer people who can sew or who can just generally wield a tool these days.My father and his sister are still Magpies* as a result of this philosophy. My favorite cousin and I often discuss this trait of our parents’. We do believe that there are limits on the number of broken bits and pieces, plastic bags and ice cream containers that one person needs to save. My aunt hardly has room on her shelves for useful items, because of all the junk she refuses to throw out (that’s another story).I reuse glass jars when I make jam, and plastic containers for the kids’ painting fiascoes, ice cream containers for mixing bowls for play doh, and large glass jars for vases. I repair holes in the knees of my kids jeans by sewing on a patches, and other general clothing repairs. The hubby is handy in minor ways and can repair things made of wood or fibre glass. His dad is handier, has more tools, and can repairs things made of wood or metal. He fixed the handle of my griddle when I burnt the original handle and it eventually fell off, by turning another handle out of wood, encasing the end in metal and welding it on for me! … the father-in-law fixes quite a lot of stuff for us, and the inlaws give me their sewing jobs.It’s not much. We still tend to throw out the toaster when it nolonger works and buy a new one. Repair people won’t usually bother with toasters either, because the cost of labour to repair it would be more than what you’d pay to buy a new one. I can’t help thinking that there is something inherently wrong with the way economic discourses tend to dominate our thinking and our actions. Where are the sustainability discourses? The market price of a lump of metal, does not reflect its value! Nothing short of a societal rethink of values is needed here.Recycle. Now I’m proud to say that in Victoria, most councils provide excellent recycling services. Our household now has more to put in the recycling bin than in the rubbish bin. In our municipality, the rubbish bin provided by the council is half the size of the recycle bin to encourage just that. Our household also recycles food waste as compost. We have two compost bins on the go out the back and we also have chooks, who equate to the best recycling deal I can think of. I never stop marveling that they can turn grass, seeds and our scraps into beautiful, fresh eggs. (And they make great pets. I often hear myself saying hello girls as I arrive home and they run across the yard clucking to greet me – pic of Sally cuddling Chickpea).If any of you are from Australia, you could probably add a thing or two about how the whole country is applying the reduce, reuse, recycle philosophy to water. Some of my friends and neighbours are becoming very inventive with their grey water reuse. Over summer it was common practice for people to shower with buckets on the floor to catch the water, then empty the buckets onto their garden afterwards. There are water saving devices readily available and most people I know have reduced-flow shower heads. Also, research is being done in urban design that includes trial suburbs with the infrastructure to treat and recycle water locally.But, in Chicago recently, I was surprised at the waste generated in the city. Every cafe served us on disposable plates and provided disposable cutlery. Everyone carried around disposable cups, meal sizes in restaurants were twice the size they needed to be – there was so much waste! In contrast, at the San Fransisco air port, I noticed posters up around the place about conserving resources and recycling. So Illinois, what’s your story? In this day and age, there is no excuse: Chicago, lift you game!*The Magpie is an Australian bird that tends to collect things, especially shiny things.

New York Conversations in Chicago

Oh, Possums, I’m not feeling so sprightly this morning. I went to a publishing house reception last night, had a wonderful time, met reviewers and authors from a top journal in my field, was invited by a young publisher to come back to her hotel room, and got slowly-but-surely smashed in the process. But the conversation was excellent.

Her hotel room was a disaster area. Now you know I’m not fussy about neatness, but I had to move a wet towel and some crumpled clothing before I could sit on her couch. I tried to fold her ironing board for her, while she tidied the piles of discarded outfits off her bed, but it was stuck, so I just moved it out of the centre so we didn’t have to stare at it.

She’d flown in from New York that afternoon, on a delayed flight, but was relieved to find out she’d arrived before her boss. Her day had been pressured and rushed. She lit herself a cigarette and joined me on the couch after ordering a bottle of wine from room service. Our fluid and rapid conversation ranged from her quest for matches when she arrived, to life from a New Yorker’s perspective, to differences between Australia and the US including gun laws, to September 9/11, to blogging and more.

She was keen to tell me about all of the sections of movies or TV shows that don’t make sense from a New Yorker’s perspective. According to her, when Carrie in ‘Sex and the City’ talks about being able to hear the M11 bus, this would have been impossible.

From where her apartment is supposed to be, the M11 route is five blocks away, so unless she has super hearing…

And in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, there is a scene where the young fashion exec. gets confused about street numbers when she is told, no sorry this is 800 West.

That part of the movie didn’t make sense to me. I thought about it later but it took me ages to work out what it meant. My friends who have been to Chicago had to explain it, she said.

Apparently in cities like Chicago, if the streets are called Michigan North or Michigan South for example then the numbering starts again, but in New York the numbering is continuous through the North and South or East and West sections of streets.

On living in New York, she explained that everyone loves and pays for designer lables.

Everyone wants to be seen to be carrying a twelve hundred dollar purse, she said, I see women carrying expensive purses riding the subway and I think, if you got that much money why do you take the subway? But that’s why they take the subway, so as people can notice them carrying the expensive purse. And if you don’t have a designer purse, then people think, oh she must be poor. So I carry an expensive purse too.

I explained that I thought this was ridiculous. We don’t have this sort of pressure in Melbourne (unless you’re from Brighton or Toorak). But the social pressure in New York doesn’t end with labels:

I always wore high heels and full makeup just to go to school. We all did. I’ve only just realised that there are other places where you don’t got to do this!

I was astounded and told her so. Where I come from a la natural (makeup wise) and thongs (footwear wise) are quite acceptable and wearing high heels to school is a bizarre and impractical concept from my point of view. I try to get away without makeup and high heels as a day-to-day preference. The last time I wore high heels was on Oaks Day and the experience made me remember why I gave them up. When I do remember to put makeup on, I usually end up looking like a racoon – I have never been able to figure out how to stop the mascara spreading – I rub my eyes too much because I’m not used to it.

She lived in Brooklyn, and lived with a fear of crime. To illustrate her objection to the US’s liberal gun laws , she offered personal stories of what it was like to live in a world where everyone takes it as their right to carry arms: four friends who were held up at gun point on a street, a boy who was murdered for his ipod…

I explained that this type of violent crime is less prevalent in Melbourne because of Australian gun laws, preventing ownership and possession of guns.

But our second amendment to the bill of rights is the right to bear arms, she said.

I was confounded by her contradictory position on gun laws. One one hand she abhorred living in a world where it was an accepted possibility that anyone could have a gun, including any guy who might try to talk to you in a bar. But on the other hand she accepted the constitution as necessary and unchangeable! I expressed this to her but she didn’t see the contradiction at all.

You can’t change the bill of rights, especially the first ten amendments, they’ll never change, this is what we live by! she repeated by way of explanation.

Then, Possums, we moved on to 9/11/2001. As she described her experiences of that day almost six years ago, she cried. Not only did she feel like she was living a holocaust, but her daddys best friend, with whom she was also close, died.

She also still misses the World Trade centre as a land mark. You could see it where ever you were. If you wanted to know if you were heading up town or down town, you’d just glance at the World Trade Centre and you’d know where you were, you know? I still look up expecting to see it. All New Yorkers do.

It wasn’t until this year that she had the strength to go above ground to see the site. She said she got angry when she saw tourists taking photos of the site. For those of you not from New York, this means hop off the subway and literally come above ground.

I asked her if she blogged. She laughed then and said she’d been blogging since the age of thirteen! Wow! I was impressed. As you know, I have only discovered it recently and none of my friends from Melbourne understand it. They all laugh or say what’s that? if I tell them I’m blogging.

Oh, we talked non stop until 2am and polished off a bottle of white wine. This in itself isn’t such a big deal, but we had already been drinking at the reception and the only food provided were crackers and cheeses, which became my dinner. So I’m regretting it now, and hoping that if I have a good breakfast and drink lots of water that I will be able to survive this last day of the conference. It’s an early finish, so that’s one point in my favour for survival. Then I’ll have the rest of today and tomorrow to sleep, shop and play before I leave Chicago.

Collapse

Hello Possums. It was a hot day in Melbourne today. A hot north wind was blowing and on my ride home from uni I had to peddle against it.The wind has dropped now. I went outside about an hour ago to hang out another load of washing and all was still. Some thunder clouds were brewing and it was still warm. Unfortunately over the last couple of weeks the pattern has been for the clouds to dissipate and no rain has fallen. Tonight I figured that I would do my bit for the drought and hang out my washing – that way it will rain tonight! (Murphy’s Law, Possums).We are desperately waiting for some rain. In Melbourne we’re in the middle of stage 4 water restrictions.There are rumors that a cold stream of water has been detected in South America and that this heralds the end of El Nino. For those of you not from Australia, El Nino is part of our weather pattern. Instead of getting predictable rain every year like the changes of the seasons, our weather is governed by the El Nino/La Nina pattern. The hot, dry conditions of El Nino can last for years. The end of El Nino would mean rain for Australia.Providing enough water for our cities is not just a geographical problem, but also a political one. In Queensland the Government wants to build new dams. There have been heated protests about which towns should or should not be flooded. I found the arguments against the new dam compelling. Apart from people losing their homes, there seemed to be no evidence to suggest that there would be enough rainfall to fill the dam if built anyway.This is just the tip of the iceberg, Possums. Building more dams won’t save us. Other suggestions to conserve our drinking water supplies have included industry using grey water (for cooling towers in power plants, for example) and rethinking our use of water for hydroelectricity. I have read Collapse, by Jarred Diamond, and am worried that we need to change our practices much much sooner than later. These concerns are not just for our plight during this drought, but also around the world as we face global warming.It is still very hot outside. Hard for the children to get to sleep in this weather. I usually read to them before they go to bed. Tonight we all lay on my bed and finished ‘Rohan of Rin’. Lying down was my idea because I was exhausted after my ride in the heat. It was a great ending to the book. Rohan became the hero of his town and it brought tears to my eyes. The kids now expect me to misty up at these bits. They look across when my voice wavers because they love to tease me about it:Mum, are you crying? laughterNo, of course not, its only a book!Oh yeah, sure! I can tell. You’re crying!Am not! cheeky grinWe read the entire Deltora Quest series prior to Rohan of Rin, all whilst waiting for Harry Potter 7! The wait is driving us crazy! For those of you who are not into Harry Potter, you won’t know that Voldemort is back! Dumbledore is dead!! And it’s not looking good for Harry… Will it mean the end of the Wizarding World as we know it?

Nits again

Hi Sorry I’m late.

No problem. We were just going around the table and introducing ourselves and explaining a little bit about our research projects.

Hi, I’m Bindi and um, well, I’ve just been nuking my kids hair – nits again! So my brain is not really in research mode, so give me a little time and I’ll get back to you on that.

Hello Possums, I had a wonderful International Womens Day! As you know I went to a luncheon. I was expecting to feel out of place. I bet I don’t have anything in common with anyone and that they’ll all be Brighton women and I’ll have to listen to superficial wealth-creation-type stories all through lunch, I had said to my husband prior to leaving.

I sat next to a women who was probably 10 years older than me, and WAY more glamorous. She spoke with a ‘Brighton’ accent. For those of you who are not from Melbourne, this probably doesn’t make much sense to you, but if you have watched Kath and Kim, the two women in the Homewares Store have ‘Brighton’ accents. If you live in the suburb of Brighton, you will disagree with me vehemently (sorry). Brighton is an affluent bayside suburb – very desirable real estate, Possums.

She turned to me and smiled and I noticed her name tag: Lindy.

Hi Bindi, I’m Lindy.

Lindy asked me where I was from. And you? I inquired politely. Brighton she said.

It was almost poetic. I felt I was slipping into a de ja vous situation, although it didn’t have that mystical I- feel-I’ve-been-here-before quality, but an I-told-you-so and here-we-go quality. I was conscious that my face had begun to support a stuck-on smile. But, just as I thought I had read the situation, Lindy surprised me with a confession: I’m afraid I’m not a business woman, she said, So I’m feeling a little out of place here. I’m a scientist.

What the… I thought to myself.

Tell me about your science, Lindy, I inquired with genuine interest – you see, I am a science graduate myself. Once a secondary teacher, I now venture into primary schools as a visiting science teacher and teach sessionally as a tertiary science educator.

At this request, Lindy did a double take on me. She obviously was not expecting to be asked about her career. Her body language indicated that she required an explanation, although she smiled at me, obviously pleased to have been asked.

I’m not a business women either, I admitted, and I did a science degree too. What field are you in?

Lindy was a physiologist before she had her two children. She told her story with animation and passion. I warmed to her. It was when she mentioned that she ventured into primary schools to teach science, and confessed to having a secret wish to one day write a book about her ideas that I figuratively fell off my chair. It was as if she had been planted there, just so I would have to eat my words!

We swapped contact details.

We spoke with each other until the guest speakers came on. The first speaker was the 2006 Telstra Business Woman of the Year. She was a women in her fifties with a broad frame, but with a sense of style that spoke loudly: PERSONALITY and MONEY. Black leggings, a grey balloon-pleated skirt, a loose wrap top, orange framed rectangular glasses, a chunky orange African bone style necklace and high orange pumps that radiated the message: Sex and the City chicks, eat your hearts out!

She told the story of building her business, a furniture design and manufacturing business located in regional Victoria. The beginnings were humble: no money after respective divorces, seven children between them, and depression (her husband’s). Yet despite this, she and her husband made a pledge over a boozy dinner between just the two of them to try one more time to make it work in furniture. This was at a time when the trend for manufacturing furniture in Australia was to go off shore.

She spoke with a dead pan voice that a stand-up comic would undergo major surgery for, and she instantly had the audience laughing and almost crying with her, and screaming for more. Four of her five daughters were in the audience and as adults each of them had a pivital role in their business which grew to become national and turning over millions of dollars a year. The name of the business: Jimmy Possums.

Serendipity, or what?

I’m planning to google Jimmy Possums, and check out the furniture myself. I was impressed not only with this women as a mother and with her drive through adversity and the stories she told of gaining recognition and respect in a male-dominated field to be finally taken seriously, but also with her business philosophies that are put into practice at Jimmy Possum. For example, not only does Jimmy Possum employ apprentices, it nurtures them. The company is like a big family and their apprentices are brought into the fold to have success and pride for perhaps the first time in their lives (often they hadn’t succeeded at school and suffered low self esteem at the beginning of their employment). She spoke of the joy and pride she felt in watching these young people blossom into confident and talented tradespeople.

In her closing remarks she said she supports and employs women in all areas of her business. She said women are much more colourful to work with. She celebrated the fact that women can display their personalities through what they wear better than men. She would rather be in a board room with women than with men in their drab suits that all look the same. She said she loved being part of all that, especially the shoes, and she loved being a women in business.

There was a magic connection around the room after her speech, Possums, and it wasn’t just due to the wine. Members of the audience stood up to tell their stories about women they had known in business that had supported them. Lindy leaned over to me when one of them finished speaking and whispered, I’ve got tears in my eyes! Me too, I replied.

The second guest speaker was more factual in her presentation and resorted to statistics to illustrate women’s contributions in various countries. She pointed out that women in the workforce was an indicator for economic success. One of the women in the audience asked the speaker to comment on the statistics for indigenous women in business and the response was surprising. Drawing on her experiences in New Zealand, she said that in small countries there seemed to be a need to utilize all talented people, whether they were indigenous, women or men. There were therefore better chances for indigenous women of New Zealand than Australia. This was a very thought provoking discussion.

At school pickup that afternoon, my two youngest children inquired about my day:

How was your lunch, mum? Did you make any new friends?

Yes, I did make a new friend.

You’ve got sooo many friends, mum!

Yeah, that’s coz she’s an adult!

Nothing more to be said. But in my mind I reflected on how easy it would have been to have had a different conversation with Lindy. I eat humble pie, Possums (for not the first time).

Now you might be wondering what the Nit anecdote has to do with this story. Well it is my little example of being a woman in a mans world, Possums, and not being afraid to say it the way it is (for what its worth).

Pic of my youngest submitting herself for nit treatment and a crazy hair style:

Settling the Score at Reunions

Hello Possums. Have you ever been to a high school reunion? What were your expectations? Did you go there with a particular agenda, with a particular person in mind or did you just go for the fun of it with an open mind?

My best friend from high school went to our 20 year reunion with the attitude of just having fun, but the night turned out to be the chance for her to settle a score with a boy from our year. The boy made a suggestive and degrading comment to my friend when we were all going through puberty and she never forgot it! Of course there had been a lot of water under the bridge since this incident and he was no longer a boy, but a man closing in on forty with a wife and five children. My friend did not reflect on this. Her feelings were as strong as though she were the girl of fourteen once again. She never forgave him and believed: once a sleeze, always a sleeze.

My friend had not eaten prior to the evening, and as is often the case at these sorts of functions, the finger food just doesn’t cut it if you’re hungry. Food was light on. Champagne was flowing freely however. A bad combination. I’m sure many of you have been caught out in just this way before too. Before you know it, you are feeling fantastic. In your impaired view, you see yourself as analogous to a lamp, mesmerizing those around you with your good humour and witty conversation like moths attracted to your light. You feel fearless and invincible.

This is the state my friend was in when D.B. approached her and started up a conversation at our reunion. It must be noted that my friend was rather quiet at school. Eventhough she was very nutty when we were doing things together, this never really flowed through to her school life. As an adult she became successful at her career and her personality blossomed with confidence as she aged. She also developed curvy good looks and always had thick golden hair, which she wore highlighted that night. (We all tried to look our best that night, Possums, I’m sure you can relate to that!). D.B. was overwhelmed by these changes and I’m sure he was attracted to her in a way that he would not have been at high school.

After the usual greeting and ‘What do you do?’ small talk, my friend and D.B were joined by a few of his friends. It was in the presence of this audience that my friend decided to air her beef. I’m sure that if there were no audience she would not have bothered. The presence of the audience just provided her with an opportunity to embarrass him in the way that she felt he did to her when they were lined up outside the gym with other students waiting for the start of PE in year 9.

I always remember something you said to me when we were at high school, she said.

Oh, what was that?

Well, you took a pencil out of your pocket and said, hey you wanna be fingered with this?

He glanced at his friends,who pretended they didn’t hear what had been said, and then back to my friend absolutely speechless. He didn’t see that one coming at all.

Later that night when she recounted the story to me I could feel her jubilation.

I would like to thank the organisers of the reunion for providing my friend with this once-in-a-life-time opportunity to settle the score and move on!

PS. They knocked my high school down and now there is a housing development on the old site. This was a common occurrence in the early 90’s in Victoria when the State Government’s economic policy included the rationalisation of public assets. My high school amalgamated with the local technical school to become a secondary college. Our records were moved there, but many of the the staff members who cared about us weren’t. Instead of getting a call from Mrs S. or Mr M. to organise our 20 year reunion (as had happened for our 5 and 10 year reunions), we had to do it ourselves. It was due to a group who had kept in contact all those years that we managed to get together at all. It was a wonderful night. The fact that it went until the wee hours in the morning showed that most people were keen to reconnect.