Girl With a Satchel

GWAS Notes Part Deux: Hatching a satcheling

2013-04-08T17:10:00.002+10:00

Following on from The Long-Winded Good-Bye diatribe, an update for those who still check in here from time to time (oh, ye faithful!)...

Mr and Mrs. Satchel are expecting to hatch their first satcheling around the same time as The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (just a week or two prior). Yes, we are "with child", and it goes without saying that this is the best news ever, though The Australian Women's Weekly is yet to note its world-changing significance in the light of the royal baby's arrival.

What exactly does one do while pregnant?

Well, one works at one's job while fighting fatigue, all-day-sickness (morning? ha!) and back pain; grows significant girth in the stomach region; shops for clothes to suit changing figure; fondles sweet baby things in department stores; picture-stalks 'Jools Oliver Pregnant'; reads Meg Mason's wonderfully hilarious Say It Again in a Nice Voice; visits the obstetrician as frequently as the loo; takes nana naps at every possible chance; friends women with little ones (in a sort of mad, me-too! desperation); avoids most media by instinct (protect, nurture, shield...); nests, nests, nests; calls/emails one's mother often; walks around caressing one's tummy; smiles graciously at those who like to touch one's tummy; thinks BIG thoughts about the tiny LITTLE miracle that is making a person and bringing said person into the world; thanks God MUCH for said miracle (His grace truly knows no bounds)...

That is all.
This is my world.
And it is supremely lovely.
A new season of life, indeed.

I won't bore you anymore with baby talk.
But... wheeeeee!

Girl With a Satchel

P.S. But, of course, it's not all about me! Since we last checked in... Georgie has taken her first classes at the University of Sydney, Beci has been to Fiji, Brooke has been to Egypt, Emma got married, Ellen-Maree became a News Limited journalist, Sophie got a new camera, Julia returned to Malaysia and The Guardian set up sticks on Australian shores.

Video: The JC Clothing Co. Denim Project (c/o Cambodia)

2013-04-08T17:10:00.001+10:00

Hello you! This is Mr. Satchel's latest project, and the video made by the talented young filmmaker Annika Salisbury on our trip to Cambodia last year (one of many for Mr. Satchel). I am very proud of him, of course. It's been a long, arduous, complicated journey to this point, peppered with an abundance of hope-filled moments, small graces (such as not losing our passports!) and people willing to sacrifice their own time and skills to help. That makes all the difference in getting a project like this off the ground. One of many campaigns aimed at liberating the poor, the captive and the vulnerable in Cambodia, the JC Clothing Co. Denim Project (aka 'Stop Traffick') is a work-in-progress - as much a learning experience for us as for the girls themselves (whoever thought making jeans - in villages with no electricity, no less! - would be so darn complicated?). And there's a way to go; but you have to start down the road in order to get anywhere, don't you? I hope you get something from the film, I really do!

And if you want to buy the jeans, or recommend them to someone, you can go to JCClothingCompany.com.

See also:
To Cambodia with delicacy (how to make a small difference)
The Road to Redemption (via Cambodia)
Snapshot: Beate and Willem, a Cambodian Education
Virginity Trade & The Girl Who Spelled Freedom

Girl With a Satchel

GWAS Notes: A gentle, long-winded goodbye

2012-11-30T12:07:00.001+11:00

Dear readers,

You might have guessed it, but Girl With a Satchel is taking a sabbatical (surprise!).

I am not the first media scribe to have headed to the not-for-profit/charity sector for respite and gainful employment in an all-too-uncertain media environment. But to say that were the sole reason for my exodus from online would be quite untrue. The reasons are manifold.

Parting is sweet sorrow, but excites me nonetheless. Sometimes it is easier to hold onto the familiar than to finally let go and see what God has in store. All feels like a new beginning. Which is where the very "me" that has been "me" must end, and so to it GWAS (we are impossibly inseparable, to some extent).

As Watchman Nee writes, God is not satisfied with a simple exchange of interests. A change from economics and history, media and culture, to Corinthians and Ephesians, for example. "Origin determines destination," he says, "and what was 'of the flesh' originally will never be made spiritual by any amount of 'improvement'."

No great revelation to say that it is hard here online to make your way – operating at a dismal loss, ironically for the time I have felt least conflicted about, and most enjoyed, my work here, has been interesting to say the least! The site has been through many revisions in its time, all reflecting my current state of mind.

If the whole of life is based around one's relationships – with God and fellow man – then I have to say I've not always done a commendable job. When your heart is tugged in manifold directions, when your identity is in part tied up in your work, then it is easy to lose sight of what matters most: marriage, friendship, children, community, good health, God. Yes, there is also worthy work.

There is something about the journalistic profession (writing, blogging, whatever you want to call it) that posits the journalist in a precarious position, forever negotiating whether the work is legitimately beneficial to others or not. The plumb line of truth is blurred. Loss is incurred. Human fallout is inevitable. No one is accountable. What of the Good News?

To be liberated from the thought of 'this would make a top story' is probably not what a practising journalist wants, and yet I cannot help but feel that all of life were not to be experienced as such. At least, not at this point in time. Not for me. There is very good journalism out there to be found.

For now, I am happy enough to sit on the bench and ride out the tide of this conundrum as the media world goes through its own growing pains (regressing or progressing? I'm not so sure).

The world is in a state of absolute peril, as it always has been post-Eden. And all of the wrong that we still see is sparked by this 'going it my way' mentality. Oh, to be heard, to be thought highly of, to be proved right, to be loved!

It is very human to want to improve, to better ourselves, to reach new heights and new goals, to think new thoughts, uncover new knowledge and accomplish some feat. But as Tasmin Archer sings in one of my all-time favourite songs, "Sleeping Satellite",

In the rush of the race
The reason we chase is lost in romance
And still we try to justify the waste
For a taste of man's greatest adventure

The individual is so often left behind in this relentless climb, sometimes to the point where there is nothing left of them at all. They are numb, irrelevant, dust. Or if they are the opposite, posited on high, the position is so often built on fleeting fluff; enough is never enough. That is not how things should be.

And, yet, the quest to contextualise, to order, to make sense of what we see and hear and read makes us very much human. That is a gift. Where is it appropriate to do so? The classroom of life surely knows no bounds. Or does it?

Sometimes we have to withdraw, decline, go offline, have some downtime to process what has been on rewind and work our way back to the present tense with better sense. And probably the best way to do that is in the comfortable pages of a journal (I have filled dozens of pretty little jotters in years), and not a public blog.

Which is not to say being here, and writing here, has not presented me with an abundance of opportunities – I have jetsetted to Singapore (thank you, Nuffnang) and New York (thank you, Planet Blue) where I skated on ice and made lifelong friends; I've been on afternoon kids' TV (yippee!) thanks to Rebecca Sparrow who wrote me into a script; I've seen and thought and asked things that I thought I never would. Not all of them good.

I started blogging here six years ago with no clue as to how it would go; no agenda other than to write about those things I liked. Since that time, I have done a great deal of sorting out. I have found my truth, and it is wonderful and I hold onto it with all my might.

As a wise man once said,

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field."

The emergence of my burgeoning faith, transparently accounted for here, has probably for many readers been an uncomfortable, disconcerting, irritating thing. That has troubled me a lot. To alienate is not the way, yet to deny that something incredible has changed within, and therefore the view without, would be inexcusable.

Now, more than ever, I am confident in God, and so I lay down everything before Him and say, 'Take what you will.' Should he choose to give GWAS back at some stage, then so be it. If not, I count it of no loss anyway. New assignments, not necessarily of the work-economy kind, await. New seasons, new duties, new wonders to contemplate.

There is so much to do in the world: so much hurt, pain, confusion to alleviate and joy to create. Let's not forget that for a second, even when we are "off duty" for a bit. No project with a worthy aim is too big or too small. I look forward to collaborating with my husband on a project or two, serving my church, doing a good job.

Thank you so much for being such dear and true readers, without whom there would be very little point of posting anything here at all (and for bearing me with patience, extra gratitude!). Your patronage at the site has not been taken for granted.

The handful of kindred spirits whose 'offline' discourse I have cherished so much, thanks to emails exchanged on GWAS topics of interest (media, culture, faith), have warmed my heart. You know who you are!

To contributors such as Georgie Carroll, our teen blogger who is now off to university (wow!) via a trip to the U.S.A; Brooke Lehmann, whose brilliant book reviews often made my day and who embarks for Egypt soon; Beci Culley, illustrator and girl-out-for-my-own-heart (off to Italy!); Emma Plant whose wit is always entertaining; Sophie Baker, whose photography is taking her places; Liz Burke, who is now an award-winning journalist at the Women's Weekly (ACP 'Rising Star'!); the always-lovely Alison Stegert, Julia Low and Lucy Brook... and Bloke with a Bag who is just a great dad, thank you.

To my fairy-blogmother, Diane, whose big, golden heart can melt the coldest of ice-capped personalities... you are a Cinderella's dream (and could teach those ugly step-sisters a thing or two) and your words of wisdom have been a beacon of light unto me.

If you would like to be kept in the loop, might I suggest that you sign up to the Girl With a Satchel Mailings List (sidebar; right – though I confess, not a lot of mail goes out... the current newsletter is so detestably ugly that I can't bear to send it, and I've simply not had time to get it up to standard).

You never know what you might find one day in your inbox out of the blue. If you would like to say hello or good-bye or good riddance (if you simply can't refrain), email satchelgirl@gmail.com.

If you still would like to send us something, because snail mail is a nice way to do things, then I recommend this P.O. Box:

Girl With a Satchel

P.O. Box 204

North Tamborine Qld 4272

For now, the comments section has been turned off (sweet relief, believe me!). And this grandiose, somewhat self-important soliloquy is just about over (phew). I fear I have said far too much (again). Quest: refrain.

So, until such a time as the wind directs me back here (like a Johnny Farnham reunion tour), or to another post in the precarious online media world or even the printed kind, farewell, so long, chin up and good cheer.

I wish you a safe and happy Christmas and wonderful New Year.

Erica, the Girl With a Satchel
"'...She was made straight, and glorified God." Luke 13:13

Media: Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

2012-11-30T10:55:00.000+11:00

Media: Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus
(a very GWAS Christmas tradition)

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

- Francis Pharcellus Church, editor, The Sun, editorial, September 21, 1897

Thinkings: G.K. In A Topsy-Turvy Land

2012-11-30T10:14:00.003+11:00

Thinkings: G.K. In A Topsy-Turvy Land

"By perpetually talking about environment and visible things, by perpetually talking about economics and physical necessity, painting and keeping repainted a perpetual picture of iron machinery and merciless engines, of rails of steel, and of towers of stone, modern materialism at last produces this tremendous impression in which the truth is stated upside down. At last the result is achieved. The man does not say as he ought to have said, "Should married men endure being modern shop assistants?" The man says, "Should shop assistants marry?" Triumph has completed the immense illusion of materialism. The slave does not say, "Are these chains worthy of me?" The slave says scientifically and contentedly, "Am I even worthy of these chains?"

- G.K. Chesterton, 'In A Topsy-Turvy Land', Tremendous Trifles, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8092/8092-h/8092-h.htm

Bulletin Board: A Brisbane film screening

2012-11-16T17:29:00.001+11:00

Bulletin Board: A Brisbane film screening

Culture: Gen Y loves reading

2012-11-12T11:30:00.000+11:00

Culture: What's fuelling Gen Y's love of reading?

As the release date for the film is scheduled for release on December 14, 2012, picking up a pocket 75th anniversary edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit issued by publisher HarperCollins and featuring Tolkien's own illustrations seemed fitting.

In Tolkien's tale, the precursor to The Lord of the Rings, we find Hobbit Bilbo Baggins leaving the comforts of home at the request of the wizard Gandalf to undertake an epic journey, reconciling the two parts of his whole self and sharpening his character when put to the challenge.

"Tolkien’s first published novel... is a much more artistically and intellectually sophisticated book than it often gets credit for, and it richly rewards adult re-reading," suggests Corey Olsen at The Wall Street Journal, pointing to The Hobbit's character depth, use of poetry and song and story construction.

It's an unusual but not uncommon undertaking, to read again something you first chanced upon in the library at primary school. The characters are familiar but the story is not quite the same. But for new generations of readers, old tales are coming to life again, given new zeal by technologies, social media, films, crafty marketing and Generation Y's love of a self (or bookshelf) discovery.

"I'm currently reading Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie," says Malaysia-based blogger Julia Low. "I bought this while browsing through a children's store at the Sydney airport. I had heard only wonderful things about Neverland and wanted in on Peter and Wendy's adventures."

In the year that saw the collapse of Borders book stores, a downshift in sales through book chains and the commensurate acceleration of online sales, Generation Ys (born between 1979 and 1989) spent the most money on books in 2011, according to research out of the U.S., usurping the bigger Baby Boomer population as consumers of the written word in bookish form, whether on tablet, online or in print.

According to the 2012 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Review conducted by industry trade magazine Publisher's Weekly and Bowker Market Research, Gen Y's 2011 book expenditures rose to 30 per cent, up from 24 percent in 2010, passing the Boomers' 25 per cent share.

The Review noted that 43 per cent of Gen Y's purchases went to online channels, with online book retailers accounting for 39 per cent of unit purchases, up from 31 per cent in 2010. Still not an enormous share of the total book sales market but on the upswing, e-book consumption rose from 4 per cent of unit sales in 2010 to a not-insignificant 14 per cent in 2011.

BookStats, the annual industry sales survey coordinated by the Association of American Publishers and Book Industry Study Group, found that book sales fell 2.5 per cent over all in 2011 to $27.2 billion, suggesting that there is a profit margin between print and digital to be overcome.

It was much the same story in Australia in 2011: book sales slipped 7.1 per cent after the collapse of REDgroup Retail (Angus & Robertson, Borders) to 60.4 million, according to Nielsen BookScan, while the value of those sales slumped 12.6 per cent to $1.1 billion.

Amazon is reportedly selling 114 e-books for every 100 printed books, helped by the popularity of its Kindle. Unit book sales rose 3.4 per cent, to 2.77 billion in 2011 with the discrepancy due to higher sales of lower-priced e-books, said American industry journal Publisher's Weekly.

Children and young adults book sales, meanwhile, from January to June 2012 were up 40.7 per cent on the same period last year according to AAP StatShot, with a 251.5 per cent increase in e-book sales (up from $46.1 million to $146.4 million) over the same period last year. E-book sales claimed 17 per cent of the children's book market, with sales across all children's formats on the uptake.

Flagging a significant shift to digital, the Review posits that there is cause for the industry to think seriously about its book choices (mystery/detective, romance and science fiction sell well in e-form), publishing platforms, price points and retail distribution channels, such as the behemoth discounting UK outlet The Book Depository.

Telling is the recent merger of Penguin and Random House (now Penguin Random House) – a high-profile collaboration in the world of book publishing, with the mega-publisher now accounting for about one in four of all books sold.

"The book industry is operating in a new and dynamic landscape that puts much more power in the hands of consumers," said Kelly Gallagher, vice-president of Bowker Market Research.

"Consumers can now very easily purchase virtually any book they want, whenever they want it and get it at a competitive price. It’s more essential than ever before to understand who is buying and what their expectations and habits are."

Rowena Cseh, editor and publisher of gr magazine, which has seen a growth in its own youth and young adult readership, says that big books during Gen Y's formative years, such as the Harry Potter series, were game-changers for many Gen Ys who may otherwise not have been readers.

For them, it's about what their peers are reading and what they're saying online.

"Gen Y is online savvy and looking for information in that arena, compared to the Baby Boomers who may be more bricks and mortar browsers," says Cseh. "It could be that they are finding out more about good books from this avenue, linking up with resources like us, or book loving peers, social media, etc., and that may mean they are more confident to buy books or enticed by others enthusiasm."

Or they may be pining for the want of seclusion from the often hostile outside world, which has been precarious at best as Gen Ys have grown into young adults negotiating their place in the grand scheme of things.

Ironically, this is the same sense of outside hostility – of a need for escape from reality – that saw J.K. Rowling retreat to cafes in her time of dire need to write tales of an orphan boy-wizard; the heroic underdog fighting against death itself with his comrades, just as Bilbo Baggins does with the dwarves in The Hobbit. In both, as with the popular Hunger Games trilogy, there is somewhat of a mythologised reflection of the world outside, albeit fictionalised, only the protagonist wins.

Films are proving to be the perfect vehicle for book selling, and vice versa for movie ticketing, but also the discovery of old tales by a new generation. In 2012-13, no fewer than 16 books are being made into films, according to one source. They include Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, starring Hugh Jackman, Russel Crowe and Anne Hathaway and, of course, The Hobbit.

But even amongst Gen Ys, there remain lovers of analog – the tangible, dusty pages of a book – and the idea of partaking in an activity, an adventure of sorts, that connects heart, soul and mind with words on the page, and transports us to places far and wide where victories may be won and obstacles overcome.

Stories that connect across generations, that stand the test of time, will not soon pass away into the digital ether, but within it might find new life. In the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, "If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!"

Perhaps in the digital age, Gen Y is finding the value of escape via the vehicle of books.

"I can't stay reading a computer screen for too long; and I love the feel of a book and the intimate and personal experience when reading from a book," says GWAS book reviewer Brooke. "And, of course, the smell. Old or new, they smell divine! Like old friends."

Kids' Book Shelf: The Princess and the Packet of Frozen Peas

2012-10-30T14:28:00.000+11:00

(Kids') Book Shelf: The Princess and the Packet of Frozen Peas by Tony Wilson and Sue deGennaro

This book contains such a quirky spin on the theme contained in The Princess and the Pea, the story by Hans Christen Anderson in which we find a prince travelling all over the world to find a real princess. He found none and returned home.

But one stormy night a real princess arrived on his doorstep, looking bedraggled and wet. To put her to the test, to see if her claim was authentic, the Queen placed a teeny-tiny pea under layers of mattresses and doonas on her bed... a true princess would surely feel the pea, deep beneath the downy sea, her skin being so delicate and all. And she did.

However, in Tony Wilson's imagination, the princess was a bit of a pain... how could someone so sensitive as to complain about a single pea interrupting her good nights' sleep possibly be enjoyable to live with? And so we have The Princess and the Packet of Frozen Peas with spindly, soft and sweet illustrations by Sue deGennaro.

In this story, which was born of an essay Wilson wrote about meeting his now-wife called 'Love Is Blind', Prince Henrick is on the search for a princess who plays hockey and likes camping. Easy, right? Not so much. Until at last he finds the girl of his dreams... who has a gap between her two front teeth.

While one might suggest that even the easy-breeziest, sportiest of girls can turn into a princess if her prince acts like a dunce (and might be excused for throwing a packet of peas at him in retaliation on occasion), the idea that a true prince simply wants a girl without the drama is a welcome antidote to traditional fairytale expectations, where the girl who's most down-to-earth wins the prince's heart.

It's a modern take on an old story with a message about being who you are in order to truly find your perfect match... on the hockey field or off.

Girl With a Satchel

Creativity: Twinkle toes by Beci Culley

2012-10-30T13:14:00.001+11:00

Creativity: Twinkle toes by Beci Culley

Illustration by Beci Culley

Life is so often a precarious business – the heart is torn in this way and that. When desire conflicts with duty, choice with confusion, we can sometimes feel ourselves teetering on the edge of collapse, all tied up in knots and unsure of the way ahead. But we must find our feet again. The balancing act begins and ends with the time-tested truths; she lifts her arms in praise, finds her strength renewed, and pirouettes on pointe off into the sunset. A new day awaits.

Girl With a Satchel

Arts, Culture & Entertainment - on ballet, books and baton twirlers

2012-10-30T08:42:00.000+11:00

Dumbo feather, the magazine that makes conversations with real, live people its focus, has a new edition out, ripe for the picking. Word is that the front section of Issue 33 is devoted to "Going Local". "Many great things can happen in your backyard, your balcony, your street, your neighbourhood, and we explore some of the ways you can make a change in your immediate universe." How fitting!

The 2013 Illustrators Australia Awards are open (deadline November 13). The third Australian and New Zealand Illustration Awards aim to present the very best of regional illustration and will be judged by top professionals in the fields of advertising, design, publishing and illustration. The competition is open to all Australian and New Zealand illustrators. Categories include: Advertising, Book, Editorial, Fashion, Institutional (organisation), Self-Promotional and Unpublished.

How's this for a colourful collaborative idea... Tour Mail by The Sketchbook Project sees visitors to the exhibitions across America take to a table to create something unique that will be sent on to another person in a different locale, thereby sharing the love between Sketchbook stations. "Whether they came to look at Sketchbooks or were just passing by, visitors are inevitably lured over to the Drawing Table by the bright Prismacolor materials and the possibility of making a piece of art," say the Project's proponents. Sadly, The Sketchbook Project 2012 is not coming to Melbourne this year as planned... perhaps next year? Entries for the 2013 Sketchbook Project are now open.

Frank Cottrell Boyce’s The Unforgotten Coat has been announced as the winner of the 2012 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. The "inventive and magical" story – originally penned to promote the charity The Reader Organisation, and given away on ferries, buses, through schools, prisons and hospitals – is about two Mongolian refugee brothers living in Liverpool, and examines the effects of the British immigration system on children. Guardian Books Editor Julia Eccleshare said readers "will be left wiser when they have finished the story".

Children's books as part of the drive to win the presidency? Yes, indeed. Non-profit organisation Authors and Illustrators for Children are supporting Obama 2012. The campaign includes children's author names such as Judy Bloom. Kids' books 'n' politics... I'll be!

The New Yorker asks, 'What happened to movies for grown-ups?'

I ask, how does one become a baton twirler like this girl?

The creative Beci Orpin will be hosting will be hosting a Harvest Workroom workshop around three fun projects to create from her new book, Find & Keep. The best bit? Your goodies will be bundled up at the end of your session in a Harvest Textiles Christmas backsack and accompanies by a signed copy of Beci's book. The small and intimate session held in East Brunswick on Friday November 30 or Saturday December 1 is $180 (a pre-Christmas gift for the crafty one you love?).

Katie Noonan recently melted audiences with her supremely lovely vocals at the Brisbane Powerhouse, accompanied by acoustic guitarist Karin Schaupp. They are working on an album together called Songs of the Southern Skies which features a reimagining of some classic Australian music.

What a sweet book video... meet Peggy, peeps.

This neat little video of two Toowoomba snappers, who go by the Dickensian name of Matt and Katie Ebenezer (they are very un-Scroogey), taking the world by storm care of Nikon, is recommended by Sophie. I feel A Christmas Carol coming on.

The fledgling filmmaker finalists in the ACMI "Screen It" competition have been announced. This year's theme is "belonging" (in family, cultural groups and communities), and called on the school-aged entrants to explore topical issues while flexing their film-making muscle. This year's competition also incorporated an anti-bullying element in partnership with Bullying. No Way!, an initiative of Australian education authorities.

East Timor’s first locally produced feature film, A Guerra Da Beatriz. "East Timor hit the big screen in the 2009 movie Balibo, about the execution of five Australian journalists in 1975, but that was essentially an Australian production. By contrast, this film is conceived, performed and directed by young Timorese, with support from volunteer Melbourne filmmakers," reported Natalie Craig for The Age.

Sigourney Weaver and Mel Gibson in The Year of Living Dangerously

Hobart-born Christopher Koch, the "warm and charming" author of 1978's The Year of Living Dangerously, which was made into a film by Peter Weir, starring Mel Gibson as a journalist and set in the time that led up to the overthrow of Indonesian president Sukarno, told Stephen Romei in The Australian recently:

"If a book is made into a film, they hang it around your neck forever. I've written other books since that I thin might be better, but people always come back to that one and it's because it was a film. That's how much film dominates our culture." No doubt, J.K. Rowling could relate. His new novel is Lost Voices. He is not a fan of Fifty Shades of Gray.

Recently, husband and I welcomed a new addition into our home... a piano! How timely, then, this lovely new edition of Anthology magazine. Right up our alley. Though we don't do dogs on mats indoors.

Stop whinging, fight cynicism and channel the creativity positively, says Relevant magazine.

Have you ever driven around town to the tune of Schubert's "Ava Maria" or Tchaicovsky's "Nutcracker Suite"? It's an experience in which I delight, as everything around appears to come to life like a ballet accompanied by a symphony; a Fantasia of sorts but steeped in reality. In Brisbane, we enjoy the station 4MBS, which recently had a fundraiser to keep up with digital technology. It's still on the air. Yippee!

The big buzz in Brisbane of late has been the Queensland Ballet's appointment of new artistic director Li Cunxin. In 2013 the author of Mao's Last Dancer and former stockbroker will be bringing audiences classic ballets, including Cinderella, Giselle and The Nutcracker, beginning a new annual company tradition each December.

"I am very excited to share these beautiful ballets with Queensland in 2013," he said. "I have chosen works that will not only inspire a love of ballet in everyone who experiences them, but will showcase our exceptionally talented ensemble of dancers."

Opera Queensland will also be presenting a dark, "Dickensian" version of Cinderella in the new year.

Even the classics need an update occasionally. And that goes for the Bible. The Bible Society's online 'Live Light in 25 words' campaign is in full swing. The latest edition? God's Library, an e-book by Greg Clarke. It's a goodie.

Girl With a Satchel

Book Shelf: Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

2012-10-26T14:00:00.000+11:00

Book Shelf: Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Reviewed by Brooke Lehmann

Robin Sloan's career has seen him centred in the world of social media – once working for Current TV, a successful media company in the U.S, and also for Poynter and the eminent Twitter enterprise – mainly working in the sphere of media development.

So it's no surprise that the debut novel of the San Franciscan resident, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Text Publishing; $29.99), takes on a defined technological tone, nor that in its infancy it was a 6000-word e-Book. What's most interesting about this novel, though, is the seamless union between technology and books, something which has rarely been done so successfully.

When questioned about how he achieves such a harmonious relationship between the two, Sloan simply states, "Here's the trick: books are technology. Always have been."

The inspiration for Sloan's novel piqued after a intriguing tweet from a friend of his in 2008 – 'Just misread '24hr book-drop' as '24hr bookshop' – after which, he found himself curiously plagued with the concept of a 24-hour bookstore.

"I think many stories begin with a question. In my case, the question was, 'What would a 24-hour bookstore look like anyway?'” he says. “Why would such a thing exist?”'.

Well, as it happens for Sloan, a 24-hour bookstore becomes the façade of a secret society that has been in the works since the 1400s; the enlightening time of Johannes Gutenberg and his printing press.

His male protagonist, Clay, is an intellectual yet slightly apprehensive guy in his mid-20s, whom Sloan describes as, "nervous, but never insecure – he's not always the boldest person, but he knows his place in the world, and he's comfortable there."

Upon losing his media and design job at bagel empire 'New Bagel', due to current recession, Clay is in dire need of a new job. As luck would have it, on a stroll through the city of San Francisco, Clay stumbles upon Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore, with a 'help wanted' sign in the front window.

After being shown the ropes by Penumbra himself, and henceforth made to prove his impeccable talent for climbing ladders and searching out requested novels in the remarkably high shelves of the store, Clay is instantly granted the job and is issued with the night shift, with two strict instructions:

1. Always be on time for his shift – never arrive late, and never leave early;
2. No browsing, reading or inspecting the certain mysterious novels shelved high up in the bookstore. Of course, these rules are not followed.

And so, we discover that these certain unique novels (which Clay can't seem to track down in any number of Google searches), and the peculiar customers that consequently come to borrow them, are not all they seem to be and so, the adventure begins.

The dialogue as presented by Clay is endearing and infectious and Sloan admits that Clay's voice is most definitely his, however, "There's plenty of selection and distillation at work there."

The novel almost takes on an Indiana Jones undertone, with adventure and intrigue lurking around every corner. The narrative is fluid and amusing, and although the plot has a mature element to it, the tone remains innocent and imaginative.

Sloan perfectly captures the romantic ideal of the bookstores he thinks will always have a market: "The best ones are places for people to gather and hang out; places to sit and think and dream in public; places to find not just the book you were looking for... but the book you didn't know existed."

Sloan, who describes himself as a media inventor ("I like to design not just the content, but the container, too"), states that we can definitely expect another novel from him in the future. However, his heart is still firmly planted in what he classes his 'native country', the internet, and will continue to further delight us with his musings online.

A wonderfully crafted intellectual adventure, Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore's refreshingly new plot exhibits a truth which escapes the most of us; that books and technology are one and the same.

Perspective: Quiet champions of social causes & forgotten girls

2012-10-26T11:00:00.001+11:00

Perspective: Quiet champions of social causes

The Little Match Girl. Source: Lamp and Book

'That poor little girl,' she said to me, 'alone in the world with no mother'. 'She's got a father, she's not alone,' I said churlishly. 'Ah, that's not the same thing at all. Ye wouldn't understand. A girl needs a mother's love. Ye can tell she's missing it, she had the look of a lost child.' - Araby by Gretta Mulrooney

By Erica Bartle

On arrival in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, my husband and I visit a cafe frequented by some of the country's elite. Their food and drink are served to them by girls with whom they'd not usually associate. They are outcasts in aprons with pretty faces.

Many of them are from minority groups and poverty-stricken rural families, who are more likely to be the unwitting victims of human trafficking rings. The odds were stacked against them to begin with and someone took advantage of the situation. These girls have been sexually abused.

They are the forgotten girls of Cambodia and its bordering South-East Asian nations: Burma, Thailand, Vietnam. One girl, I am told, was set upon by 15 Japanese men on a "tour". To satisfy their depraved natures, these men betray these girls, their wives, and their souls. How can they sleep at night? Everything inside of you wants to scream, "This is not right!".

And it's not, but because the problem is endemic, deeply entrenched and part of the global economy, it is hard to see how we can win. The Poverty. Corruption. Hierarchical systems. Discrimination. A cultural burden dating back to Pol Pot and a developing world that sees cities thrive and the rural world limp along far behind. These are not easily overcome.

But there are brave ones here fighting for those who are too weak to stand against the insurmountable odds. Their tactics are discreet: is it about rescuing each one (one by one) from the cusp of death, the clenches of the adversary, and nursing her back to life.

Gently, gently putting back the pieces and giving her a future. Making things right. Protecting her until she is strong enough to protect herself and ready to take flight. Giving her work, a wage, a hope.

The girls are so fragile that it can take years to get them to the point where they can be productive in the world again; where they can trust; when they can smile. The psychological damage is so great that sometimes they just switch off, retreating into the same imagined worlds they created to escape their abusive situations. They cannot handle a lot of stress.

While each girl's story is her own, there is a narrative common to them: they have been victims within a system, a structure, a world that has actively worked to oppress them; to rob them of their freedom; to keep them very, very small and only shadows of what we might call human. No dignity.

For these girls, trauma occurred in early life, as their identities were taking shape. They were baby birds yet to take flight. Pushed out off the nest prematurely by someone who should have known better, they are sold onto the human trafficking market. Some so that their families might withstand the poverty; others because they has already been abused in their communities.

Scars, stigma, shame, mistrust, fear... all these need to be attended to in the rehabilitative process, as they regain their strength and a sense of identity. They are permitted to question the existence of evil and harm in the world, and to seek to understand and address its sources, accept imperfection and break the patterns in which they judge themselves for their circumstances.

Cambodia is not alone in the plight of its young, its poor, its inequality. Did you realise there are two million Australians living on the poverty line?

Giving to the poor; addressing poverty

Born in 1952 in London, Gretta Mulrooney took a degree in English at the University of Ulster and lived for a few years in Dublin, where she worked as a hospital cleaner, a plastics riveter (fitting together Guiness signs) and teaching English, before returning to England to teach and then take up social work.

Araby was her first published adult novel. The late Maeve Binchy called it "wonderful". Like J.K. Rowling's first adult book for fiction, The Casual Vacancy, in which social issues are tackled with literary flair and without sentimentalism, there is something of the well-trodden path about Araby, not unlike the short story of the same name by James Joyce published in 1914, which illuminated the squalid conditions on North Richmond Street, Dublin.

Through the first-person narration by the character Rory Keenan, a cynical physiotherapist whose embarrassing, gregarious, eccentric, unpredictable, overweight, opinionated mother Kitty is the bane of his existence, we are taken into childhood memories experienced by Rory in England and Ireland, and back to the present tense in which we find the family readying Kitty for her imminent death.

"Twelve years after publication, this is also about a past moment in Irish history where family and economics came together joyfully for a change," said one reviewer, Margaret Carroll at Amazon.co.uk, pointing to the commentary on the Irish welfare system.

"The details are right and the contrast between restrained, Anglicised son with his 'caring profession' and the realities of his needy mother is beautifully balanced."

The chapter that stands out most to me is the case of Kitty putting her Catholic faith into action, in a sort of redemptive interaction with a young, ginger-haired girl in a grubby dress named Erin she and Rory encounter on a park bench by the River Lee (Rory is at this time aged 11). Her father has gone off to sell the horse that will put food on their plates; her mother died some years before.

The girl is invited to lunch, eats a whole plate of fish and chips followed by two helpings of trifle and three glasses of milk. The food bill settled, they move onto a department store where the eight-year-old is fitted with a pink and blue dress, matching cardigan and socks, shiny black shoes and white underwear. To finish the day, they take in a film and then bid the girl farewell.

'I had a grand time,' says little Erin, buttoning her cardigan. 'The best time ever.'

An Australian story

While all very Pollyanna, the story – this particular anecdote – reminded me of a good friend of mine who has recently taken it upon herself to bestow charity on a child at her daughter's school. This little girl's mother had a drug addiction and suffers with mental impairment; her father, while a lovely young man, is out of work.

Not surprisingly, the little girl has some social issues to contend with, and also some behavioural problems. Not only is she lacking a permanent home and inappropriately outfitted for school, but she has on occasions been ostracised from play and parties and activities by the other children and their parents.

"The majority of parents don't make any effort to speak to this family," my friend tells me. "They are not rude or mean, but they keep their distance. It is shameful. What's interesting is the way affluent, middleclass people avoid getting involved with those outside their social sphere. In excluding this child, parents send a clear message that it is okay to exclude someone because they're different."

Compelled to take action, my friend took it upon herself to provide the girl with some wholesome interaction and food in her own home, during which time she's found her to be much more pleasant than the other spoiled little girls!

"Her dad is nice, so I don't despair, but I just think every kid deserves a mum to help them get neat and tidy for school."

Speaking to The Guardian about her new book, J.K Rowling – who for a time endured poverty and single parenthood herself – talks about one of her central characters, Terri Weedon, "a prostitute, junkie and lifelong casualty of chilling abuse, struggling to stay clean to stop social services taking her three-year-old son, Robbie, into care.

"The poor are discussed as this homogenous mash, like porridge," says Rowling. "The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people. They talk about feckless teenage mothers looking for a council flat. Well, how tragic is it that that's what someone regards as the height of security or safety? What would your life be like if that's the only possible path you can see for yourself?"

Rowling notes that in the UK, lone-parent families are a little worse off since the 2010 election. "But it's not a 'little bit' when you're in that situation. Even a tenner a week can make such a vast, vast difference."

It's much the same situation in Australia.

Poverty and its repercussions

In the Poverty in Australia report recently published by the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), it is found that the proportion of people in poverty rose by approximately one third of a percent from 2003 to 2010, though declined between 2007 and 2010, due to the depressing of median incomes during the GFC and increase in pension payments for single people.

It found one in eight Australians, including one in six children were living at or below the poverty line. These include Cherie, a single mum raising an eight-year-old, trying to provide the basics, juggling part-time wage earning, fighting persistent thoughts of not being good enough and struggling to pay rent, bills and basic living expenses.

"I have had to swallow my pride at times and turn to family and charities for that extra bit of help when a big bill comes in or an emergency comes up, to prevent from being chucked out on the streets," she says.

"Still, I feel so lucky that I am alive and have a healthy, beautiful son that I will watch grow into an adult who, despite the struggles, will one day give back to our community for the support he is now being afforded." What Cherie is doing is fighting poverty in itself on the frontline.

The poverty line, by Australian standards, is $358 per week for an adult; $752 for a couple with two children. Women are at slightly higher risk of poverty, reflecting lower employment opportunities, lower investment incomes in retirement and wages and the greater likelihood that they are engaged in unpaid caring roles.

About half of all children living in poverty are in sole parent families, and one quarter of people in sole parent families are living below the poverty line. Lone parents and their children are at more elevated risk of poverty. This, says Australian Council for Social Services CEO Cassandra Goldie, "makes the Federal Government's recent cuts to payments for sole parents all the more disturbing".

The Report notes, "Personal stories show that people in poverty are not all the same. They come from diverse backgrounds and there are many different reasons for poverty. Some come from disadvantaged backgrounds, some have long-term illnesses or disabilities, others were once well off but a family crisis or illness changed their lives for the worse".

In short, poverty can happen to anyone, but it can be generational and geographical. As Sarah Ferguson showed us in her story for Four Corners, 'Growing Up Poor', in concentrated places of disadvantage such as Clayborne, a "welfare ghetto" in Sydney's south-west. The kids there have had promises broken by dysfunctional parents.

"When you make promises to someone that's really, really young, it's hard for them to forget it," says one young boy, "it's kind of imprinted into their brain forever." There is a belief that "most people don't have a happy ending", as shared by the young Jessica who skips on school. And, yet, there is some hope:

"If bad things didn't happen, we wouldn't know what a good thing was," says one mum. "If you want something that bad, you'll go for it," says another, who dismisses the constant labelling (not helpful for the kids).

The Poverty in Australia report notes: "One thing that unites people who do not have access to a decent standard of living is that they aspire to a 'normal' life where income is secure, they are respected and have a place in society".

Toni Wren, an employment and social policy consultant, delivered an Anti-Poverty Week address titled 'Help parents into jobs to end child poverty' on October 19 for the Benevolent Society, reminding us that Australia is the second wealthiest country in the world behind Switzerland on an average per person basis.

Yet 2.3 million Australians live in poverty.

Equality in the egalitarian nation

Pointing to research by Professor Peter Whiteford, one of our leading social policy academics, Wren says that childhood poverty is strongly associated with lower educational attainment, one of the main predictors of poverty later in life and in Australia it's harder to move out of the bottom or the top of the earnings distribution – in short, children inherit poverty or wealth.

According to Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, published in 2012, "living in a jobless family increases the probability that a child will have behavioural problems by 13 percentage points and increases the probability of having conduct and emotional problems and hyperactivity."

One study published study by the Social Policy Research Centre at the UNSW, cited by Wren, found that kids are copping the brunt of poverty issues. Aged 11 to 17, they will often opt out of further studies because they don't want to put their families under more financial stress; they protect their parents from blame and social stigma; they were reluctant to join sports teams or partake in school excursions.

"We do irreparable harm when we turn it into a question of individual behaviour, blaming people for their own poverty," notes Dr John Falzon, CEO, St Vincent de Paul Society National Council in Poverty in Australia. "You don't build people up by putting them down. You don't help them get work by forcing them into poverty."

A hand up is what many people need – vocational education and on-the-job training, which correlates to employment, particularly post-school qualifications. Educating mothers, particularly single mothers, helps to lift their kids out of poverty, too, notes Wren.

But in order to do this there are significant hurdles, including boosting confidence and addressing health issues, living conditions, social acceptance, particularly insofar as domestic violence against women is concerned.

So the disadvantaged need spokespeople, advocates, silent bidders and champions; people who will not walk to the other side of the street or look away at the Little Match Girl starving to death and say, "Not my problem!", "Where are her parents?!", perhaps unaware of their own great poverty of spirit.

For many of us, there is a vast chasm between out intentions and our doings; our beliefs and our actions. Reconciling these can cause a lot of anguish – but there is surely a blessing to be found in the complete and unfettered surrender of self-will to the goodness of society as a whole, or even one little girl.

Giving till it hurts

Mother Teresa once said, "I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love", knew this only too well.

We all have a role to play in the betterment of this country and this world, however large, however small – and oftentimes we begrudge that we cannot do more, or get overwhelmed, when what we really ought to do is start the day saying, 'What small thing might I do to add something positive to someone else's situation?'.

That thing might be reporting a story elucidating the plight of people whose voices we never hear (such as Clarion Award winner Leisa Scott writing on the NDIS, or Kristina Keneally writing about 'The Forgotten Ones' in The Monthly); it may be volunteering for a group that tugs at your heart; it might be flying off overseas to help the victims of a natural disaster; it might be sharing a coffee with a lonely person in your community; it might be picking flowers from your own garden and creating a display at the old peoples' home.

Just getting educated about the world can help. Either way, we have to be attentive to playing our particular part. No one is the same. If it were so, nothing would get done. And there is so much to do!

We must surely make the most of the opportunities that come our way to connect, give, stand up for what's right, make someone's day or donate a coin (or a thousand-and-two) so the people who can do do. Just being nice in a world that can be cruel and harsh is enough. Or turning up when no one else wants to know the story to say, "It's alright, it's going to be okay".

In this sense, the media can really play a huge part – making us aware that life is actually not about us, but how we handle each and every assignment and test we're given. We might fail sometimes, but all the while we become better able at handling things – and, in doing that, quiet champions of humanity.

It is always wonderful to read about the recipients of Pride of Australia medals – those Aussies who have gone over and above in the call of duty, such as medical research graduate Jeremy Baldwin who has worked on a project screening rural communities in Ecuador for Chagas disease, and created a "mobile printing van" to boost literacy in Honduras.

I have met and read about many wonderful people of late who have been thrown a curve ball in life they didn't see coming. One such lady is Natalie Bird, who spearheaded the first Australian sensory-friendly movie screening for kids on the Autism spectrum in Cairns. Natalie is strong and determined and wishes that one day she might be able to tell her son, "I did the best I could to make the world better for you".

A quiet defiance

Softly spoken, luminously skinned Virginia Lonsdale is an ethereal presence, but she’s not afraid to stand her ground. The author behind an ABC Radio National Letter of the Week, Ms Lonsdale is a wife, mother, passionate advocate of mindful parenting and proponent of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). In her letter, she wrote:

We have had the chance to meet other parents who have a child with a disability and see how they have used creativity, imagination, vision and smarts to lead regular and yet imaginative lives. As for me, he has brought out dormant and hidden gifts in teaching, parenting, learning, advocacy and being fully present.

Virginia is a few years into her journey, with her husband, of raising a child with Down syndrome (Trisomy 21). And the way she handles this is remarkable – full of dignity and integrity. But we must be aware of the added financial pressures and emotional strain that comes with raising a child with a disability and how easily we forget that anyone of us might find ourselves in the same situation.

How would we approach the task? With gusto and positivity or bemoaning what could have been? I honestly don't know how I would react, only to say that without people like Virginia publicly championing the positive aspects of parenting children with disabilities, it would be a very lonely.

To me, this is as valiant as Rosa Parks standing up for what she believed in on a bus, or Anne Frank communicating through her journal to us as her world was flipped on its head, Malala Yousafzai (who Newsweek called "The Bravest Girl In The World") championing female education in her country, or Queen Esther who saved the Jews from imminent persecution in Old Testament times.

If these girls, women and men can do it against all odds, in the face of persecution, the Nazis and the Taliban, then surely we too can find the resolve to make a positive difference, stand up for what we believe in and not bemoan our circumstances?

It is not necessarily to be done in the loud and shouty way to which we have become culturally accustomed. A quiet resolve might be all it involves to make the world in which you live a better place. "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world," said the quixotic Anne Frank.

It might sound shrill, but it is a good thing to consider that you can be a part of something bigger by starting small – a champion of social causes just by handling whatever situation, circumstance or task it is you're given with a little loving care to make the world more fair. It might start in your home. Or at school.

One teacher I know was dismayed to find that at a camp out not a single child offered to share a sleeping mat with the child who didn't have one. How can we expect our children to share and see beyond themselves if we are unable to lead? It warms my heart to think that my friend's daughter will grow up to think that Mummy did a nice thing for that poor little girl with the grubby dress.

Every girl and child deserves to feel safe, fed and hopeful about the future. But sometimes the very people who should be protecting them are too wrapped up in their own concerns to see the need. Until someone like Malala Yousafzai, now hospitalised in Birmingham, is shot twice (in the head and neck) and we are jolted from our stupor.

There are tyrannical forces actively working against girls all over the world; from Cambodia to Pakistan and right her in Australia, where perhaps they are all the more subtle. Against these oppressive cultural, political, economic and ideological enemies we have to stand. And those who do are fully deserving of our support.

By just loving more, and seeing beyond ourselves to the those all around us needing care, we too can all be quiet champions of social causes. Let's all ensure we help each other along in this greatest of human quests; forgiving wrongs but never walking past one lest we too be complicit.

As Prime Minister Julia Gillard said in her International Day of the Girl Child address, "May this be the country where every girl is born wanted. Where she grows up free from want and fear. And lives out her years nurtured in dignity and abounding in opportunity."

Let's help nurture all the lost, broken, forgotten little girls back to life and give them a purpose, a passion, a plan and plenty of love so she can withstand all the rainy days, turbulence and lonely times with her head held high and one eye on the possibility of a brighter day.

See also: Gender and class equality should go hand in hand

Girl With a Satchel

Trailblazer: Rosa Parks

2012-10-25T18:35:00.000+11:00

Trailblazer: Rosa Parks

“I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” - Rosa Parks

By Brooke Lehmann

On October 24th seven years ago, the world of civil rights was in mourning over the loss of the 'mother of the movement', Rosa Parks. A petite, hardworking, civil rights advocate and seamstress, Mrs. Parks dedicated her life to the cause of equality for her fellow African Americans.

As we all know, she became a world renowned name after her defiant act on a local bus in Montgomery, Alabama, which saw her arrested for breaching the local segregation laws. Her case inspired a mass eruption of protest by the black people of Montgomery.

What it inspired was a civil rights revival in the face of racial equality in Alabama that ultimately placed her alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other acclaimed advocates of the Civil Rights movement.

Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley, on the 4th February 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama to father James McCauley, a carpenter, and mother Leona Parks (née Edwards), a rural schoolteacher. Two years later her younger brother and only sibling, Sylvester, arrived on August 20.

Sadly, at the age of five, Parks' parents separated, and, with her mother and brother, moved to Pine Level Alabama, where she began her education. Rosa recalls school as a child as being a relatively pleasurable affair, saying,

"I liked school when I was very young, in spite of the fact that it was a one-room school for students all ages... It was only a short term for us, five months every year, instead of the regular nine months every year."

From an early age, Parks, like any young African American of the day, was by not immune to the inequality which presented itself constantly in every aspect of life. Once she vividly recalled having to walk to school with the other black children, while white children alone were granted the courtesy of a bus escort. On another occasion, she watched her grandfather (a former slave) stand with a shotgun outside their house as the Ku Klux Klan passed down the street.

It was her courage and conviction of civil rights which brought concern to her grandmother (also a former slave and a strong civil rights advocate), and resulted in a cautious warning: 'You'll be lynched before you turn 20 if you keep standing up to whites'. However, contrastingly, some of her earlier experiences with white people were pleasant, as she remembered fondly in her autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story, that one Yankee soldier treated her like, '..another little girl, not a little black girl'.

At the age of eleven, Parks' mother enrolled her at the Montgomery Industrial School whose staff consisted of solely of whites. The staff of the school would regularly receive harassment and were ridiculed in the local community for their involvement with black people and their education; twice the school was burnt down by arsonists.

For her high school education, Rosa attended a laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes, but had to leave prior to graduating in order to care for her ailing grandmother, and later, her mother.

In 1932, at the age of 19, Parks married 29-year-old barber Raymond Parks, an avid member of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), who zealously raised money for the defence of nine black men involved in the famous rape case known as the Scottsboro Trial (the men were eventually released, however the process took almost 20 years).

It was Raymond who stood by an assiduous Rosa as she continued her education and finally received her high school diploma in 1934. Rosa also became heavily involved in the NAACP as secretary, working alongside the organisation's state president, Edgar Daniel Nixon until 1957.

"I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP, but we did not get the publicity... We didn't seem to have too many successes. It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be, and to let it be known that we did not wish to continue being second-class citizens," Parks recalled.

THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT

Infamously, on December 1st 1955, after leaving her seamstress job at Montgomery Fair, a 42-year-old Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person on her local bus. The segregation laws of the time demanded that coloured people had their own section of seating and, in addition, were required to pay at the front of the bus, only to exit and re-enter afterward, at the back of the bus.

However, on this day, a defiant Parks refused to relinquish her seat upon request when there were no seats left.

Prior to this incident, Parks was all too familiar with bus driver James F. Blake. In 1943, after boarding the bus to go to register to vote, Parks heedlessly wandered straight down the aisle of the bus to find her seat. Blake ordered Parks to exit and re-enter the proper way but instead Parks exited and waited for the next bus. Suffice it to say, Blake's reception of Parks' impudence, was not received lightly.

"When the driver saw that I was still sitting there, he asked if I was going to stand up. I told him, no, I wasn't. He said, 'Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have you arrested.' I told him to go on and have me arrested'," Parks stated in an interview*.

And that's what he did. Parks' was not the first act of such defiance. An article in the local newspaper the Montgomery Advertiser, published on March 10, 1955, proclaimed a similar case involving a 15-year-old 'negro girl' named Claudette Colvin.

The article states: "The girl was allegedly drug kicking and clawing from a city bus last week after bus driver Robert W. Cleere reported to police she had refused to move to the Negro section of his bus."

The NAACP had been scouting for some time for an appropriate test case to bring before the supreme court in order to challenge bus segregation laws. As Colvin was found to be pregnant, the NAACP rendered her case insufficient for fears the pregnancy would spark negative propaganda and mar any chance of a successful outcome.

So when the NAACP were alerted to Parks' case (almost immediately), they explained their proposal, and, despite husband Raymond's fears, Rosa agreed to do what she could – her tolerance for the treatment of black people completely evaporated.

"I was not sitting in the front of the bus, as so many people have said, and neither was my feet hurting, as many people have said". No, Rosa Parks wasn't physically tired any more than after a normal day's work; she was tired of being treated as a second-class citizen.

So sparked a revival of hope and defiance in the African Americans of Montgomery, Alabama. The Women's Political Council (WPC) had the notion of a bus boycott that would last for a day – a protest to coincide with the arrest of Rosa Parks. The WPC distributed thousands of fliers pleading that all African Americans refuse bus services for the day.

The boycott, eventually dubbed the 'Montgomery Bus Boycott', saw tens of thousands of Montgomery African Americans refuse local bus transport, replacing their usual commute with walking or car pooling with the few negro locals who owned their own vehicles.

The boycott, which was planned to last only one day, resulted in a protest for one year and two weeks; one which cost the town dearly, as 75 per cent of Montgomery's bus business comprised of black people.

Coinciding with the boycott was the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, with their new leader, an unknown pastor by the name of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., bringing Parks' case before the United States District Court.

Eventually the case was brought before the Supreme Court and on December 20, 1956, the segregation of Montgomery buses was labelled unconstitutional.

POST BOYCOTT

After the momentous success of the Supreme Court's decision, persecution of black people became endemic in the south and, according to an article in The LA Times, "Parks' husband was driven to what biographer Brinkley called, “near-suicidal despair”, by the death threats targeting them." As a result, the couple moved to Detroit in 1957, where Parks began working as a seamstress again.

Parks' involvement in civil rights never wavered. She often marched in protests all around the country, even in the 1963 march on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech.

In 1965, Parks began working as a receptionist and case worker in the office of Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich), which she continued until her retirement in 1988. Sadly, in 1977, both her brother Sylvester and her husband Raymond passed away.

Parks described her husband as an inspiration who "believed in freedom and equality and all the things that would improve conditions". She continued his legacy through the co-founding of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, an organisation that focuses on motivating youth to reach their highest potential and by educating them about the movement.

"I see the energy of young people as a real force for change," she wrote in her book, Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today's Youth.

Parks' faith continued to be a stronghold throughout her life. She recalled in another of her books, Quiet Strength, the services she attended every Sunday before supper, and how her grandmother would read the Bible to her, and her grandfather's prayers.

"We even had devotions before going to pick cotton in the fields. Prayer and the Bible became a part of my everyday thoughts and beliefs. I learned to put my trust in God and seek Him as my strength."

Her conviction and faith saw her through the uncertainty and tumultuous struggle of the civil rights campaign in Montgomery in 1955. A deep-rooted sense of morale and creed stemmed the discernment and wisdom she showed through her relatively silent, but bold, proclamation on the bus that day on December 1st.

Describing her strength in the face of arrest, she said, "Since I have always been a strong believer in God, I knew that He was with me, and only He could get me through that next step."

While continuing to seek social justice and serve her country and community, in August 1994, Parks was attacked in her home by a young man who wanted money from her.

"I pray for this young man and the conditions in our country that have made him this way," she wrote at the time. "Despite the violence and crime in our society, we should not let fear overwhelm us. We must remain strong."

Parks has been the recipient of more than 43 honorary degrees, and has garnered hundreds of certificates, awards and plaques, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honour a civilian has received, from President Bill Clinton in 1996. She was also blessed by Pope John Paul II for her contribution to humanity.

"Four decades later I am still uncomfortable with the credit given to me for starting the bus boycott," she once said. "I would like [people] to know I was not the only person involved. I was just one of many who fought for freedom."

Parks' death on October 24, 2005, which was announced by her former office in Detroit, enveloped the world of civil rights with a humble reverence and appreciation for the legacy and revolution that this subversive woman inspired.

But it was Rosa Parks' humble submission to the plight of fellow man that has forever marked the course of history. The morsel of freedom she longed for, the entitlement of every created being, was her driving force. She said, "I want everyone to remember me as a person who wanted to be free."

*Interview with Howell Raines for his book, My Soul is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (1977).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://rosaparks.org
www.adl.org/education/rosa_parks/bio.pdf
http://articles.latimes.com/print/2005/0ct/25
http://news.cincinnati.com/articlehttp://www.montgomeryboycott.com/segregation_case.htm www.leaderu.com
www.biography.com
www.achievement.org
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk

Book Shelf: World War II - The Autobiography edited by Jon E. Lewis

2012-10-25T11:49:00.000+11:00

Book Shelf: World War II - The Autobiography edited by Jon E. Lewis
Reviewed by Man with a Bag

Early in 1941, young Rachel Wray (she was 19 years old) decided to leave her depressed life in Northeastern Oklahoma and follow her boyfriend, George, who had joined the U.S. Navy, to San Diego, California, in the determination to turn around her fortunes.

She got a job as a pastry cook at an exclusive restaurant at $15 a week plus board and was feeling quite satisfied with herself – so much so that she and George made wedding plans. But come 7th December 1941, their lives changed dramatically.

George went to sea to fight the war, while Rachel decided on a path of self-improvement and enrolled in night school to do vocational training in bench mechanics and riveting, graduated after three months and obtained employment at Consolidated Aircraft (later Convair) at 80c per hour as a Riveting Technician.

"I remember my brother, who was in the Air Corps at the time, and his friends laughed at me one day thinking I couldn't learn this mechanical stuff. I can still see them, but it only made me more determined. I think it probably hurt their pride a little bit that I was capable of doing this," she wrote.

"Convair was the first time in my life that I had the chance to prove that I could do something, and I did. They finally made me a group leader, although they didn't pay me the wage that went with the job, because I was a woman."

Raised on a farm by a "daring mother who was afraid of nothing", and forced to quit school early to go to work, Rachel must have been a courageous young woman, because not only did she reach the top of her profession at Convair, but she found time to fight for and win equal pay for equal work and the overall betterment of working conditions for her workmates, both male and female.

Many in her department were ex-school teachers, artists and housewives, and she actively railed against the discrimination against them reflected in the week's wages.

"To us it seemed the men's pay automatically went up, and ours didn't," she recalls. "I was fortunate enough to get raises later, even a ten-cent raise, and I actually had an assistant foreman come up to me and say, 'Don't say anything to the other girls about getting a raise'. I told him, 'I don't discuss my personal wages, but how about the other women who are deserving, too?'. So on the wage board I fought for the other women as much as I fought for myself."

By 1943, Rachel was earning $1.15 per hour and had an A-mechanic classification.

There are 199 more insightful letters, memos, notes and correspondents reports like Rachel's in World War II The Autobiography arranged in chronological order from September 1st, 1939, to October 16, 1946, and under section headings such as 'Resistance & Reconquest', 'The Road to Berlin' and 'Setting Sun'. More complete histories of World War II can be found but this book takes you into the direct world of those that were there at a particular time and date.

You will read the actual words of political and military leaders from all sides of the conflict through the duration. But to me the most fascinating and thought-provoking parts of the book are the letters written by the soldiers, sailors and airmen, the men and women at the front, or waiting at home. These letters talk about fear and death but more importantly about our ability, as human beings, to rise above the futility of war and at least look forward to a better future.

Geographically, you will travel from France to Europe to Africa, England to Russia, to India, Burma, New Guinea, the Pacific Islands, China and Japan. From 30°C below freezing to 40°C-plus. From the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, these letters come from all points of the compass. This book will not be to the liking of everyone, but for keen students of all ages interested in this period of history, I recommend it as a should-read.

Teen Girl With a Satchel: On going to Holland with Jack

2012-10-22T14:49:00.000+11:00

Teen Girl With a Satchel: Going to Holland with Jack

By Georgie Carroll

I can’t remember the first day I realised my brother was different. Three years my senior, growing up with Jack had always seemed like the norm, but I suppose when I was started being able to do things that he couldn’t (like reading, writing, holding conversations) I began to notice differences.

I’m lucky that for the first eight years of my life, and the first eleven years of his, we lived in a tiny coastal town in which everyone accepted Jack like there was nothing different about him. He had more friends than me, was a part of all the local sporting teams, and was a major participant in our local primary school.

We moved in 2003, and that was difficult for him, but we were lucky in that our local high school allowed him to go through fully integrated (my mum is a strong opponent of “special schools”). He graduated high school in 2009, and I’m pretty sure it was the proudest day of my parents' lives.

My parents had been married for eight years and were in their early thirties when my brother was born. In a bizarre twist of fate, my mum had been working in Special Education for a decade before they had Jack. I guess God wanted to send him to a family who He knew would be able cope.

It’s not something my parents talk about often, but a few times they’ve alluded to the difficulty of going into hospital expecting to have a healthy first child and then being told something had gone wrong. They coped because they had to, and a year later, his first birthday apparently turned into a massive party for everyone who had helped them survive the first year.

There is a piece of writing my mum often turns to when she faces difficulties either with Jack or in her line of work, and it’s called “Welcome To Holland” and it's by Emily Perl Kingsley:

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this.....

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss. But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

It hasn’t always been easy. People are cruel. The word "retard" and the ease with which it is thrown around makes me feel sick.

Sometimes living with Jack is frustrating. It is hard when I have to stay home on a Saturday night to look after him. It is hard when I have to be a carer. It is hard when I realise I am never going to know what it is like to have a “regular” sibling.

It’s also hard when I make off-hand comments about getting married and having children, and it then hits me that it is something Jack will never experience. Jack doesn’t see himself as disabled, and so despite knowing many lovely girls with Down Syndrome, he is adamant he wants a “normal” girlfriend. That breaks my heart.

Knowing that I will one day be responsible for him is also a hard realisation. With two 50-something healthy parents, hopefully that reality is still a few decades away, but the thought is always at the back of my mind. It’s at the back of my parents minds, as well, as later this year they want me to gain power of attorney over him. It’s not something most 18-year-olds have to think about.

All of the difficulties aside, I am blessed to have one of the most inspirational brothers in the world. When he was in Year 12, Jack won the Minister’s Award for Excellence In Student Achievement. Only a handful of these are given out each year, and at the ceremony he was surrounded by high school Olympians and world-class musicians and artists.

He is a second degree black belt in Muay Thai (grading to third degree in December) and an utter gym addict. He amazes his personal trainer every single day with what he is capable of achieving. In terms of his fitness, he far surpasses most other people he encounters.

He’s a TAFE graduate and has held numerous part time jobs. He is also fiercely independent. Despite the fact I (or my parents) are required to help him occasionally, he is able to go shopping and do things by himself. He is also studying to get his Ls. He is determined to not let his disability ever get in the way of what he is able to achieve.

Jack turned 21 in August and over a hundred people from all over Australia turned up to celebrate. Mum had everyone fill out a guest book with their favourite memory of Jack, and the number of people who said knowing him had changed their lives brought a tear to my eye.

I personally think it’s impossible to get to know Jack and not be impacted by his spirit. I yell and scream and am utterly selfish, but he is the kindest, loyalist, friendliest, most inspirational person you will ever come across.

To me, Jack is a normal big brother. The way I see it, God was just so excited to make him, that he accidently gave him an extra copy of chromosome 21. It’s like in the Powerpuff Girls when the Professor accidentally adds Chemical X. It changes the girls, but not for the worse. It’s not a negative thing...

Society often acts like Down Syndrome is the end of the world. But it’s not. Maybe it’s not Italy, but I’m pretty thankful that God diverted my parents to Holland the first time around, because if He hadn’t, I would be nowhere near the person I am today.

The Satchel Review - Saturday October 20, 2012 ('Go Girl' Week!)

2012-10-22T10:46:00.000+11:00

After last week's anti-misogynist mantra from Prime Minister Julia Gillard reverberated around the world, and we learnt of the plight of the little heroic 15-year-old girl-fighter (with pens, not guns) Malala Yousafzai, it was heartening to see that the girls were having a much better week.

Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker Prize with Bring Up the Bodies making her the first woman and first British author to win the award twice. "You wait 20 years for a Booker prize and then two come along at once," she said.

She was called "the greatest modern English prose writer" by chairman of the Booker judges Sir Peter Stothard. There is still one more book in her historical trilogy featuring Thomas Cromwell to come. Notably, Australian author Peter Carey is one of two other authors two be a double-Booker winner.

Then CNN chief political correspondent Candy Crowley ("Don't you just love alliterative names in a TV journalist – just so...?!" noted my aunt) was the moderator for the second (and much better) Obama/Romney debate in the US.

While accused of "an act of journalistic terror" for interjecting at one point in the debate, and for bias toward President Obama, the role is testimony to the 64-year-old's considerable professional expertise. Criticism comes with the turf.

Does it take two SNL comic actresses to make one Ricky Gervias performance? 'Course not! Whichever way you want to look at it (whether through the prism of misogyny or not), it is almost guaranteed that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will will be thoroughly entertaining in their roles as hosts of the Golden Globes come January, because they are very funny.

No surprise, but girls can spell really well! Page 14 of The Courier-Mail on Wednesday said it all: "They are the 'Jen-Masters' of Centenary State High School". Two young ladies, Jennifer Vu, 14, and Jennifer Yu, 17, will face off in the newspaper's Spelling Bee final (Years 8-12) next Wednesday with three other finalists.

"I don't find it strange because if anyone deserves to win, it's her," said Jennifer Vu. "We are from the same school, so if anyone one it would be a bonus." That's the spirit!

This week was also Down Syndrome Awareness Week, and so I watched a video talk by Amy Julia Becker called 'For All People' at Qideas. Becker, who has a child with Down syndrome, imagines a world where life is not valued only for its productivity and all children are seen as a gift; no matter their ability.

I just loved seeing the story of Glen Sheppard, the 33-year-old author born with Down syndrome and diagnosed also with severe autism. He was 16-and-a-half before he learned to communicate using a plastic keyboard and a translator, and celebrated his 33rd birthday with the launch of his second book at Cup from Above cafe.

Apparently, seven people helped him to complete his six-years-in-the-making murder mystery: 188,000 characters transcribed by hand from the plastic QWERT keyboard! Isn't that wonderful?!

Between standing up for a command of the English language, comedy, politics, carers and the rights of Pakistani girls to an education... girls are winning all over the shop, and we are not surprised at all. And we love the blokes who support them, too, and anyone who can accomplish things that surprise and delight despite the odds.

This is less a gender war, more an alliance for the goodness of society as a whole. And did you hear that Australia has been received on the 15-country UN Security Council (albeit for a temporary stint) after Kevin Rudd kick-started the process during his prime ministerial tenure? Good team work all 'round... more on all to come.

Extra reporting: Catherine Andrews.

The Satchel Review - Saturday October 13

2012-10-13T09:39:00.000+11:00

The view from Katoomba - snowfall in spring.

Skivvies? In spring? Now, that's groundbreaking!

As winter wardrobes prematurely filed away were resurrected from the archives to meet the wintry snap head on, an icy delivery of speech was heard in Canberra causing men doing the dishes across the country to ponder, 'Am I a misogynist?'.

As far as news rules go, this week was a corker, presenting us not only with wintry weather in the middle of spring, but a parliamentary speech that made the international press pay attention to our underacknowledged island-continent.

The nation's south was swept up in a chilly south-east snow storm mid-spring that froze toes like a Wintour gaze at a fashion show. What a wonder! What a treat! Look at the sleet on the street!

But as Anti-Poverty Week commenced, we were given reason to contemplate how those one million Australians surviving on the bare minimum of resources were able to meet the need of the sudden freeze.

Have you watched the Four Corners report 'Growing Up Poor' on the ABC? If that does not elicit sympathy for the plight of our fellow neighbour (in Clayborne, NSW), I don't know what will. Those kids are legends in my books. But poverty on our doorsteps? This is not good at all.

Just so you know, this same week, the Government put in place its legislation to force more than 140,000 sole parents off the Single Parent Payment onto a lower Newstart Allowance. Most of these sole parents (90 per cent, according to the Australian Council for Social Service) are female, and they include the mum in 'Growing Up Poor' whose daughter has no light in her room.

This action will save the Government $700 million.

Yes, back in February an historic wage rise for workers in the community sector – dominated by women – was celebrated. It had been found by Fair Work Australia that "gender was an important influence" in why workers in community jobs were short-changed.

So, it followed that approximately 120,000 female workers were set to receive increases of up to $24,000 a year – average salaries in the sector rose from $42,000 to $56,000. A big gain!

But the words and actions are not adding up. Balancing a budget is no easy feat, but getting your social policies right should be a standard for any decent nation – we look after the disadvantaged, marginalised and downtrodden, don't we?

As the story goes, Prime Minister Julia Gillard took the opportunity in parliament to point to the Opposition leader's peddling of double standards following the resignation of the Speaker, Peter Slipper.

"I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man," said a defiant Gillard. "If he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn’t need a motion in the House of Representatives, he needs a mirror."

The New Yorker called Gillard's performance "political theatre", though we might recall the Shakespearean tragedy that was the unceremonious axing of Kevin Rudd when examining the mixed reactions to her feminist monologue: a play for political power or girl power?

Either way, she sparked a contemporary discussion of sexism as the word "misogyny" echoed around the globe from the antipodes to New York City.

Gillard's impassioned speech was peppered with examples of Abbott's offensive opinions, including his past inferences that abortion is the easy way out, that women are physiologically ill equipped for positions of leadership, and that the housewives of Australia do the ironing as they think about issues such as the carbon tax, which was seen to be a bad thing (personally, I do all my good thinking while performing such menial tasks as vacuuming and hanging the washing).

We must admit, there is a repugnant, lingering misogyny (like racism and any ism that isn't very nice) that undergirds more macho elements of Australian society, practised by uncles of a certain Boomer generation at the Christmas table (awkward!), demonstrated by a bunch of boofheads on Mad Monday and taken up by the two misguided university students who created a page of young girls posing provocatively.

Before it closed, the aforementioned site ('Controversial Humour 12 year old slut memes') had attracted 216,000 'likes', which says something worrying in itself. Additionally the comment, "As long as there are sluts, we will put them in their place. Keep the submissions coming guys. We're not going anywhere", did not go down too well.

Least of all with their mothers, we are told.

There is no accounting for bad taste, let alone profiteering (whether financially or in page "likes") from borderline child pornography at worst and teen girls' vulnerability at best. These boys clearly have something to learn about negative cultural conditioning and right and wrong.

What do they teach that at university (would you like some morals with your Economics 101)? Is it a tertiary responsibility? No, says QUT (my casual employer), who wants nothing to do with it at all. I feel sympathy for the boys' parents who have been accosted by the media – sometimes bad parenting is not the explanation; kidults do stupid things.

But what is breeding the idea that this line of work might be okay? Perhaps it is shows on the television that border on pornography and the internet and its seedy, slimey, Gollum-esque underbelly? It is a different world today.

"What a sad state of affairs it is when students sitting the HSC feel they need to resort to a cocktail of Ritalin and caffeine to give them an advantage (''ADHD pills become latest study aid'', smh.com.au, October 14)," wrote Peter Miniutti to SMH (to which I say, "indeed!").

"While this is not a new practice, it is certainly one fraught with danger. My advice to those sitting the HSC is to prepare thoroughly, get a good night's sleep and do the best you can – no one could ask for more."

Except... world peace! The Nobel Peace Prize was this week awarded to the European Union for six decades of post-WWII union "to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe". It was a contentious choice as Spain riots and Greece teeters on the edge of economic oblivion.

"We have almost exhausted our endurance. We must think of measures that will bring hope, particularly growth measures," Greece's president Karolos Papoulias is reported to have said. Not an enviable leadership position by any stretch.

And to think that in December the Pakistani government awarded Malala Yousafzai a National Peace Award for her bravery in exposing the difficulties of being a girl-child in the Swat district and her home town Mingora. Girls are still being bartered for marriage over there – if not shot at point-blank.

Malala, the Pakistani girl shot in the head by the Taliban on her way home from school for championing female education in her country, was heralded as a hero as she was airlifted to hospital. The second teen girl to be persecuted for her beliefs in Pakistan in recent months, Malala has literally risked life and limb for a cause she believes in.

"I will serve my people, I will speak up for my right of education and I speak for the girls," she once said. "If I lost my life in speaking up for the rights of girls, it is not a big deal for me."

That was a good thing for girls to hear, though they too might live in fear of the Taliban – the most misogynist group of them all. The best thing in Australian politics this week? Julia Gillard praising John Howard's leadership during the Bali bombings of 2002 at the memorial service. It is a topsy-turvy world we live in.

*GWAS has been working hard behind the scenes on non-GWAS things. Apologies for delays in editorial updates. Thank you for your patience.

Girl With a Satchel

Book Shelf: Fly by Wire by William Langewiesche

2012-10-09T08:07:00.002+11:00

Book Shelf: Fly by Wire by William Langewiesche
Reviewed by Bloke with a Bag

Most of us should remember the TV footage flashed around the world on the 13th of January 2009, which showed U.S. Airways flight 1549, an A320 Airbus, landing in the Hudson River, New York, with no loss of life.

From take-off to splash-down, the flight only lasted five minutes.

It was dubbed "the Miracle on Hudson". As the story goes, the pilot, Captain Chesley Sullenberger III, with co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles, saved the lives of 150 passengers that day by using his piloting skills, and casting of distractions. They became national heroes; the newest stars in American aviation folklore.

The plane had encountered a pack of Canadaian snow geese two minutes into its flight path and the engines conked out. The 'Fly by Wire' of this book's title refers to the automation technology that allows pilots such as Sullenberger to accomplish huge human feats, such as conquering engine failure, while avoiding more menial piloting tasks (like keeping the plane steady).

In essence, the contention in Langewiesche's book is that the soft landing of the plane was more of a team effort: the result of Sullenberger's skill combined with fly-by-wire technology and a former test pilot named Bernard Ziegler.

This little gem of a book will give you a second by second account of the flight and what transpired on the flight deck with the cabin crew and the passengers. But it will also take you further into the world of aircraft engineering, construction and computers. It will take you into airline deregulation and the position commercial airline pilots have to face today.

When I first took a long-haul flight out of Australia, it was on a Qantas Super Constellation, a propeller-driven four-engine aeroplane. It probably had a flight deck crew of pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer, navigator and, more than likely, a back-up pilot.

Today, on the new generation Boeing and Airbus aircraft, you only need a pilot and co-pilot. Computers fly the aircraft 98 per cent of the time. Should they?

Langewiesche tackles his subject matter journalistic aplomb, addressing the intersection between man and his inventions. Neither, we find, are infallible.

This book is only about a three-hour read, so if you're a public transport commuter, stick it in your satchel or bag. Time will fly.

My rating: 8/10.

Perspective: On love rights, wrongs and respect

2012-10-08T09:51:00.001+11:00

Perspective: On love rights, wrongs and respect


Love not war: "The thing I can't stand about you, mate, is you're always so bloody cheerful." - Frank to Archy, Gallipoli

Things said in jest or in haste or to deliberately hurt and wound can lead us into reputational ruin, as we have witnessed this week.

No surprise to hear, for example, that our Prime Minister does not wish to keep the company of one Alan Jones. If he calls, she's not home.

But we'd be wise to refrain from grandstanding. How many of us have said, whether in or out of school (Jones, notably, was at a dinner meeting of the Young Liberals when he deemed it suitable to make his shame claim), something we lived to regret?

How soon we forget ourselves, when in the company of those we wish to entertain, or to score points (hello, presidential election) when what is truly called for is a little restraint. Pride and ego so often get in the way of doing the good and respectable thing, don't they?

The family, or any group setting, can teach us so much about interacting with others – marriage alone can teach a person a lot about the need for respect, a healthy sense of humour and grace for mistakes. In short, empathy for fellow man's fallen state.

When we permit ourselves a little leave-of-conscience, and strike a particularly low blow, it inevitably comes back to bite us. I've been there, perhaps you have, too? And in the world of social media, it's a trending theme that is, thankfully, meeting with some resistance.

In the latest edition of WHITE magazine, the brilliant Choe Brereton describes a situation between friends in which there is friction.

"Insults, even petty ones, cumulatively breed a type of neglect that dissolves trust. I call it neglect because the very use of tactless language fails, in particular, to consider another's emotions, worth and confidence in you."

The reasoning behind this mud-slinging behaviour? "I hate being made to feel small," says Brereton.

Pride – blasted source of all evil!

How much of society's woes might be attributable to our desire to be seen, to be loved, to be heard, to be respected, to be right, to be the king of the world? And how much damage is done in the process because love, not selfishness, is the route to social cohesion and good relational wellbeing?

Is is all very Australian, this devilish, muckraking behaviour, from the slanging that occurs on the cricket pitch to the parliamentary floor, behind Young Liberals doors and now social media.

We never miss an opportunity to put a pin to a big head. This part of our character flourished on the war fields when the British dared to talk down their Digger counterparts.

"These "gentlemen," presumably because their asses are higher from the ground that ours, tend to assume airs of superiority," said Sargeant Sayers to his men in Gallipoli.

"But, they won't have their horses with them today, so I want you to go out there this morning, and short of actually killing them, show them the stuff the infantry is MADE OF!"

On that note, as an aside, did you know that the phrase going "to the top of the Wazir" derives its meaning, of doing something to excess, from a troop riot in the red light district Cairo on Good Friday 1915, over the prices being charged by prostitutes and the rumour that they were intentionally infecting the men with sexually transmitted diseases?

Wikipedia says it is so under the page titled 'Digger Slang'.

But blanket acceptance of a part of our culture that perhaps could do with some spit and polish is cause for reflection. At the risk of hampering our blessed freedom of speech and Ned Kelly-esque national character, there is also civility to consider. We all have to occupy this space together, after all.

In this sense, making an example of people like Jones can be helpful. It tells us something about ourselves and gives us pause to reflect on our behaviour.

No matter your thoughts on her politics, a Prime Minister commands respect because of his or her position. Our current Prime Minister's role came via the usurping of the caucus over the former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, but it is her role now, nonetheless.

The same might be said for the home. Respect for parents and respect for one's spouse ultimately lead to cohesion, though often we find ourselves dancing in the realm of conditional love: I will love you when you...
a) Stop behaving this way
b) Start behaving that way
c) Start treating me this way
d) Stop treating me that way

"Dealing with what we say and how we say it is undoubtedly a question of practice – and of respect," writes Brereton.

"You love them, so identify the triggers that get you talking crass like a crabby 14-year-old and find a way to let the temptation pass. Grab the proverbial boot...and stick it on the other foot! Pause. Think. Walk away if you must. Make it a choice not to buckle to words you may later regret, or to leave the one you love feeling insignificant and withdrawn."

In our quest to feel more significant, we too readily belittle the other. This always creates what Winnie the Pooh would call a lot of "bother". So, in an effort to raise the National Standard of Discourse, some reflection on why we feel a certain way about others, or why we feel the need to demean them, is par for the course.

Calling a member of parliament past or present an "unflushable turd", as noted by The Australian and attributable to one Mark Latham, just won't do, will it, Winne the Pooh? Is this a sign of our national immaturity levels?

A little tenderness goes along way; empathy, having a clue that someone else is not exactly like you and that their own history examined might reveal something behind their own motivation, politics and thinking.

Though there will always be people who are unkindly and rude and crude, this behaviour would be the exact opposite of love as described by Paul in his letter to the Corinthians and referred to so often in wedding settings:

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

I must confess, I don't always adhere to these basic principles of love, especially when making excuses such as tiredness for myself, but I am always humbled when I venture against them. The proud are always humbled – humiliation follows on egotism's tails.

Thankfully, true love always forgives and always prevails.

Girl With a Satchel

The Satchel Review - October 6, 2012

2012-10-06T08:53:00.000+10:00

Tracy Champan's "Many Rivers to Cross" came to mind this week as it was reported that NASA's Curiosity had come across evidence of a river on Mars. Water on the Red Planet – well, I'll be!

But after a two-day search for a 1934 vintage plane containing six people, it was found with no survivors in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. A rescue helicopter sighted the red biplane 14 kilometres north of Borumba Dam just before 2pm on Wednesday, reported the ABC.

The deceased include pilot Desmond Porter, 68, his wife Cath, 61, from Tingalpa in Brisbane's east; John Dawson, 63, and his wife Carol Dawson, 63, also from Tingalpa; and Les D'evlin, 75, and his wife Janice D'evlin, 61, from Manly West.

The Courier-Mail called them the "Best of Friends" in a front-page headline, detailing the relationship enjoyed by the inseparably "close mates, united by school, work, marriage and a thirst for adventure".

The accident was both a shock to their families and the vintage aircraft community.

"Aviation can be a cruel child and you only have to make small mistakes and it can catch up on you," said Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) spokesman Mike Barton.

Also in Queensland, four girls were ushered to the airport at the behest of the Family Court, and to the anguish of their mother, in order to be returned to their father in Italy in compliance with The Hague Convention.

Judge Colin Forrest said he had sought the guarantee of the father that he would not press charges against the girls' mother if she also returned to Italy.

The vision of Australian Federal Police prying the girls from their mother was highly disturbing, but so too was a comment reportedly made by their maternal great-grandmother when the AFP found them in hiding.

"How exciting. Who is going to play you in the movie? They will have to find a good little dark-headed actress to play you."

Deary me.

The Bali Bombings anniversary reminded us all this week that life can be short, and holidays are no sweet escape from that reality, as victims of the 2004 Thai tsunami would know too well. These coastal places of retreat for Westerners have not been the same since.

Still, it was terrorism, not natural disaster, that took the lives of 202 people in 2002, including 88 Australians and 38 Indonesians. The name "Jemaah Islamiah" haunts many of the survivors, many whose stories and strength of character have inspired us to get on with life while we have it.

The shooting down of an army helicopter by Syrian rebels east of Damascus was a reminder of how that country remains in civil war. More than 30,000 souls have been taken since the outbreak of conflict 19 months ago.

Middle Eastern conflict permeates international reportage pages and adjacent social media streams, which has largely come to define that geographic area as one at war in the minds of Westerners. A recent headline from The New York Times read, "Iran Supplying Syrian Military via Iraq Airspace".

Parochially, there was an accident on Mount Tamborine Tuesday morning involving the collision of a car and a motorbike at the intersection outside of Spice of Life cafe on Main Street.

The motorbike t-barred the car, which pulled unsuspectingly out of the intersection; both drivers escaped, for the most part, unscathed, though the car and motorbike were not so well off

The motorbike rider flipped onto the car and fell off onto the road, while the car driver at fault was white as a ghost. The former was reportedly the brother-in-law of GWAS; the latter a medical student on his first day of internship.

Shocks, jocks, accidents, aeronautical endeavours with mixed results and errors of judgement were truly the order of the week. Commiserations to all who have lost a loved one, even temporarily.

Girl With a Satchel

Book Shelf: The Gobbledygook is Eating a Book

2012-10-05T14:05:00.000+10:00

Book Shelf: The Gobbledygook is Eating a Book by Justine Clarke and Arthur Baysting

Every now and then, a children's title crosses the desk and we find ourselves smitten. They open us up to wonder again. And this one speaks to us particularly, because it is about the love of reading.

Justine Clarke is a well-known children's entertainer – the J.K. Rowling to the toddler crowd, if you like – and this is her debut children's book, co-authored with Arthur Baysting and illustrated by Tom Jellett.
Within it we find a little girl who encounters a gobbledygook eating up books.

But as he soon learns, books are not for eating but for reading, and they can take you on wonderful adventures, to Mars amogst the faraway stars, to places with dinosaurs with toothy jaws and giant roars, to the icy poles where the penguins live, and fairytale lands with ponies, wizards and queens.

"I'm so excited about my first picture book," said Clarke. "The Gobbledygook is a little ode to the wonder and joy books provide and to the respect that brings for the object themselves – the books! I love reading to my kids before bedtime, it's the best part of my day. To open a book and read together is an active pursuit – that last great adventure to share before sleep descends; the launching pad to dreamland."

Isn't that grand?

This is a lively, frollicking book full of fun language to whet kids' appetites for reading and words, and, at the last, sleeping – with a monster by one's side, nonetheless, a message that will warm the parents of child frightened by things that creep and peep out from cupboards and from under beds in the night.

The Crayola-esuqe illustrations with their bold, primary colours set the scene for a brilliant spring-time read. Clarke, Baysting and Jellett have done a commendable job in this book for pre-schoolers which hits stands just in time for Clarke's "Pop-Up Tour 2012".

The Gobbledygook is Eating a Book by Justine Clarke, $19.99, Penguin, is out October 24.

Girl With a Satchel

Kitchen Bench: Sweetness and light (Scottish Butter Tablet)

2012-10-05T14:04:00.000+10:00

Kitchen Bench: Sweetness and light (Butter Tablet)

Photography: Sophie Baker

By Sophie Baker

After making my most successful and scrumptious batch of fudge (also known as Butter Tablet) ever, I thought it fitting to snap a tantalising photo. As you can well imagine, I am now suffering from a dry-thoat and sugar headache... but, boy, was it worth it! After the recipe? Go here and enjoy!

Thinkings: William Wilberforce on morals and joy

2012-10-05T11:55:00.001+10:00

Thinkings: William Wilberforce on morals and joy

"My grand objection to the religious system still held by many who declare themselves orthodox Churchmen. . . is, that it tends to render Christianity so much a system of prohibitions rather than of privilege and hopes, and thus the injunction to rejoice, so strongly enforced in the New Testament, is practically neglected, and Religion is made to wear a forbidding and gloomy air and not one of peace and hope and joy."

- William Wilberforce, British Parliamentarian, proponent of the abolition of the slave trade; Peculiar Doctrines, Public Morals, and the Political Welfare, John Piper, 2002.

Girl With a Satchel

Book Shelf: The Guilty One by Lisa Ballantyne

2012-10-02T10:00:00.000+10:00

Book Shelf: The Guilty One by Lisa Ballantyne
Reviewed by Brooke Lehmann

Lisa Ballantyne's career has previously found her involved in the Chinese education sector with the occasional writing for magazines in English and in Chinese.

However, the Mandarin speaking Scot has turned her mind to the world of novels, introducing her debut, The Guilty One (Platkus) to our bookshelves in August. Finding itself an international phenomenon, critics have boasted The Guilty One as being 'psychological and suspenseful'.

The story follows Daniel Hunter, a man who knows what it is to come from a dysfunctional family. Now a partner at a solicitor's firm in London, life wasn't always peachy for the successful lawyer; a fact that resurfaces when he receives the case of 11-year-old Sebastian Croll, who has just been charged with the murder of eight-year-old Benjamin Stokes.

The novel flashes between memories of Daniel's childhood in foster-care due to his drug addicted mother's inability to care for him and the absence of his father, and the murder case which has all of London talking.

Daniel, or 'Danny' as we come to call him, is forced to reconcile with his tumultuous past; one of fear, loneliness and instability of home, until he met his new foster mother, Minnie, a waddling, gin-loving, rough, but well meaning Irish lass.

While Minnie manages to break down the walls that young Danny created in an act of self-preservation, Daniel learns the hard way that it's those we love and trust who can hurt us the most.

Concurrently, Danny is consumed with the uncertainty that surrounds the outcome of the overly intelligent and slightly unnerving Sebastian; a conclusion that could find the 11-year-old lost to the system forever.

The outcome adamantly remains elusive right to the final pages. Ballantyne's plot successfully involves all the conventional lines one would find in a psychological novel; a convoluted case, haunted pasts, twists and turns, and the uncertainty of truth at the end.

However, aside from these typical concepts, Ballantyne's narrative is a little dry. Admittedly, a slow build up is a given for this genre, however, Ballantyne fails to capture the reader's attention the way through. Somewhat of a letdown, the focus and pressure established around young Sebastian's fate is hardly given justice in the execution of its portrayal.

Despite these bungles, there are moments of brilliance in some of her metaphors. "He smoothed the ivory-coated wood of the piano, his fingers still tingling from the bashing he had given the keys", writes Ballantyne, a beautifully crafted sentence that bespeaks of life's highs and lows; at once critical, hurtful and unforgiving, and the next gracious, doting and soothing.

A novel bordering on mystery and intrigue, The Guilty One is worth a read, however, don't build up your hopes too high.

Culture: Making sense of senseless suffering (for mature readers)

2012-10-01T13:56:00.001+10:00

Culture: Making sense of senseless suffering

Frazzled, a little on edge and weary on Friday night, my husband and I sat and watched Looper at the cinema, which would not prove to be panacea to our state of being – violence has a tendency to escalate fractured emotions – though it did offer up a kernel of a moral, which was its redeeming feature along with Emily Blunt.

Essentially what we find in the film is a young man named Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) – one of several young henchmen – recruited into a group of assassins who shoot and kill people who come back from the future ("crime travel" is what the film's genre has been called by the New Jersey Newsroom).

"This time travel crap, just fries your brain like a egg... " says the crime boss character Abe, and you can actually start to feel your brain doing the same as you watch the film, but let's lay that aside.

When the protagonist is faced with the prospect of killing his future self (Bruce Willis), things start to go awry. In this Back to the Future meets Bladerunner meets The Matrix meets The Terminator movie, Joe is forced to sober up from his life of drug-taking, murdering and numbing individualism to think not only of himself, but "himselves", and also Blunt and her son*.

It's all terribly violent with sex scenes thrown in (look away, did I), but at its core is a simplistic message about lost boys with no moral compass becoming awful men and the consequences of one's actions, especially on children.

This past week we have witnessed the first details of ABC radio administrator Jill Meagher's murderer emerge. What we see is a portrait of a man, a pastry chef with a penchant for prostitutes, who had endured an unfortunate, abusive and violent relationship with his father. He became a father himself, living a fractured life with four children to two separate women and clearly a lot of pent-up anger inside.

Beautiful Jill was his unwitting target – caught up in the cross-fire of a life gone awry. He chose to stay in the dark and took away her light.

Also recently in Australia, Andy Muirhead, former host of the ABC's popular Collectors program, arrested on charges of child pornography, was the subject of a Kate Legge feature in The Weekend Australian Magazine on Saturday.

Legge painted a revealing picture of an ostensibly successful young man who could not temper his anxiety and thus spiralling addiction down the road to viewing child pornography so hideous in its nature (for child pornography is, by nature, a depravity unimaginable) that it is hard to comprehend just how he became so numb to his actions until his arrest.

The details of Muirhead's case are very disturbing; they nearly made me wretch as I read them to my husband. Confronting was this detail elucidated by Legge:

We expect offenders to be deviant, depraved, grubby; not respectable, cheerful, next-door types. But Griffith University professor Stephen Smallbone, a leading expert in preventing child sexual abuse, confirms those who access internet child pornography are typically white, male, educated professionals: judges, soldiers, dentists, teachers, academics, police officers, and yes, celebrity television presenters.

Like Jill Meagher's murderer, it is very much a case of, 'How could this happen?'. Two completely different men from different backgrounds each committing crimes that we regular, law-abiding, God-fearing folk could not imagine doing, nor becoming.

What we see is a complete disconnect; between the man and his better nature (conscience), or the man and God. His personhood becomes completely corrupt. Such persons, left to their own devices, to fester in isolation and without appropriate checks in place, then become a menace to the human race, and to themselves; a moral disgrace.

Into that cavernous space, where the broken parts of them reside, the hideous things come crawling like spooky creatures in the night... the mind games, the habits, the thoughts that no man should ever entertain, let alone think, until, twig!, temptation is given permission to run its course and the crime is done and its perpetrator numb to both its cause, its outcome and possible consequences – never mind the victim, who is not a "person" (with hopes, dreams, a family) to them.

"People? Really? This collective noun glosses over the emotional vulnerability and powerlessness of toddlers, pre-school children and young teenagers... unspeakable cruelty demands zero tolerance of those who profit, produce or encourage this foul trade. These are children, not people," notes Legge, quite rightly.

Where should we sit amidst this calamitous web of misery and evil? How to make sense of it? When it is too late for those who have been caught up in the stickiness of tattered lives and darkness threatens to settle in and overwhelm us all?

We must surely seek to get to the root of the cause. For the Christian, that means negotiating a fallen, rotten, stinky world full of the consequences of original sin with the good sense to see that all is not as it should be but there must be justice, mercy and love, which conquers all. Where we see wastelands, we should turn over the soil. This is our toil.

"Behold, I have given you the power ‘to tread upon serpents’ and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you," said Jesus (Luke 10:19).

Surely we must value the sacredness of childhood as being an antidote to future depravity, to love our children into a state of convivial familiarity within the home, but not expect to put all the pressure on the family when society, and the individual and his or her actions within its structure and influenced by its many appetising offerings, is also very much to blame – the fallen world culture, just the same.

Ban the internet? Put out the brothels (and the pokies and Lotto while you're at it, too)? Who are we to hold to account? What are we to do?

I don't know. But at the risk of being too zealous, of offending the 'anything goes' few at the risk of being seen as nanny-state ninnies, we perhaps too easily give in to the idea that if we don't agree that some things are not beneficial to society at large, then we should allow them to carry on because it's scary standing up for something.

If you see a log on a road, and swerve to miss it in your car, do you stop, pull over and remove the log so it is out of harm's way for others, or do you continue to drive on thinking, 'Glad I escaped!' and not give a thought to the next passer-by? By forfeiting your present material comfort (inside the car), your good deed might become a blessing to others.

In the film Looper, the young man takes out his own life, seeing what he might become if he doesn't do so: just another hopeless case of history repeating. It is a tragic suicide. This Hollywood act of redemption and self-sacrifice gives us pause to think, 'But what could have been? Must it come to this?'.

Yes, family love and stability can inoculate against wrongness in adults, but in the case of Muirhead, by all accounts from a good family, something very different went wrong. He could not find sufficient resources within himself to conquer his depravity, nor the means to ameliorate his anxities about life and his newfound fame in appropriate ways.

What is the way out of bad actions and guilt? How to stop before the consequences catch up and threaten to overwhelm? Saint Paul tackles these problems in his letter to the Romans; the inner struggle for the right within us over the wrong. Who amongst us will be humble enough to admit when something is wrong?

If in doubt, chuck it out is my motto – accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative and don't look at Mr In-Between (sex scenes!), because you never know what might trigger; some behaviour in your own self that you thought you were never capable of doing.

Some lingering image or thought that you could better do without; some resentment that has not yet found its way out given permission to run wild at an inopportune time (like when defences are down and so too is sense).

As my husband keeps reminding me, what might cause one person to stumble (access to a home computer, beer in the fridge) is not the same for everyone – hence, we should not judge the activities some indulge in or refrain from at the expense of social cohesion.

But if it is our common experience that certain things (such as pornography and unloving parents) result in bad outcomes, we must shine a light on them and put things right. In essence, get in there before things go horribly wrong. Turn up the soil; root out the weeds; plant new seed before it's too late or else await the inevitable.

"God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world," wrote CS Lewis.

We are all vulnerable to the pull of the delicious things society dishes up as the remedy to our lonliness or childhood woes; but the balm of Christ – peace, love, well doing, grace – can soothe all things and restore them to their rightful way. We cannot think that we will be exempt from suffering, so we must buffer ourselves with faith and walking in the light.

It wasn't so long ago that Hitler roamed the earth and led the Jews to their death camps. To what now might we be turning a blind eye?

*Be warned, this is no Scrooge-y Christmas tale; there is a devilish child who will make your blood curl.

See also:
Thinkings: On the Robert Hughes' of the world
Perspective: Pornography is not great in any shape

Girl With a Satchel